Downward spiral – fail during week 3
Day 13 started out great. I could tell that I was really adapting. I stayed up all right without needing video games or any of my usual crazy activities to keep myself awake. I just stayed up and did reading homework, which normally would have put me to sleep in a heartbeat.
One of my naps during the day was out in the car while I was traveling. For some reason, I subconsciously shut off my alarm after my nap and kept sleeping. I woke up an hour later wondering what had happened. This was my first major oversleep of this attempt.
After that oversleep, it seems my body wanted more. That evening, Vino and I dozed off at the same time while we were at the apartment doing work on the computer. I woke up 2.5 hours later.
After that, it's like we both turned into narcoleps, constantly nodding off without realizing it during the night (and sometimes the day too). Fortunately we were there for each other to wake each other up, or this would h ave ended much more quickly. Accidentally dozing off for 1-30 minutes now became a common occurrence. Still, we pushed forward, and for 3 days didn't have any major oversleeps. Dreams during naps during these days were far less frequent. During the days I felt mostly fine, though it was impossible not to fall asleep briefly during some classes when the lights were low and temperature was high.
In the days that followed, there were several times I dozed off, which are summarized here:
Day 13 - 1 hr, 2.5 hr
Day 15 - 2.5 hr
Day 18 - 2 hr, 2 hr, 2 hr
Day 19 - 1 hr, 1 hr, 1 hr
Day 20 - 0.5, 1.5 hr, 4 hr
There are numerous uberman sleepers who adapted at day 30, despite having overslept here and there during there adaptation period. If I could just cut out these stupid random naps, I'd probably be just fine. The only account I could find of someone who had failed after such an extended uberman attempt was Dan.
However, by the end of day 19, I realized my mistake log was not looking so different from Dan's now. It was obvious that failure was imminent if something did not change. I came up with an Everyman3 schedule (11:15a, 5:30p, 9:30p, 4a core) that I decided to try out. Maybe the core sleep would appease my body's desire for a longer chunk of sleep, and I could beat this thing out.
Before I even got to start my everyman schedule, my polyphasic mentor Jonathan told me about some sleep tracks that he was using to induce REM sleep. After a 2 week break, he was re-adapting to his old Everyman schedule, and using these tracks, it was far easier than he expected. It may have been the tracks, or just the fact that he had been fully adapted before that made it easy for him.
Jonathan gave me the track, and I gave it a try. It's designed to be listened to for 30 minutes before sleeping, but he used it at the start of his nap. He suggested that I do both for best results. So I did. I overslept every nap after that, which may have had to do with the sleep track or may have happened anyway with my messed up sleep schedule. After a few failures to wake to the alarm that went off 20 minutes into the 30 minute track, I custom made a 20 minute version of it, and added the wakeup sounds from placebo's sleep track that I was accustomed to waking to. I still overslept, turning it off or ignoring it in my sleep, with no recollection of the alarm going off later.
With this last 4 hour oversleep and not having been able to sleep during my naps recently, I know there's no chance of making this work. It's time to cut my losses and go back to a normal monophasic sleeping schedule.
Given the success I was starting to see back at around days 12 and 13, I believe this would have worked in the long run if I had been able to stick to my schedule through day 30, as others' experience have been. I was getting REM and dreaming during my naps, waking easily, wide awake during the days, and seeing improvement in my wakefulness during the nighttime hours. The new sleep schedule is fragile right after being formed though, and I guess I broke it.
Day 11 thanks to Metal Gear Solid 4!
wow, what a week (and some)! This attempt at uberman has gone nearly flawlessly. I had a 30 minute oversleep and many times where I'd doze off at night when I was sleepy. Dozing off was usually very brief (seconds-minutes) with a few that lasted up to 30 minutes. Having my friend around to watch my back has been invaluable. I would have utterly failed otherwise. Nodding off like this is currently my biggest problem.
During the day, I'm usually feeling pretty great, with the occasional sleepy spell. It's the nights that are really killer. It's staying awake at night as a zombie that is really freaking hard.
The only think that has made staying up at night awesome has been playing Metal Gear Solid 4 for PS3. It's a game that fully engages me; I'm always actively doing something or on alert. It brings my stress levels up. Whatever that game is doing, it keeps me from being noticeably tired or sleepy, and my body doesn't even want to sleep. It has made passing the otherwise difficult nights extremely easy. I would recommend any action game that really pulls you in and demands your constant attention. Other good titles for this: God of War, Left for Dead 2.
Now I'm dreaming during nearly every nap. Sometimes I think I'm not dreaming, but I realize after waking up that the place I was in my mind while I said that was a dream.
