For the past two days I have been waking up fairly early to catch flights back home and last night I finally arrived. I was very sleep-deprived from this and felt a bit uneasy knowing that I tend to get sleep paralysis when I am very tired. This experience was the most intense I have had and couldn't help but draw parallels to psychedelics. The reason I am posting this is to show an interesting experience and hopefully, gain insight from others to help me understand my sleep patterns a bit more. First I will explain the experience and then add some details which I think are important.

My thoughts were wandering off a lot and I drifted into sleep in about 30 minutes and I think immediately started forming a dream. At first, I saw a slow-moving spider start to form on the floor of this one place I stayed at recently, and I pointed it out to someone near me. I forgot about the spider and all of a sudden sort of "jumped" into my dream and immediately became aware that I was dreaming. I was quite excited for a split second but then I got a sort of shock (I believe this is literally the paralysis, which persists throughout the experience) and immediately lost control of my body and just kind of folded onto the ground. A second after folding to the ground everything disappeared and I was in a void falling in a backflip and feeling like everything was turning upside down on me even though there was nothing. I woke (or so I thought) to fright in my room and started stumbling out to go and tell people what is happening but halfway down the hallway my legs and everything goes numb and I fall down again. Trying to salvage any strength I reach out with my arms towards the other rooms and attempt to shout but fail to really get any sound out (it is like I am completely breathless) and feeling like I am about to die. Finally, I wake to myself breathing heavily and see weird triangle shapes on my roof even though my room is completely dark and you cannot see the roof (I have woken from sleep paralysis before seeing weird shell-like 3d shapes on my roof.

It was a truly hellish experience. It felt like some absurd trick was being played on me and that I would be stuck in this loop of entering a new place every time trying to get a grip on things but just when it seems promising it is all taken away. I also thought at times that this is not a regular sleep paralysis experience but that I am really dying or entering some sort of coma (I think I also thought I was already in a coma but would be stuck like this until I wake up). This thought pattern seems very typical of a bad trip which might occur on psychedelics and is very interesting to me.

I am an insomniac and have been wondering for a long time why I tend to struggle so much to fall asleep and why I sleep so light and remember so many of my dreams. I have some reasons to believe I might be hypoglycemic and that this might be the underlying factor in everything. My metabolism is very fast metabolism and I often get nausea throughout the day especially when I have just woken up, I become irritable quite easily and have sudden bouts of depression, and often when I stand up I become light-headed and feel as if I might faint. It is written in this study that "spontaneous awakening is considered to be an emergency reaction triggered by the deficient cerebral blood flow". For this specific sleep paralysis experience, I might have been so tired that I immediately entered deep sleep but my mind was woken up from the hypoglycemia while my muscles were still paralyzed and I was still in a dream state.

I might be completely wrong with all my assumptions and would love to hear others' inputs.

Getting on a regular sleep schedule will hopefully sort out the issues you’re having. When you are dead tired and experiencing sleep paralysis it seems reasonable to dream waking up when you’re actually dead tired and still sleeping. If my sleep schedule is thrown off or I take an afternoon nap on my back I sometimes have experiences like yours. Often I will feel like my eyes are open and there is a demon presence creeping toward me when in reality my eyes are closed and I’m dreaming. I’ve learned to just wait it out and observe, like a bad trip. With psychedelics I feel more lucid compared to sleep paralysis, almost hyper lucid. Sleep paralysis is more of a haze.

As far as hypoglycemia during the night maybe you could have a low glycemic index snack with some protein before bed.

I've had similar to the guy above me. At one of my old addresses it used to happen almost daily. Stuck on the couch, all the pictures on the walls are now demons and hideous looking things, all the while a feeling of impending dread as something is just around the corner stalking me. Then I wake up for it to repeat.

My fix was getting a dog. He chills out next to me and is calm as hot tea at all times. So hes a really good grounding anchor to reality. If hes calm and collected it must just be me having a bad time and it will pass.

Perhaps the traditional folklore on the subject won't be of benefit (The Old Hag). I experienced it before. Always sinister and deeply terrifying.

I don't know how it could be explained by science and honestly reducing the experience to mere physiological understanding is shortsighted to me. I think meditation could help. Help you in more ways than just getting away from this.

Shortsighted might not be the word I am looking for actually. Perhaps reducing it to a biological angle might help now that I think about it. I wish I could offer more insight into your wild experience with it.

I am realising the folly of my thoughts and understanding by utilizing forums.

Constantly editing myself.

Grateful for this special forum thanks.