this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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I experience this EXACT same thing when I stay up until sunrise the next day. It's feels like my brain chemistry changes and everything will be good. I wish I could hang on to this feeling. I'm in my early 40s and I first started noticing this effect in my early 20s. I didn't know other people experienced it!
Oh nice, yep I'm in my early 20s right now. I think the reason why I've started feeling it now might be because the trajectory of my life is in theory fully under my control.
In theory, it's fully under your control whether you experience this feeling or not. I have a degree in psychology and the best I can explain it is that the sleep deprivation alters your brain chemistry (kind of like antidepressants do) and it changes your perception of reality. The way I experience this effect so strongly, it almost changes me into a different person... an optimistic, happy, extroverted person. Maybe it's endorphins being released due to your body being overworked and going into an emergency mode. It sucks that I eventually have to go to sleep, where your cerebrospinal fluid washes your brain and "resets" it back to baseline. If I could only retain that sense of enlightenment and hopefulness I experience when stay up so absurdly long, I know I would be a better person. I really believe it's due to the altered brain chemistry, I just don't know exactly what it is. Maybe it's due to your sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for the flight or fight (emergency) response that we have, which releases adrenaline, among other brain chemicals (neurotransmitters). Good luck in your pursuit of finding the answer, I'd love to know more about whatever this effect is.
Just to add a little bit more, the best I've come to manually reproducing this effect on my own is through long bouts of exercise. Maybe it's the same effect as the "runner's high". I used to be a firefighter and I'd experience a similar effect when I would spend all day outside doing PT (physical training). Come 5 o'clock, after 8 hours of exercise, everyone would be dying, and I'd be experiencing a euphoric boost of energy, and I'd help all the instructors clean up the training grounds. Whenever I'd stop, I would crash, hard. It's possible for me to feel this feeling through exercise, it's just impractical to devote 8 hours a day to exercise in order for me to feel it.
Thanks for all of this info, I'll definitely comment if I find something!