Girl go to SLEEP! ft. lessons from night life, grad school, and strangers

introductions.

Unmedicated sleep is difficult at the moment.

Portrait of Lemon showing me how good life can be.

I’m someone who makes getting up early a part of their personality— less in an LLC Twitter, early bird gets the worm type of way and more in a “If I have to speak to anyone in my first three hours of defrosting I will look, sound, and act like a deeply disgruntled toad” way. My sister and I have had a decade plus argument as to whether I qualify as a morning person. She claims morning people are nice to people in the morning, not just people who love being awake at that time. I claim I am not nice at all, at any time of day, and I need the morning to become someone who pretends like they are.¹

I’ve been sleeping for the past seven days. Three (!!!) glorious mornings in a row, I slept until 9am (I am usually up at 4). Such gluttony came at the request of my mom, who said I sound more tired than she is (she has cancer lmfao). I’ve been so afraid to sleep. I watched a Nina Simone short documentary this evening and she remarked on having a team of nineteen. Nineteen livelihoods attached to her showing up for work. So how can she not work? How does she allow herself to turn off?

“I got nineteen people that depend on me for their livelihoods; that’s a hell of a lot of people. Because I know if I say, “well, look, I’m too tired to work tonight,” I’m gonna get it from both ends. Nobody’s gonna understand or care that I’m too tired. I’m very aware of that. Now, I would like some freedom somewhere where I didn’t feel those pressures. And I think that I— I think that some songs would flow out of me then, because they wouldn’t have to come.” —Nina Simone, filmed between 1968 and 1969

I feel this way every moment I’m not working. Right now I’m campaigning for a Universal Basic Income Project for Ebola Survivors in Sierra Leone, a vulnerable population amongst other vulnerable populations. The longer I take to raise the money, the longer they don’t eat. It’s folks under my care that are starving. How do you sleep? How do I allow myself to just… turn off?

This is how I imagine parents feel. Or people caretaking after elders. Or anyone with direct dependents. It can feel a little ridiculous when someone tells you that “you need to sleep more.”

Then, there’s trauma. Touching tragedy with my bare hands drove me to drink². I know you’re not supposed to talk about substance use when you’re in the helping professions— therapists are supposed to recommend breathwork and good journaling habits and not finding your best CBD:THC ratio. It’s scary, a bit, to be honest about this. In the professional world, cannabis use is still very much a no. I doubt I would ever post an essay like this if I was licensed, tbh. But I regularly get questions about sleep, how to manage sleep, how to find your way back to sleep after trauma, so I’ll share what I’ve learned personally, professionally, and what other people had suggestions with. All the typical therapist advice really does work… and it tends to be the hardest advice to pivot to when your sleep schedule is really royally fucked. You do not go from disordered substance use and disordered sleep to skincare and journaling and jazz at 9:30pm. So, as someone that’s been both ends depending on the era in life, I have a few in-betweener steps as well— honest ones, ones that work when dishes have piled up and I’m completely buggin and I can’t actually afford to take anything off my plate.

But a quick introduction in case you are new here: hello and welcome to threadings., the newsletter and podcast where I (ismatu) talk about the things collecting me and keeping me stitched together. I (ismatu) am also a chronic obsessor, over-worker, sleep-when-I’m-dead scholar in recovery. This is the first week in a long, long while that I’ve slept consistently. Everything is better. My body feels better. The perma-pain in my upper back I had just resigned myself to is now gone³. I could feel today. I haven’t felt emotions doing mundane things in weeks, I think. I don’t actually know since when. Many factors contributed to a sense of welbodi— freedom to read, being alone for the first time in months. The majorly major one? Sleep. I’m writing to people that have the choice to sleep more and still continue to struggle.

what night life, grad school, and strangers teach me about sleep.

Substance Use Days

Substance use used to be attached to my living. I remember telling my therapist how stressed I was in graduate school and she was like, “yeah, you’re already a clinician all day and then you’re a therapist in lingerie at night.” A description of stripping I use to this day. My official clients were not really privy to the job that actually paid my bills, because being a sex worker is still very taboo in professional spaces. And so are drugs (or any kind of substance use). But in short, I’m supposed to funnel you towards methods of self-soothing that wean you off all pacifiers as soon as possible— adult pacifiers including but not limited to: alcohol, cannabis, any other ingestible/inhalable that’s mind-altering, social media, screen time, escapism (especially escapism involving high risk behaviors, like gambling, spread of disease)… etc. Right? Habits that have the capacity to really derail your life. And also… in reality, I argue that we’re all addicted to something.⁴ I don’t always (or even often) think stone cold sobriety is the best or most sustainable thing. I still have to plan days, consecutive days where I can sound like a toad at noon and put down all my weights and responsibilities to get high, chill in my onesie, and watch Bear in the Big Blue House.

