Driving Makes Me Sleepy - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/50/shoulda-been-dead

I've never been held at gunpoint, I've never thought that someone else should have killed me, but there is a serious problem that I have had my entire life, driving in a car, either as the driver or the passenger, makes me SUPER sleepy.

I don't know what it is, the noise, the vibrations, the boring landscapes that I have to drive through or whatever else is happening, but if I get in a car at the wrong point in time and I'm stuck in it for too long, I get SERIOUSLY sleepy.

This has made a few times where I look back and honestly, I should have been dead.

The first was in high school, my senior year of high school and I had my truck. Every week I would drive out to the middle of no where N. Las Vegas to Mr. Straub's house for cello lesson with him. The only problem with that was that at the time I was also doing a dozen and a half different activities, getting almost no sleep, napping during some of my classes, and I was always hanging on by a thread. Multiple times while driving out to N. Las Vegas either on the 15 or 215 I would blink for a little bit longer than it should have been.

I can't explain how scary it is to realize that you fell asleep and the only thing that kept you from wrecking the car that you're driving at 70+ mph was pure, dumb, luck.

The worst was when I was in the car with Alicia and we were driving back from Las Vegas. I have done that trip countless times, so it is horribly boring. I can do that trip almost in my dreams because I've been down it so many times, and that night, I did try to do it in my dreams.

I woke up to Alicia screaming at me, my tires bumping against the side of the road on the rumble strip, and headed towards the median barrier in a mountain pass.

My body went from being nice and comfortable to just about dying in a matter of seconds. It went to feeling comfortable behind the wheel of a car, to my wife yelling at me, seeing a concrete barrier wall coming straight towards me, and my heart jumping out of my chest.

I don't know how I'm still alive, and in all honest, I have no understanding of how I am still alive. I wish I could say more about it, or make it any better descriptions about the night, but the situation was that simple, I fell asleep at the wheel, almost ran into a concrete wall, and the only thing that kept me alive was a yell from my wife.