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Subscribe to RSSA man jumps out a fifth-story window. A woman marches into oncoming traffic. Another woman loads a gun and shoots herself. All appear to be open-and-shut cases of suicide, but, then again, maybe not. In rare cases, such deaths could be caused by something called parasomnia pseudo-suicide, experts say.
In other words: It’s possible to kill yourself in your sleep.
Recently, the New York Times reported on such a case. On the morning of May 30, a young, promising designer named Tobias Wong was found dead in his New York City home; he’d apparently hanged himself in the night. But Wong had a known history of insomnia and extreme sleepwalking episodes, among them billing clients, cooking a steak dinner or even creating silly outfits for his cats, the paper reported. His sleepwalking condition had apparently worsened with the stress of growing his design business.
Could his death be a tragic result of his sleepwalking?
There are documented cases of suicide while sleepwalking, says Michel Cramer Bornemann, the lead investigator of sleep forensics at the Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, Minn. Bornemann spends his days working on the legal implications of sleepwalking. He’ll help build a case to defend a sleepwalker who wanders into a stranger’s home, or, on the other hand, prosecute a woman who claims she was sleepwalking when she loaded a gun, shot and killed someone.
“If you think about sleep, the part of the brain that makes us human is essentially offline,” Bornemann says. He’s talking about the prefrontal cortex, which controls our personalities and our decision making processes. In sleepwalking, “the behaviors are either very primal, reflexive behaviors, or they’re overlearned behaviors that are kind of built into our neural networks that have become habitual.”
On NPR’s “This American Life,”comedian Mike Birbiglia relates experience with the sleepwalking disorder and an episode that nearly killed him. While staying at a motel in Walla Walla, Wash., he had a nightmare that a missile was headed for his hotel room. While still asleep, he got out of bed and jumped out the second story window. To cope with the disorder, he now sleeps in a sleeping bag.
Sleepwalking is more common among kids, affecting about 12 percent of American children, Bonneman says. But as the brain matures, most people grow out of it – it’s much rarer for adults to sleepwalk, and only about 4 percent of Americans adults do.
“But technically, it can happen in a lot of us,” Bonneman says. “This is something that all of us are potentially capable of.”
What’s the worst trouble sleepwalking ever caused you? Tell us in the comments.
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When I was in my mid-20's, I lived in a pretty bad neighborhood in San Francisco. I once found myself completely naked and locked out of my apartment on the street, having gotten there by sleepwalking. Fortunately, my room mate was home, so he let me back in. Pretty scary experience.
Back in 1982 I shared a two bedroom condo with a good friend. In the middle of the night, the guy he had just started dating woke me up as he climbed in bed right on top of me! I hollered, he screamed, the lights came on .... drama and chaos!!
I currently have a friend who occasionally stays overnight in a guest roo, who sleep eats. I've awakened in the AM to find the kitchen floor strewn with cereal, coffee grounds all over the counter, and had to clean mayo and lettuce out of the guest bed sheets! Oh well, at least she makes getting up in the morning an adventure.
A couple of years ago I woke up in my car after dreaming that I was late for work. Luckily I had grabbed the wrong keys but who knows what would have happened, its a 45 mile commute!
My son was a sleepwalker. One night he walked into his little sister's room and peed in the toy box. Have you ever tried to wash a zillion little toys? Many more instances and years later, he went into her room, took her jeans off a chair and put them on a chair in his room. After that she locked her bedroom door - no way was she sharing her designer jeans.
I started buying weird things in ebay while taking Ambien. One day, my brother called and asked why I had sent him some Monkey Ass Tomato seeds. I am not kidding!
I set my neighbor's dog house on fire while sleepwalking. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
I was staying with a some friends for a couple of weeks while in between apartments. One night, they heard me get up and not go back to bed. When the husband got up to check out what was going on, he saw me walking through the house turning on all of the lights. He followed along behind me turning them all off. I went back to bed and never had a clue. The had a good laugh over it.
