Most adult sleepwalkers consider their condition to be embarrassing, which is certainly understandable. You wander around in the night, doing who knows what, sometimes some pretty strange stuff. Possibly you awake in the morning, somewhere other than where you went to sleep. Maybe you notice things in the house that have been moved around, or you find objects in very odd places. If you’re lucky, you have a household member who finds you wandering around, and helps you back to bed. Most likely, your family and friends think your late night escapades are funny. And often they are.
What many sleepwalkers (and their loved ones) do not know…is that sleepwalking can be dangerous. It’s not unusual for adult sleepwalkers to trip and fall, thereby injuring themselves. Falls down stairs are fairly common sleepwalking injuries. Sleepwalkers have burned or cut themselves, while trying to cook, and injured themselves in many other ways.
Many sleepwalkers have been seriously injured, on some occasions, even killed, during their moonlight forays around the house…and beyond. The have been several deaths in recent years, of teens and young adults, that were initially ruled as suicide. Further investigation finally changed cause of death to “suicide or accident while sleepwalking.”
There are many cases on record of people who walked out of second story windows, or even off roofs, falling to the ground below. Almost always, they were seriously injured. In some instances, they sustained permanent disabling damage and were crippled for life. For many people, even the fall did not wake them up. They woke up sometime later, and crawled for help, or someone found them lying on the ground hours later.
A few years ago, a story received a lot of news coverage, about the teenage girl in London that woke up in the middle of the night atop a 130′ construction crane. She had wandered out of her house, to a construction site a few blocks away. Somehow, she managed to walk through the site without being noticed by security personnel, climbed up on the crane, then laid down on a narrow beam. A passerby noticed her, and alerted police. The fireman who rescued her was unable to wake her, even while strapping her into the safety harness. He found a cell phone in her pocket and they were able to call her family. A family member then called her, and the ringing phone woke her up. Fortunately she was not hurt, but this story could have had a very tragic ending!
Although it is very rare, there have been occurrences of sleepwalkers walking out into the middle of a busy street and being hit by a car. There have also been instances of people actually stepping out in front of oncoming trains, buses or trucks, many times with fatal results. Over the past decade or so, there have been increasing incidents of sleep driving, resulting in serious auto accidents. The majority of these cases involved sleepwalkers using the popular sleep aids, Ambien and Lunesta. They take their pill, retire for the evening, and wake up in the hospital trauma center, in their pajamas, with no recollection of what happened.
Another bizarre sleep behavior is sleep eating. It’s thought that about a million Americans are victims of this strange eating disorder. Strenuous dieting, stress, genetics or the above named medications can cause this peculiar activity. In some cases, people had no clue why they were gaining weight. Security cameras placed around the home finally solved the mystery. In some of the more extreme cases, the sleepwalker would get up several times during the night to eat, not just once. And they weren’t only eating food items, but were consuming things like sticks of butter, handfuls of sugar, and other odd things.
If all these stories were not enough to convince you sleepwalking is hazardous, here’s one of the most dangerous sleepwalking activities of all: Murder while sleepwalking! There have been many cases of people committing murder and other serious crimes, while sleepwalking. Some of these stories date back to the 1600′s. Among the crimes that people have claimed to commit while sleepwalking, include: Homicide, assault and battery, sexual assault, child molestation, theft, and almost any other crime you can think of. Have you read enough? Do you want to quit sleepwalking before you get hurt or in trouble? Well, here’s the good news:
Depending on the cause of the sleepwalking, most people can stop, with proper treatment. Sometimes simple lifestyle changes can reduce or eliminate the episodes. Biofeedback and self-hypnosis have proven to be very beneficial to help people stop sleepwalking. Medical intervention may be required in some cases. But nearly all sleepwalkers can be helped in some way.
By: Kathi Harris
About the Author:
For lots of great information about adult sleepwalking, its causes and treatments, plus sleepwalking stories that range from the hilarious, to the bizarre, to the tragic, visit our site at Stop Adult Sleepwalking Now There IS help for you! You do NOT have to continue endangering yourself or others.
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