I sometimes get drowsy during the day in class if I'm sitting for long periods, especially with the lights low, but am otherwise alert during the day.
Tonight was the first night I was able to have any productive hours at night - I actually got some homework done! The time period for which I'm usually dead tired or zombie-like at night shrunk at both ends today by a few hours.
Days 7-10 have been the worst at night. This included a crazy zombie spell I had where I woke up not knowing what the heck was going on, thinking my sleep buddy might be an Islamist terrorist who was trying to trick me. It was like I didn't even know what the word uberman meant. It took a good half hour of talking to me and finally giving me an IBC rootbeer to drink for me to snap out of it. What an adventure. Once I got on MGS4 again, I was good for the rest of the night. 
Uberman attempt 2 – Day 1 – Practice wakeups
Business as usual. Not much special to note.
People have been suggesting practicing waking up, so getting up instantly becomes a knee-jerk reaction when the alarm goes off. I gave it a try several times - not only is it effective, but it's fun! It's turned into a fun way to ward off sleepiness - set the alarm for a minute later, and as soon as it goes off, stand up immediately and yell "I'm up!". hahaha, I love it. Now I also do this when I wake up from my real naps.
Reboot
Upon deciding to reset, I went to bed at 4am and woke up at 4pm. Stayed up until 11pm, then slept until 9am. That's roughly 22 hours of sleep in a 30 hour period.
People have suggested that after messing up on uberman, it just gets infinitely harder because of the sleep debt already incurred. Makes sense to me. I'm going to reset my sleeping schedule, going back to monophasic for 5 days or so, so I can give this a fresh shot during the week before classes start up again.
Uberman Day 10 – Game over… try again?
I had one dream yesterday and no more after that. Every hour was progressively tired.
Today, I was a zombie far worse than I'd ever been before. Vino went out at night, and never came back. Turns out he fell asleep on a couch back at his parents'. I was at home ironing clothes, doing anything to stay awake. I kept nodding off. After several times, I realized that I'd messed up. After my previous oversleep, I told myself that I'd try to keep going to so see if I could, but if I slept when I wasn't supposed to again, I'd stop.
My polyphasic mentor was telling me about how if you mess up majorly on uberman, you need to reset your body on monophasic for a week before trying again, or you end up like me. 
Turns out he was right! I'm going to allow my body to reset and recharge for a while before attempting this again.
Uberman Day 9 – Dream
Night
I played Dance Dance Revolution for the first time in ages, which was quite an intense workout. When I came home, I knew I might sleep really heavy, so I set several alarms to make sure I'd get up. It was easy enough to get up, but I was very sleepy from 9:30-1:30. Thanks to my programming partner who really wants to get things done, he was able to keep me focused on the project and keep from falling asleep too (though I had plans to do it on my own, if he were not there).
Near the end of my 1:30a nap, I woke up from a dream where I had my seat up too far in my car, driving with cruise control on, leaving a parking lot. My leg was wedged between the seat and the panel at my knee, and I couldn't get my foot to the brake. I pulled the hand-brake, but it didn't have enough power to fight the engine that was pushing me forward. My car kept on accelerating, so I maneuvered arund the car in front of me who was waiting for traffic to open up and drove right into the busy street, hauling a right. I ended up hitting both cars I was sandwitched between, and my only thought was "crap. my insurance is going up".
All that detail probably wasn't necessary, but I had a dream! I'm not as worried about how that oversleep affected me now. I maybe lost a day or two, but I'm still good. 
Day
Naps have gone alright today. I've been falling asleep, but not awaking really refreshed like I did when I REM Getting more and more successively tired as I go on. Each nap leaves me a little more tired than previous than the last.
Uberman Day 9 – Digression
Night
That pre-nap heavy meal majorly threw me off. I had several hours of unscheduled sleep time after that. As of 5:30 am now, I seem to be back on track.
Day
Couldn't sleep during my 9:30 nap this morning, and was sleepy afterward. I slept very lightly if at all for my naps until 9:30pm. It's almost like I dropped to an earlier stage of my adaptation. I expect to go through hell again before adapting to where I was before. I'm giving this one more shot. Any more major failures like this, and I'll have to put this down until later. I can't be adapting when school starts. I am learning from my mistakes though, and hopefully won't be repeating them. I'm still going to pull this off if at all possible, but I'm not going to drag it out forever either.
Uberman Day 8 – Zombiesitter
Night
The night after having slept 2 hours went by extremely easily. Only time will tell if I'll crash and have another hump to get over before I adjust fully because of that.