That was this week. I’ve been pushing myself to get this book out in full and in print and my mother finally pulled the “cHild go to BED” card. I tried to take a day or two to force myself to slow down and all I felt was worry and guilt, which led me to work maladaptively (trying to relax during the day, not relaxing enough, working until late, going to bed when I can’t keep my eyes open anymore, repeat). So today, I went to my favorite smoke shop (been my favorite since I rolled up to buy a pre-roll and was chided for not saying salaams first). I walked there and I walked back and felt my body move through space around people I said hello to (!!!), rather than moving from different writing position to different reading position inside all alone. I am also a card-carrying Two Puff Chump— which was still way too much because Western World Weed is absurdly strong!!! they still have regular weed in Africa—all this means, I got high so that I could not work if I wanted to. The good thing about having dyslexia is that I, without exaggeration, lose the ability to read if I’m not mentally able enough.⁵ I stretched my body out properly for the first time in a long time— that’s a big deal. I used to dance for a living; now I sit down all day and type. My day used to hinge on sunrise and sunset, but I’ve been too inside lately to feel the transitions. So today, I intentionally felt the sun go down. I called my sister and planned to see her for her birthday. Cannabis makes it rain in my head and sometimes it can feel important to catch those good ideas, so I had a blank notebook open and a hot pink felt tip pen and I wrote whatever splashed into my hands. It was a day that helped me remember I am an overgrown fourteen year old and I still need to walk and get my wiggles out and journal in hot pink and give myself time to be wary and weary of the womanhood my body thrusts me into.

scanned from the journal of ismatu gwendolyn, june 14 2024

I still feel like a dork and I still want to exude cool (like the mountains do). There are lots of things I don’t remember until I physically stretch myself out. I’m on my yoga mat taking inventory of all the stress I keep— been stacking overdue emotional processing in my back like expired off-brand campbells soup in my childhood pantry. I stretched on the ground and felt the sun set and allowed myself to wonder about the weights of being alive to tell the story, having a people to continue, of work that’s bigger than me, of how every adult I know and look up to wishes I would slow down and is mega proud of my accomplishments simultaneously. “Just sleep more” feels very unserious. Cracking my hips makes memories come back: how my mom stopped insisting I would go to bed and started bringing me the Costco size cans of mandarin oranges. How my dad stopped insisting that I go to bed and roll me one with lavender. How I used to smoke weed and cigars and dance for a living and now sometimes I need it to help me with the decays of the day. How on days like this, I write my essays by hand so I can hear the pen’s nib on the paper and wear that sound like a christening, a rebirth, a new remembrance on how slow life is actually moving, despite myself.

Every adult I want to be like when I grow up tells me that the sooner I can navigate life without the pacifiers, the better. And I believe them. And also, of the ones that indulge, pretty much all of them smoked like chimneys at my age. Or they drank. So I think I got a snatch of time to figure out how to remember the rolls of my life while sober. I’m mostly there, which is way better than last year.

Weed does not help me sleep. I can’t really (ever) go to bed not sober. Weed detaches my mind from my body, such that Mind babbles nonsensically and Body is free to feel and to be. That’s what weed does for me. It’s nice; it literally robs me of my sleep. I trained myself to stay up all night on cannabis working because it eased how painful it was not to have time to sleep, how painful the heels were, how painful the grief I was running from was, and so now my body on THC is wired and my mind is loose and untethered. Most days, it’s really stressful (and not at all productive) to have my mind out of commission. I spend 99% of my time sober. I have too much responsibility to not be able to think. But this week? I dropped all my balls. I don’t know the next time I’ll get a week like this. I dropped everything and effective rest only kicked in yesterday because those first two days I felt really, really guilty for not working.

