SLEEP OF DRUNKARDS.
To enter at large upon the subject of sleep would require a volume. At
present I shall only consider it so far as it is modified by drunkenness.
The drunkard seldom knows the delicious and refreshing slumbers of
the temperate man. He is restless, and tosses in bed for an hour or
two before falling asleep. Even then, his rest is not comfortable. He
awakes frequently during night, and each time his mouth is dry, his
skin parched, and his head, for the most part, painful and throbbing.
These symptoms, from the irritable state of his constitution, occur even
when he goes soberly to bed; but if he lie down heated with liquor, he
feels them with double force. Most persons who fall asleep in a state
of intoxication, have much headach, exhaustion, and general fever, on
awaking. Some constitutions are lulled to rest by liquors, and others
rendered excessively restless; but the first are no gainers by the
difference, as they suffer abundantly afterwards. Phlegmatic drunkards
drop into slumber more readily than the others: their sleep is, in
reality, a sort of apoplectic stupor.
I. _Dreams._—Dreams may be readily supposed to be common, from the
deranged manifestations of the stomach and brain which occur in
intoxication. They are usually of a painful nature, and leave a gloomy
impression upon the mind. In general, they are less palpable to the
understanding than those which occur in soberness. They come like painful
grotesque conceptions across the imagination; and though this faculty
can embody nothing into shape, meaning, or consistence, it is yet
haunted with melancholy ideas. These visions depend much on the mental
constitution of the person, and are modified by his habitual tone of
thinking. It is, however, to be remarked, that while the waking thoughts
of the drunkard are full of sprightly images, those of his sleep are
usually tinged with a shade of perplexing melancholy.
II. _Nightmare._—Drunkards are more afflicted than other people with
this disorder, in so far as they are equally subject to all the ordinary
causes, and liable to others, from which sober people are exempted.
Intoxication is fertile in producing reveries and dreams, those
playthings of the fancy; and it may also give rise to such a distortion
of idea, as to call up incubus, and all its frightful accompaniments.
III. _Sleep-walking._—Somnambulism is another affection to which
drunkards are more liable than their neighbours. I apprehend that the
slumber is never profound when this takes place, and that, in drunkenness
in particular, it may occur in a state of very imperfect sleep.
Drunkards, even when consciousness is not quite abolished, frequently
leave their beds and walk about the room. They know perfectly well
what they are about, and recollect it afterwards, but if questioned,
either at the moment or at any future period, they are totally unable
to give any reason for their conduct. Sometimes after getting up,
they stand a little time and endeavour to account for rising, then go
again deliberately to bed. There is often, in the behaviour of these
individuals, a strange mixture of folly and rationality. Persons half
tipsy have been known to arise and go out of doors in their night-dress,
being all the while sensible of what they were doing, and aware of its
absurdity. The drunken somnambulism has not always this character.
Sometimes the reflecting faculties are so absorbed in slumber, that the
person has no consciousness of what he does. From drinking, the affection
is always more dangerous than from any other cause, as the muscles have
no longer their former strength, and are unable to support the person
in his hazardous expeditions. If he gets upon a house-top, he does not
balance himself properly, from giddiness; he is consequently liable
to falls and accidents of every kind. It is considered, with justice,
dangerous to awaken a sleepwalker. In a drunken fit, there is less
risk than under other circumstances, the mind being so far confused by
intoxication, as to be, in some measure, insensible to the shock.
IV. _Sleep-talking._—For the same reason that drunkards are peculiarly
prone to somnambulism are they subject to sleep-talking, which is merely
a modification of the other. The imagination, being vehemently excited
by the drunken dream, embodies itself often in speech, which however is,
in almost every case, extremely incoherent, and wants the rationality
sometimes possessed by the conversation of sleep-talkers under other
circumstances.