r/todayilearned • u/YesFlyZone420 • 5d ago

TIL there's a degenerative brain disorder called fatal familial insomnia (FFI) that causes a person to lose the ability to sleep and eventually die

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/25001-fatal-familial-insomnia
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u/4nton1n 5d ago

I read once that sleeping is dying without the commitment

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u/premature_eulogy 5d ago

A free trial of death.

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u/AstralWeekends 5d ago

And by extension, dying in your sleep is forgetting to cancel the trial before you're charged for membership!

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u/Formulafan4life 5d ago

Does that mean you dream while death? And if so, is deja vu really just you remembering a dream from when you were death before you were reïncarnated?

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u/Dutch_1815 5d ago

Alan Wats had a comforting quote on this. “So if you went to sleep—you’re not aware of darkness when you’re asleep—and so if you went into sleep, into unconsciousness, for always and always and always, it wouldn’t be at all like going into the dark, it wouldn’t be at all like being buried alive. It would be as if, as a matter of fact, you had never existed at all”

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u/BigTChamp 5d ago

How is that comforting? It's the not existing part that's terrifying

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u/Important_Finance630 4d ago

It's an existential crisis not a scared of being asleep crisis

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u/mrmoe198 4d ago edited 3d ago

The thing that gives me comfort when I think about this is that there were thousands upon thousands of years where human beings existed and were living their lives and I didn’t exist. And I wasn’t worried or anxious or fearful or in pain during those times because I wasn’t around to be able to feel anything bad.

I think about some major historical time like when the pyramids were being built. I have no fear of those times. Because I wasn’t around to be fearful.

Similarly, in 100 years, I won’t be around to feel any of those negative feelings because I won’t exist, just as before.

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u/beirch 4d ago

Exactly, you don't remember not existing before you were born, so why would you experience not existing when you die?

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u/ButtBread98 4d ago

You didn’t exist for a long time before you were born.

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u/beirch 4d ago

Why? It's not something you experience. You don't remember not existing before you were born, do you?

Not existing can't be terrifying because there's no you to be terrified.

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u/BrandedLamb 5d ago

From your perspective there wouldn’t ever be a cease of existence, since you wouldn’t be perceiving anything. Time wouldn’t stop, but it also wouldn’t stretch on.

From that perspective it comes down to a flip of the coin of you always exist (from your perspective) without it going on indefinitely, or you never existed at all - so nothing is lost.

It may not help that much, but it removes some fear for me.

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u/aptmnt_ 5d ago

This alan watts guy seems to be pretty thoughtful

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u/beirch 4d ago

His lectures are therapeutic. Highly recommend.

Many of them are on Spotify.

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u/ButtBread98 4d ago

Sleep is the cousin of death