I often sleptwalked as a child. Once I went to the bathroom, put on my imaginary roller skates and started skating through the house. When I was done, I sat back on the toilet to "take off my skates" and went back to bed. My Mom laughed as she described the whole scene the next morning. One other time I woke up on the sidewalk in front of my apartment. Luckily I was in pajamas!
When I was a kid I walked in my sleep up until I was 17 years old. My family had bought 5 acres of land and put up a tent for us to sleep in. There was one room, a kitchen, built out of wood that the tent was attached to. One night when I was 12 I woke up three blocks down the road. I went back home and the kitchen door was locked. I knocked on the door and my mother let me in. It was a very dangerous desert area where havelinas and rattlesnakes lived.
As an adult of 45 I walked 5 miles to my boyfriend's house, turned around and walked back. Also, around that time I was stopped by a policeman & policewoman. They woke me up 3 blocks from my apartment. They said that I was walking with my eyes closed (how?), yet I didn't stumble or falter. They took me home.
Again @ 64 I began taking sleep medicine (ambien) and woke up in the kitchen having cooked an oriental dish with my cookbook open. I never cook oriental food and I wasn't hungry. When I looked at the recipe that I followed, I could not read it because my eyes were too sleepy. How? The next day I ate the food and it was delicious.
Another incident while taking ambien. I woke up laying in the floor with a cd player playing lovely music.
I don't know what makes me do this. Patty
Sounds like ambien is a fun trip haha joking of course but just think if you could have executed this correctly....set up a tread mill and leave it on try and see if you have triggers that make you sleepwalk this could be a very fun experiment for you if you don't end up getting hurt you could learn how to be a chef simply by sleeping well every night lol
About two years ago I had my old (favorite) high-school teacher from 20 years earlier contact me from overseas and tell me he was coming to my state and would love to visit me and stay for a few days. I was flattered that he had gone to the trouble to track me down after so long, and resolved to make the visit for he and his wife a wonderful time. We had them stay in our guest bedroom.
I took him and his wife out with my family to the best restaurants, sites, and views Austin had to offer over two days.
The last night they were there I had the most horrifying thing happen: I awoke at 2AM in the morning sitting in the dimly lit guest room in my underpants, sitting on the corner of their bed by the pillow next to his wife. My teacher was shaking my shoulder calling my name saying 'Are you OK, are you OK?'.
He said that he was awake when I came in walking in a rather 'wooden' fashion and saw me go around the bed to his side, stop, look, and then go around the bed to the other side and start pulling the blankets away to get in bed next to his wife. That is when he woke me by shaking my shoulder.
How do you explain that!!! How do you recover from that! It certainly made for some awkward conversation at breakfast.
Three of the four kids in our family sleepwalked as children. Our scariest experience: my older sister once tried to jump out of the back door of the car, while it was moving, during a trip to the mountains. One minute she was sleeping in the back of the station wagon, the next she was yanking on the door handle, muttering "Gotta go to the bathroom." I grabbed the door and held it closed while my mother screamed her name and tried unsuccessfully to wake her. Mom finally slapped her to wake her up. Harsh, yes, but better than having her leap out of the moving car. My younger brother used to eat in his sleep, and my parents say more than once they found me standing outside in the driveway, sound asleep (which makes me wonder why they didn't install different locks after the FIRST time it happened).
Both my brother and I would sleepwalk when we were young. My father installed a gate at the top of the second-floor staircase because I was always falling down the stairs while sleepwalking. My brother would sit up in bed, turn on the bedside lamp, put on his glasses and "read" his schoolbooks -- asleep! One night there was a lot of commotion in the hallway and he was "playing" basketball with his friends using his pillow. He was yelling his friends' names and if they missed the basket, he would curse at them!
I wake up in the shower all the time. It is a real time saver in the morning! LOL!
thanks for propagating the truth. tobias' disorder was terrifying. we were totally in love and he would never do this on purpose.