In short, here’s what I have to say about medicated rest: if you need the drugs, do yourself a favor and don’t use them blindly. Whatever your pacifier is: online shopping, a very sugary caffeinated beverage, hours spent on twitter, adderall or nicotine to help you focus, whatever. The list goes on. Keep track of when you use. What are you spending your currency on (time and money)? Is it giving you the life you want? Are you at an amount of use that you can sustain? Is it costing anyone anything? Are you prepared (personally, morally, financially, time-wise) to pay those costs for continued use? Where do you need support from yourself or others? Stretch yourself out. Have an honest self-inventory. I promise you if you haven’t, and you let yourself be honest with these questions without guilt, you will sleep better. So much shame hides out in pacifiers and you don’t even realize how incongruent it feels in your body to shame yourself for comfort until you acknowledge it. Write it down and be honest. Be honest with yourself about where your needs aren’t met. I promise you’ll sleep a bit better.

Helpful Therapist Advice (TM)

The winter after I turned sixteen, I exchanged one hot drink for another (my drink of choice was coconut hot chocolate over my dad’s immaculately brewed Folger’s). And suddenly I was falling asleep during 3rd hour history. Had no clue that 50 oz of coffee throughout the day, every day was decimating my body until I… accidentally made a better choice. Lol. Improving my sleep schedule has been a lot like that!! Accidentally making better choices until I remembered what my parents and grandparents used to say about too much caffeineweedwineetc.

I posted this on my instagram story about a week ago.

Responses yielded some advice I liked and even more requests from people who too were like please please share a crumb of sleep support i cannot fucking sleep. Welcome to clinically-trained section of What I’ve Learned About Sleep.

Disclaimer:

I am someone that has lived a work life that depended on disordered sleep and so I really cannot stand other people’s Normal Work Life Sleep Advice. When I was a teenager, I slept four hours a night on a good night. Usual days saw me home from working my minimum wage job sometime between midnight and 1:30am, brushing my teeth, and doing homework until I fell asleep on my books. Every night. Every day I had to be at school at 7:15am. It was literally impossible to sleep more if I wanted to get to college. My mom always tells people how “driven” I was. The drive in question was a desperation to get out of my house. This era of time saw me really inhale the lie, “You need to earn sleep.” I still catch myself thinking this sometimes.

I didn’t sleep well in undergrad until my junior year because of all the trauma that caught up to me once I was no longer in a prolonged state of flight or fight. My school very quietly put me on suicide watch (which I was only vaguely aware of at the time but now that I have a degree in clinical social work? LMAO baby was in danger!). Insomnia was such a problem I got my school to pay for me to not have a roommate. College was when I started having recurring nightmares about war that wouldn’t go away; I was learning more about the war that displaced my family in school than I was at home, where things are still unspeakable.

Graduate school was me surviving an education I straight up could not afford. I do not come from an economic background where call home was plausible. I did not have a partner helping me balance the workload that comes with full-time clinical degrees. It’s not the coursework that was killing me, it was the amount of work hours I had to complete for free. That’s when I was in the strip club three to four times a week, working for a living. Course work + unpaid clinical hours + working for money + social life + time I spent for me = I never slept. Sometimes there would be thirty-six hour stretches where I could not sleep, as in I literally did not have the time. None of those balls felt droppable.

Also: this kind of life, grinding to get a master’s degree, is very different than grinding to stay alive.

from The Dewy Review, August 2022

Denny’s has played a crucial role in my upbringing. Me and my sister went to one in particular in high school whenever we needed to think, eat the original Pancake Puppies, have milkshakes and feel sorry for our Black asses in the exclusively white suburbs. One day a white lady with long, gray hair who worked there asked if she could sit down with us. We said of course. She told us that she works two forty-hour jobs. She works 80 hours a week. Actually, I think it was 78 because she was just under full-time at both places, but it was the only work she could get. Most of her life was spent between Denny’s and another restaurant. How do you tell someone like that to sleep more? “Take magnesium?” How do you compare grinding for an elite degree that still opens doors for me to grinding to pay your rent because you get paid singular dollars on the hour?

So I wanna be clear about who my target audience is for this essay. There are no sleep tips that override exploitation. I am writing down sleep tips from people who are in the position to choose to sleep better. I found this necessary because I am no longer under exploitation work needs anymore and yet I still set deadlines for myself that require me to dead sprint through my life. Every day, I have to train myself to be kinder to my body than I once was. I promised teenage me that we would stop falling asleep at the desk and now look. Here I am in my adult body, having enough agency over my life and day such that I don’t need to work like that anymore, and I still rob myself of sleep. Here are better choices.

