This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Butler chapter.
If you didn’t know already, I’ve got narcolepsy. Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder characterized by extreme daytime sleepiness and often takes the form of random sleep attacks. Some narcoleptics, including me, also have cataplexy which is random muscle loss. Anywho, narcolepsy is a really serious thing that is often made light of so to help stress the importance of it to you I am going to use very serious gifs.
No matter how much sleep you get, you will never wake up well-rested:
Ritalin (or whatever stimulant you get prescribed) doesn’t make you less sleepy it just makes you super jittery.
And when the Ritalin finally wears off enough for you to chill the fuck out you’re suddenly exhausted again. Absolutely no middle ground.
Your attention span is way too small to actually listen in class. (Can’t pay attention when you’re tired, or when you have the jitters).
It’s also way too small to study for any length of time.
Sometimes you zone out into a tiny micro-sleep in the middle of talking to someone.
If you have cataplexy there’s a huge chance one of your muscles will fail you at least once a week.
Every time someone is tired around you they will make some “funny” comment about how they might have narcolepsy too.
Your one true love will always be your bed (even though you can go to sleep anywhere).