Random drug test
Fortunately I don’t get called for random drug tests as a cartoonist. I say fortunately not because I would have anything to hide (the only drugs I do are beer and wine), but because they’d probably make me show up at 7am, which is an ungodly time for a nocturnal creature like me.
When I go to my yearly health checkup every other year or so, they always ask me to come in early for my blood test and urine sample. At some point I found out that the only reason they make you come early is because you need to do it before breakfast, i.e. on an empty stomach. Heck, I can do that at 10 or 11 am! Always takes some effort to convince the assistants that I really do get up that late. I wonder if night shift workers never go to the doctor, or why I always get this weird reaction when somebody learns of my shifted life/work/sleep rhythm. I can’t be the only one, can I?
I work from 3 to 11 pm… get home around midnight and get on the computer, go to sleep around 3 or 4 am, wake up around 11 am, sometimes at noon!
Hi Stef. I am a graphic artist myself. It turns out that at night there is no noise whatsoever, and therefore I do concentrate better at night. I go to sleep on average at 3/4 am, I wake up at 10/11 am. With that said, people usually think “this guy is lazy he sleeps late every day, but if you do the math, I only need 5/6 hours sleep per night, while most early birds get 8 or 9.
It’s totally criminal to get someone like us out of bed at 7 am, to go and give some blood and pee. Maybe we should make a petition of some sort 🙂
Best regards!
Your not alone, but I’m glad to learn I’m not either. I once read that its not that we prefer the dark side but its that we have 25 or 26 hour clocks in our head. The overtime somehow adds up to keep us in the dark.
Has any of you pilots found certain times of the day annoying? For me, I have programmed my simulator to avoid the early morning hours. When flying at night, I just can’t stand to see the early morning sky.
Nocturnal Pilots Association?
Similar issue but I have the opposite problem. I naturally get up between 3 and 4 am and I’m off to bed around 7 pm. When I have a trip I love to try to be on the road between 3:30 and 4. I can cover a LOT of ground before everyone else gets to rush hour. A 7 am appointment is a problem because that’s getting close to my lunch time.
I’ve heard about that 25-26 hour rhythm too! I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard that they made an experiment with Russian Cosmonauts in one of their training tanks, where they let them establish a natural routine without giving them any sense of time, and they naturally established a 26 hour cycle. Weird, huh?
“It’s totally criminal to get someone like us out of bed at 7 am”
Ricardo, I found someone who knows your pain:
“getting up at 7 am is a pure torture for individuals affected with DSPS”
– Dr Piotr Wozniak,
http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleepchart.htm
Don’t work shifts anymore and still detest getting up anytime before 10am! But in my case, I fear it is laziness, as I definitely need min 7 hours sleep to function…. 🙂
got up at 5am yesterday, flew 10hrs, climbed back into bed at 10pm . . .
just sayin’ . . . .
aviation reality check!
I was twice “randomly” selected for drug testing when I worked at the airport…then the testers started doing the random selection and we lost two workers…who really needed to go. Ones results were so wild the testing company told the boss they’d need to receive them in person and it might be best of a lawyer was along as well. This was one of the supervisors. It was the worst run company I ever worked for.
At the second job there, I worked a rotating shift. so every so often I spent a month working 7pm to 7am.
Now I work 1pm to Midnight so normally I am not up yet..beginning vacation later this week and am rotating my wake up back to early am as much as possible to allow travel all daylight hours (22+ hour drive on a motorcycle) and visiting the folks as they are early birds.
Laviator, you are right. That’s exactly what I suffer from DSPS 🙂 I will read it carefully and check if it is doing me wrong. I am quite sure that once I get a nice job that I like, and I et married I will start having a “normal” life again. Thanks for the link!
The DSPS theory makes total sense! I really feel that I would have 26 hour days if I was shut off from sunlight. When I was still living alone, I often contemplated to shift my sleep cycle for two hours every day, but I never tried it.
And I so totally know how you feel, Ricardo! I also have a normal length of sleep, just shifted backwards. But I already stopped to defend myself and live with the fact that people think I’m lazy. Only every now and then I break out into a rant…
Stef, when I am at the dorms, this is perfect. I build my curriculum so that I can go by somewhere between 19/7 and 20/8 cycles, with weekend nights awake and days sleeping. Works perfect. Now I come home and my parents (who often sleep 21-7 – ten hours) tell me I am lazy and oversleeping and I should be like a “normal person”.
Portuguese medical staff are cleverer – they send me mail or letter, saying “we expect you there and there at that date that hour, for tests p, q and r. Please do not eat anything for x hours before the testing.” Works neat.
About the 24-hour cycle being unnatural: it is what the sun offers us, and we had better be grateful for it. I cannot imagine how people even think of cutting themselves off from the very basic natural rhythm. Sun and his light and warmth are essential, just like food and drink!