Once I was pulling an all nighter as a 12 year old my 10 year old brother got up from his bed and started walking toward our stairs as he stumbled up them I shouted his name several times. He was unaffected but my mother did wake up and we watched him navigate his way through our house. His first stop? The fridge of course. He got a can of tomato juice and tried drinking it.... fortunately for him it was sealed tightly. His next stop was much more funny. He went into my bedroom and started to jump up and down on the bed. His last and final destination was into the bathroom where he laid down on the floor. I covered him up with my blankets and gave him a pillow. In the morning I awoke to him yelling, "Tom (not real name) WHY THE EFF DID YOU MOVE ME?!" I still tease him to this day
My 28 year old brother passed away on Sept 3rd of a "self-inflicted" gun shot wound. He was a very active sleep walker and had sleep problems his whole life. He had a very long and active history of sleepwalking during which he would often get up in the middle of the night and do things. For example, you might find him making sandwhiches, practicing karate, "shooting" with his hands, or "taking xrays" in his sleep. Anyway, the night he shot himself, he had taken melatonin and had been up late studying. He had just taken his guns out of storage so they happened to be out on his desk. The circumstances surrounding his shooting do not point to suicide. The gunshot entered through the left side of his chin, although he is right handed. Someone who is an experienced shot is not going to take an offhanded shot at themselves if they want to commit suicide. That night after he shot himself, he held a towel to his chin, walked from his bedroom down the hall to the bathroom where he got undressed, and filled the bathtub with a few inches of water, before collapsing on the floor where he was found. He was making plans and doing well in his xray tech program. I really feel strongly that this was an accident that very well could be attributed to his active sleep walking.
I have a friend who sleepwalks (and I bet the neighbors love it). She usually knows she's done it when she wakes up topless and finds her shirt on the floor, in the hall, downstairs, or even in the front lawn.
The one episode I remember best is when my cousin was reading in bed about 11 p.m. one night, and her husband was half asleep, with his head hanging off of the bed, near the nightstand. Their then 8 year old son walked in, calmly went to were his father was "hanging out", and proceeded to urinate on his dad's head! Dad grabbed his arm and tried to shake him awake, but all that did was spray the urine around the room! My cousin just sat there laughing.
My own sleepwalking has been less dramatic-altho I will answer the phone while asleep and spew nonsense.
My doctor had me on Ambien for awhile. After about a month on it, I started "sleep walking" ... wife caught me a couple of times and others I woke up on my own. The scariest incident? Most of what I know about my worst incident comes from my doctor. Try "sleep driving" if you want a scare ... My doctor set me a 7:30 am appointment to asses my "complaints" about sleep walking. I made the appointment. Had to drive through morning rush hour traffic on I-95, through a HUGE school zone, park, sign in at security, and go back to see doctor. An EEG was done and it showed I was in REM sleep at the time. Only problem was, is that I was completely functional at the time (well,except for being asleep). I was asked if I were sleepy? Apparently my answer was yes and I was told to stretch out and take a nap. About an hour later I woke with that "big arsed" orderly bent over me checking vitals ("I" didn't know that is what he was doing) and proceeded to attack. I remembered absolutely nothing about the previous few hours. Needless to say I don't take ambien anymore and I don't make early Dr. appointments anymore!! I later found out that I had been sleep driving on more than that occasion and it was proved to me that it was indeed so.
Boy oh boy am I glad to see all of this. I sleepwalk (not as much as when I was younger). I thought I was a freak, I am glad to know I am not alone. I tend mostly to do stuff around the house, cook, eat (prepare food), take apart a closet, etc. But I have woken up several times down the street with nothing but a night shirt on. The first time scared the crap out of me. I was 14. My mom caught me walking in the park across the street from my apartment at some weird hour of the morning. At that time, she was sure I was meeting someone. Now she knows... Thanks everyone for letting me know I am not so different.
sleep walking, hmmm. Is it a disease like sleeping sickness.