Helpful Therapist Answers: How do you sleep when your world ends in new ways every day?

Practical, Do-able Tips

Put the phone away for the hour before you go to bed and the hour that you wake up.

I am aware this is the world’s most difficult thing. I am aware that I am asking Sisyphus to just, like, take a break from pushing his rock. I wish to remind you (gently) that if the empire did not benefit from everyone being terminally addicted to their phones, they would not ensure child slavery continues so that everyone has one for cheap. Your doom scrolling is not saving the world. You are ruining your body’s wind-down cues by flooding yourself with blue light dopamine. You are teaching your body what is important to you by what you give your focus to when you go to sleep and when you rise. Giving yourself time and space to adjust to the day is a gift. It’s only cliché because it’s true.

Doom-scrolling is the mental equivalent of filling up on hot cheetos and takis on an empty stomach.

This is another one that we all know but cannot get away from, and it’s difficult to say it plainly without sounding judgmental. I absolutely get my ass beat my Doom-scrolling, especially during the uprisings in 2020. I’m going to rephrase: social media addiction is now cut with social justice voyeurism. You feel like a bad person, an uninformed person, for turning off Twitter/Reels/TikTok etc. Honestly, you really only need thirty minutes a couple times a week to keep abreast of most happenings. These apps work just like cocaine⁶— the first ten or fifteen minutes are the best and then you spend the rest of that time chasing that high. Release yourself from the moral weight of putting your phone down. Use that time to read

Social media can be amazing for starting points on understanding what’s going on in the world. Staying informed goes deeper than what the algorithm will ever provide for you.

Engage in activities that slow your brain down.

Remember reading before bed? That’s my shit. Bedtime stories hit so hard because they’re media that takes up the before bed slot so easily. I am a huge proponent of healthy escapism. This world is so difficult; so many of us have stressors we cannot meditate away. Escapism through reading is an example of an adaptive pacifier— it’s a lower risk behavior than other kinds of escapism because it’s pretty tough to build up a behavioral addiction to reading. Being somewhere else mentally for a while is a treat you don’t need to feel guilty for! If I am especially anxiety ridden, I love revisiting fiction written for children and young adults. It’s always engaging without being too scary (because I am prone to nightmares). I love I love I love reading before bed. Also a huge fan of: knitting, a sensory-pleasant skincare routine (face and body), showering before sleep, light cleaning around my home with a little jazz, low intensity stretches, meditating. All these things tell your body it’s safe to slow your mind down.

Do things that require you to think with your body.

This is where I say “Exercise is really helpful for adjusting your sleep schedule!” and everyone boos. The worst part of becoming a therapist is resigning yourself to stating the obvious like no one ever thought of that. Indulge me. Physically exhausting your body helps you sleep. Engaging in movement activities where you get to think with your body (intuitive dancing, walks without your phone, weightlifting, swimming, bicycling) help remind you that you are not a walking mind. You are and you have a body. If we’re talking about sleep, then we also need to be talking about ways to make that sound enticing to your physical, corporal self. It’s tough to feel a sense of sleepiness if you’ve been inside in one place all day.

The “by morning or bust” mentality is holding you back.

I am so guilty of this. 8pm rolls around; I realize I have not gotten nearly enough done for the day; I open my laptop with every intent of clearing a week’s worth of to-do’s in three business hours, (which, of course, forces me to ignore my body’s gentle cues for early rest); it’s suddenly 3am; the work I did sucks; I have a slow start to the next day because I abused my body. Repeat.

Just! Go!! To bed!!! My mother always used to say this when I was in high school. “The work is not going to get up and run away from you.” Hate it when the parental platitudes were right :(

But seriously. Instead of judging yourself for not getting your to-do list done every day, ask yourself why without judgement. Where are you doing too much? Why don’t you wanna take little bites?

Use candlelight.

We’ll file this one under “things my friends use as proof that I am 80 years old.” I love candlelight. I buy the big 14 day candles from local botánicas and I burn it while I do my evening work. When all the lights in the house are off, I can feel the natural dimming of dusk, which helps anchor my body in what time of day it is. And then instead of turning on the lights, I journal by candlelight and blow it out to go to sleep. I don’t even need to get up from my bed!! Lovely.

Additionally, if you thrive off the creative energy of the world being asleep in the middle of the night: 4am is also a magical place because the sun is coming more than its leaving, but there’s still solid time in the dark. Waking up early can be kinder to your circadian rhythm than really late nights— and it naturally times your solitary creative work into the rising sun rather than obliterating your chances of waking up before noon. Which can really help to regulate you into a sleep when it’s nighttime rise and fall.

