Is this a medical condition.

I drive a lot. On a typical day I do 250 miles, some days double that. A couple years ago I started having trouble keeping myself awake. It's progressively gotten worse. It's to the point that anytime I'm behind the wheel for more than a half hour I really have a hard time keeping my eyes open. It's almost like I'm drugged. Several times I've had to pull off in rest stops to get out and walk around for a couple minutes to wake up. As soon as I get out I'm alert and wide awake, get behind the wheel and I'm comatose.

It doesn't matter which vehicle I'm in so it's not carbon monoxide...I don't think.

It happens no matter what time of day, or how much sleep I've had.

It's dangerous and I want it to stop. I tried an energy drink once and it seemed to make me sleepier. I don't regularly drink anything with caffeine in it.

I have to drive for my job and I definitely don't want to kill anyone.

Do I need to see a doctor about it?

Dehydration? Might be worth a Doc trip.

I drink nothing but water all day, and I drink a lot of it.

Who knows, it could be medical. But it sounds like it could be a behavioral / association kind of thing also. You are associating driving with sleepiness. You drive, you become sleepy and strengthen the association.

What about the other side of the equation? What are your sleeping habits? Easy / hard to go to sleep? Where and when do you sleep? Is there a pattern, a consistent location / process? Maybe your sleeping behaviors are not strong enough / consistent enough and you are picking up another association.

I have unfortunately developed an association with meetings at work and being sleepy... fortunately I am not in a lot of meeting but its a bit frustrating. The dimmer quiet room, the droning voices... sleepy time... argh.

Do you have trouble sleeping? When my sleep apnea got bad some days driving an hour at a time was hard. Now I have a machine I sleep with and I get better sleep in 4 hours than I used to get in a night.

In reply to nicksta43:

It interesting that you just happened to post this, I am having a similar problem, and it is scary.

My problem is when it gets dark, I can't seem to stay awake.

Between 12 and 2, either AM or PM, I find it very nappy behind the wheel. Also about a half hour into a trip, I will generally get a bit sleepy, but after an hour, I'm good to go.

I've had that problem most of my life ... some how I've made it this far without crashing ....

I call it road hypnosis (my diagnosis) ... getting out and walking around seems to be the only "cure" for me ... and that doesn't always work .... so no help for you, just commiserations

Listen to talk radio. It will turn you from a sleepy driver into an angry one.

I was in a very similar situation, and that was one (of many worse) reasons I started a new career last year. Now instead of worrying about being asleep behind the wheel, I just have to fight myself from dozing off at my desk...or work from home and take a nap during lunch.

Sleep Apnea. I had a sleep study done and now I also have one of the machines that pumps air into my nose while I sleep. No more drowsy sleepy driving for me!

Sleepy at work is a different problem. That's just plain boredom!

More vitamin b?

with all the driving, how is your weight?

The more you put on, the more likely you are to have sleep Apnea. You might think you are getting a full night's rest, but you keep waking up enough not to get into REM sleep for any serious amount of time. Once you get comfy behind the wheel, the drone from the wheels and engine is just enough to put you over the edge into sleepiness

Weights good, around 185 now.

Sleep is another issue, sometimes I really struggle to fall asleep. On average I'd say 5.5-6hrs per night.

When I was 18 I had a lot of trouble sleeping, went to a doctor because I had blacked out two times in one week from not sleeping. I wanted to know if there was a medical condition was causing the lack of sleep. The first thing out of his mouth was "I'm not going to prescribe you any sleeping pills, so don't even ask" Was so berkeleying pissed at him. I wanted to punch him in the throat. But I realized he likely sees a lot of young guy's just trying to get some pills. I just wanted to make sure the lack of sleep wasn't a symptom of something more serious.

Stimulus - Response?

Pavlov's dog stuff. You've been driving so long, now when you get behind the wheel your brain says "OK, time to shut down and let the eyes and hands do it".

