>>6301016i get an average of 16 hours of sleep per week
i have very bad insomnia.
went to doctors for it all my life, gave up when i became an adult.
something something neurotransmitters. in particular my serotonin levels are highly irregular, causing me to have trouble sleeping and fairly poor short-term memory. a few mood problems, but much more moderate than doctors predicted. mostly just periodic anger outbursts, but not violently.
i also have frequent sustained norepinephrine spikes, which cause me to feel intense alertness and paranoia when a spike is active.
those are the main issues, but pretty much all of my neurotransmitters are out of whack.
i can rarely sleep when serotonin is acting up but i can't sleep at all when norepinephrine is spiked.
sometimes i only have one of the two issues, sometimes i have neither, and sometimes i have both.
usually the only time i can sleep is when neither transmitter is behaving oddly. sometimes the timing of them can cause me to go sleepless for a few days. 4.5 days of no sleep is my longest, but that's rather infrequent.
the serotonin issues seem to run in my mother's side of the family. my mom and grandma have insomnia and depression. my mom has anxiety. two of my three sisters have anxiety and depression to the point of suicidal thoughts. one of those two has frequent insomnia as well. i'm the only one who gets the alertness/paranoia issues, which seem to be from the norepinephrine spikes.
my insomniac sister and i both have IQ greater than 130. i wonder if this is because of the weird neurotransmitter things or despite it - or just completely unrelated. 2 out of 4 siblings having "gifted-level" IQ is statistically unlikely unless other factors are at play. in addition, those two (myself and sister) are only half siblings, sharing our mother, which supports the thought that perhaps it is related to this condition.
or perhaps, as you suggested, prolonged sleep itself may be detrimental to people in some way.