You should color more.

If it’s three in the morning and you are feeling that “I need to change everything about my life right now overnight” energy, make yourself a cup of ovaltine and color. Scribble on a page. Write down your thoughts. Draw pictures. Your mind is busy and overstimulated, like a little kid that stayed up way past bedtime and is now really strung out. You need to sleep. Your middle of the night thoughts and whims are not more sensical because you are older, you just have more agency over your life. You need to sleep, and to do that you need to remind your adult brain that it’s not actually urgent. Reduce your stimuli. Color. Drink warmed milk.

If physical sleep does not come, rest in other ways.

Sometimes my body is just up. I accept that. Nothing makes me want to sleep less than thinking “If I don’t sleep now my day tomorrow is fucked and then I won’t get anything done and that throws the rest of the week off and and and—” enough. I trust my body to sleep when Body is ready. When I cannot sleep, I resist the urge to say, “might as well get some work done.” No. No might as well. Do silly things. I read books I loved as a kid. I look at pictures I’ve printed out. I do not go near any sort of glowing screens. I lie on the ground. I go outside and feel the night air and breathe it. I brew a cup of tea and sit there and think about every swallow. I keep it as low stimulus as possible and I do restful, mildly boring things.

Spiritual/Ideological Tips

Lean into the ways that you are insignificant.

The world is not on your personal cellular device. Remembering that you are one stitch in the human tapestry. One stitch does not and could never make up the whole story. Feel peace in knowing that nothing you do makes you the savior of humanity (and so it is very okay to get a good night’s sleep).

Stand upright in what you can do.

You cannot save the world, but you absolutely can help save your world. The world is very much still saveable!! The myth of powerlessness is as paralyzing as the myths of valiant grandeur. Small actions are not nothing. Small actions affect the ecosystem around you in ways that do or do not benefit you. One plucked stitch in the tapestry unravels the whole thing.

Do something.

When you have an honest self-assessment of what is within your scope and abilities, act on it. This will likely require some small changes in habit. Commit to small disobediences from the way the world says you must live your life. Slow down. Think long. Check your sources. Engage in conversation and intimacy within your community. Budget in money to give to crowdsourcing— set ten dollars aside each month and give one dollar to each campaign you see until it runs out. Pick up small reminders each day that thwart the internal idea that what you do does not matter.

Move energy through your physical body.

Your endlessly expansive mind should serve your very finite body, not the other way around. This is why therapists are always telling you to take a walk! Take a walk! Go for it! Procrastinating? Take a walk? Whirling around on the same topic? Physically turn in circles! Whatever energy is percolating in your mind, release it in your body.

Respirate.

I am aware that every therapist in the world tells you to breathe, so here I am punching my I Am Literally Just Like Other Girls Card. Breathwork has been a thing since before humans understood respiration. Treat yourself like you are an animal (because you are). Eat. Drink Water. Calm your body physically like you calm a little kid or a scared cat. Breathe slowly. Move slowly. Ignore every sense of urgency around you. Even if it’s for ten minutes, ignore every sense of urgency around you and breathe. Don’t do anything else but listen to yourself breathe. I like to count my breaths into sleep. Counting down for me can feel stressful because

Exhaust yourself creatively; be unserious about it.

Nothing traps energy in my body quite like fear of performance. I am an artist; I am sensitive about my shit; sometimes I take myself way too seriously. I own markers and little paints and sketchbooks and small things to make color and meaning. And sometimes you do need an easy sense of completion to feel like you did something. Put “draw a little doodle” on your to-do list, and then draw for twenty minutes, and feel good about it. Did you know you never outgrow finding relics of yourself? I am as delighted to find pictures I drew when I was seven as I am to find pictures I drew when I was nineteen. So I’m pretty sure forty year old me is going to live for my painting doodle things.

Write down the feelings of survivor’s guilt.