Take a similar trip with someone else driving, see if you nod out.

nicksta43 wrote: Weights good, around 185 now. Sleep is another issue, sometimes I really struggle to fall asleep. On average I'd say 5.5-6hrs per night. When I was 18 I had a lot of trouble sleeping, went to a doctor because I had blacked out two times in one week from not sleeping. I wanted to know if there was a medical condition was causing the lack of sleep. The first thing out of his mouth was "I'm not going to prescribe you any sleeping pills, so don't even ask" Was so berkeleying pissed at him. I wanted to punch him in the throat. But I realized he likely sees a lot of young guy's just trying to get some pills. I just wanted to make sure the lack of sleep wasn't a symptom of something more serious.

45 minutes of a vigorous exercise, some "personal time" and a hot shower not enough to get you to fall asleep easier?

When you pull over, try a nap instead of a walk. 20 minutes of shut eye is a good 'reset button' for me. Maybe a brief walk afterward to fully awaken.

I do the exact same thing, except after around 7pm I get boundless amounts of energy and drive through the night with no caffeine.

In reply to Gearheadotaku:

If the boss found out I was pulling over and taking 20 min naps sleeping would be the least of my worries.

nicksta43 wrote: Sleep is another issue, sometimes I really struggle to fall asleep. On average I'd say 5.5-6hrs per night. When I was 18 I had a lot of trouble sleeping, went to a doctor because I had blacked out two times in one week from not sleeping.

Sounds like a classic case of sleep apnea. As other have said" Go get a sleep study done". I had one done 10 years ago and found that I would stop breathing ~once a minute which meant I wasn't really getting any rest.

Got a machine and have slept better the last 10 years than I ever had in the first 60 years of my life. I was so bad that I had to have a special machine (Bi-PAP rather than the usual C-PAP).

5.5-6 hrs. sleep is not enough.

Try this: When you get get home tonight, go out and do something active for an hour. Run. Swim. Bike. Golf without a cart. Play hockey for an hour. Go get chased by a bear or something.

When you're done with that, shower up, and then get with wifey and have some fun. If there is no wifey, improvise. Then go to sleep. NO cell phones, NO TV, NO Computer, NO tablet, NOTHING with a back light for 30 minutes before you turn out the light. In fact, reading a paper book is best. Then use the site linked below to determine what time you should wake up based on when you fall asleep; be sure to get at least 7 hours. More would be better.

sleepyti.me

EDIT: Can't get that site to link correctly. Copy and paste "Sleepyti.me" into your address bar and click go. It is all about sleep cycles.

http://sleepyti.me

mtn wrote: Try this: When you get get home tonight, go out and do something active for an hour. Run. Swim. Bike. Golf without a cart. Play hockey for an hour. Go get chased by a bear or something. When you're done with that, shower up, and then get with wifey and have some fun. If there is no wifey, improvise. Then go to sleep. NO cell phones, NO TV, NO Computer, NO tablet, NOTHING with a back light for 30 minutes before you turn out the light. In fact, reading a paper book is best. Then use the site linked below to determine what time you should wake up based on when you fall asleep; be sure to get at least 7 hours. More would be better. sleepyti.me EDIT: Can't get that site to link correctly. Copy and paste "Sleepyti.me" into your address bar and click go. It is all about sleep cycles.

If you have a smartphone, they also make apps that use the accelerometers to monitor sleep cycles and wake you up between them. I'd be using one were it not for the fact that the dog's moving around would likely set it off (which is also why I haven't slept as well since moving in with the GF...).

I'm actually doing an at-home sleep study next week since the GF noticed that I seemed to stop breathing at one point... will be interesting to see what comes of it (assuming the dog doesn't try and eat the monitoring gear... )

aircooled wrote: Who knows, it could be medical. But it sounds like it could be a behavioral / association kind of thing also. You are associating driving with sleepiness. You drive, you become sleepy and strengthen the association.

I think this is a big part of it. I ran into this same thing a while back. Eventually I adapted and more or less grew out of it, but for several years it was scary to drive more than 20-30 minutes away from home.