On the other hand, Vino was in a super zombie-like state for the entire 2-6am cycle. I did my best to keep him awake, offer him food and things to do to be active, but most of it was refused. He nodded off numerous times during the night, not realizing he was doing it. Your mind tricks you into thinking you are awake with your eyes closed. You think you're awake, though you don't respond to people talking to you, and when awoken, you don't realize that you were ever out of it. I took my nap at 5:30 before his scheduled 6:00. I woke up to find him asleep on the couch. I got him up for a few minutes and had him take his 6:00 nap a littler early. When his alarm went off, he turned it off and laid back down. After a lot of prodding, and I eventually pulled him up out of bed. Me pulling him up is the first thing that he remembers happening. He spent a good half hour in a confused daze, trying to figure out why his alarm never went off, until I finally figured out what he was trying to figure out and told him. Sleep dep is crazy.
Day
Today was perfect. I only got sleepy a few times, and it would happen within an hour of my dayetim naps. I've been dreaming a bit, I think, but I can't remember most of it. I do remember having one dream in particular that I woke up scared with my heart beating heavily from whatever had scared me.
I wrote the above paragraph, and then I cooked dinner. It took longer than I expected, and I ended up finishing my meal only 30 minutes before my next nap. Everyone always says that this will make it difficult to get up for the next nap. YEP. Expecting this and knowing I'd be alone, I had a friend call to check on me some minutes after I was due to wake up. I was awake, and answered the phone when he called. Said I was up, so he hung up. I wasn't really fully up yet though. I struggled more but eventually failed to get up. Woke up again 1.5 hours later. Moral of the story: go hungry over eating before naptime.
Uberman Day 7 – Hump
Night
This morning was so hard to get through! Today I felt more zombie-like than I have yet doing this schedule. It was very difficult to stay active, and my head kept dropping.
Every since I've been using placebo's 18 minute sleep track instead of the 20 minute version, I've been getting up a lot easier.
Day
I believe I finally got some REM sleep during my 5:30 nap today. I felt wonderful afterward. Vino and I seem to be adapting at the same time, according to the schedule described on Tim C.'s blog. We're at the point where he describes day 5 to be like. Vino is actually on day 5, and I'm on day 8. It makes sense that I'm taking longer to adapt, given my early deviations from the schedule.
We're getting past the hump now, and things should be getting easier from here on out.
And they probably would be, but...
Vino was at his family's place for his 10:00pm nap, and I showed up there in my car at a little after 10. I wanted to wait for him to finish his nap before I bothered them, so I decided to hang out in my car for a few minutes. Despite not feeling very sleepy, I somehow passed out in my car, only to wake up 2 hours later. When I awoke, my contacts were completely dried out, and blinking several times caused one to fall out. I caught it on my hand, and put it back in (inside-out, the wrong eye). I was already in a confused stupor, with no idea of where I was or why I was where I was. Now I was having extremely strange vision behavior, and I needed to fix it. I started driving, and found myself in the neighborhood of my grandparents' house, where I drove the familiar (and fuzzy) roads to their place. No one was home. Remembering that Vino's lived nearby, I drove back to their place. Vino was still there. I fixed my contact, and the reality of what happened finally started to piece itself together in my mind. 
Hopefully, having comping close to adaptation, this won't set me back much.
Uberman Day 6 – Ow!
Night
Nighttime is really starting to get painful - crazy tired. Sometimes it feels like I'm drowning in a lake of tiredness, and I just can't get out. While it's hurting, I try to remember that this is good and expected, and get excited about it! From what I understand, you can't make the uberman switch without this pain. And since I'm not screwing up in other ways (no oversleeps, no dozing off - having a partner is great!), that means that everything should be working. Getting excited about that only works for so long, but it helps.
Staying awake has meant putting good music on the iPod and dancing, playing intense video games like Call of Duty 4, cleaning up and organizing around the house, and cooking. Tonight I made some delicious Chicken Cordon Blue from a recipe online. So good! I've also discovered chewing gum as a means of staying awake. Supposedly chewing gum on the right side of your mouth stimulates the brain's left hemisphere, causing you to stay awake.
I'm still having no dreams that I can recall.
Day
Christmas day - Vino and I split up to spend time with our families. Minor setbacks ensued.
I felt really good again until later in the day. Waves of tired started hitting me during a movie I was watching with my family, and my head dropped several times. It didn't seem like for very long. At the time, it felt like I was still aware of the movie, but looking back at it, I don't think that was really the case. Hard to say what was really going on, I was so foggy. Also probably had microsleeps waiting for my 9:30 nap to come around.
Vino reports that he fell asleep for an unscheduled 30 nap, in which he had REM sleep. That scares me, because it's training his mind that it can just make him extra tired to get the sleep it needs, rather than having to adapt.