Survivor’s Guilt occurs when negative self-perception collides with exposure to or experiencing highly traumatic events. I think you should write these feelings down. There are many kinds of ways to journal and different media yield different results; I recommend writing because words staring back on a page are only words. There’s no facial expression or tonality to them. It’s easier to see what you actually believe when it’s written down in ink and staring back at you. Also… unpopular opinion but Survivor’s Guilt isn’t all bad. I hesitate to assign a value judgement— what I’m trying to say is I don’t think it’s always maladaptive. Sometimes it’s not all low self-esteem or a cop in my head, it’s just true. I really don’t deserve to be alive more than anyone else. So then losing sleep over the depravity of the world, especially depravity directed towards people I feel kinship with, people that look like me, isn’t something that needs resolution. It’s something that needs archival and grieving. We’ll come back to this in the conclusions.

Tips Crowdsourced from Instagram

• “Figuring it out myself but I’m trying to put my gratitude in perspective of the world. I waste less and generally feel more in tune with the world as a living, breathing being.” (@beth_anne_m18)

• “I dive into prayer and spirituality when I’m feeling burnt out. My faith, surrender & prayer looks different every day. It’s self care, rituals, CRYING and full on release and surrender.” (@divinemercurystarseed)

• “A drop of magnesium and 1mg of THC (Choco M&M)” (@doofanterr)

• “Idk how healthy this is, but I find taking breaks by indulging in fatasy fiction to be helpful.” (@sapphodyl)

• “Big on spending time with friends and aligining beliefs and action! Having sleepovers and remember care work sustains the movement even though it feels SO SLOW!” (@jelecianotjulie)

• “I embrace my stress, it’s not really going anywhere because of my current life situation.” (@kneeyaur)

• “If my output is revolutionary, then so is my input. My work is just as important as my rest.” (@plantboi.max)

Concluding on Survivor’s Guilt

Days like this, where I leave the responsibility in the kitchen sink to wash tomorrow, where I have floors to wash and peace to water (tomorrow), I don’t work to resolve the survivor’s guilt at all. Sometimes I smoke and let her find me in the ngiht. Sometimes I let her lay up on me until I disappear, til she confesses in my ear that I’m smaller than nothing, that I am not special, that there is no good reason I should be alive when good people on my name didn’t survive to see me til adulthood. Didn’t survive to meet me at all. And I kiss My Guilts goodnight lovingly, because she is honest with me. I make us both tea at a soggy, groggy 9am because she’s right and I can’t do shit about that some days but smoke and try not to die and make something worthwhile for all these names I got on me.

With that being said— these morsels come from raising money for a Universal Basic Income program for Ebola Survivors. This campaign makes it very easy for me to fall asleep upright in front of my laptop, because real people that I know and love are starving on the other side of this. How do you just… sleep when people are depending on you? And the answer is that you will anyways. You’ll either crash into sleep or you accept the limitations of you being an animal. Tomorrow will come either way. Conditions will not change overnight. I don’t move to resolve or numb my survivor’s guilt, I just recognize it as the natural product of loving those that are suffering. And i equip myself well to pick up the work tomorrow. I allow it to motivate my actions. Love is the feeling of wanting someone’s highest good and the action of doing so. And love and grief are the same thing.

Finally: I also never should have given y’all a date for this book launch. That was supposed to be out today (the day of writing is June 14, 2024) and it’s a ball I let drop. I am really fucking tired. I cannot remember the last time I had a week to sleep and recover that was not grief-induced. I feel guilt in my body for moving slower than I want to be. And I also… like sleeping. I really like sleeping. I don’t want to take myself back to a place where I have to earn sleep; very willing to cohabitate with this grief. So… dinner’s ready when it’s ready. Very soon! But just give me a moment to really catch up with myself.

Much love. highest peace. get some fucking sleep, my dude. i know there’s usually a kinder benediction here but shut the screen off and sit in silence. you will feel sleepy eventually.

ismatu g.

1. The Disney Princess effect only kicks in after two cups of tea and copious amounts of silence.

2. it’s what the next part of the book is about and I am honestly too chicken shit to drop it.

3. my clothes better, my shoes better, my niggas colder, fuck overwork culture, FUCK ideals of productivity over capitalism!

4. Becauseeee never have I ever had a supervisor without a coffee addiction, I am just saying.

5. This includes sleep deprivation, anxiety, and all mind altering substance use over a certain threshold.

6. in my opinion! allegedly! also citing this study here that i found mad interesting:

Lin F, Zhou Y, Du Y, Qin L, Zhao Z, Xu J, et al. (2012) Abnormal White Matter Integrity in Adolescents with Internet Addiction Disorder: A Tract-Based Spatial Statistics Study. PLoS ONE 7(1): e30253. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0030253