Study: Waking Up Like Being Drunk

Ant writes "CNN reports that "sleep inertia" leaves some people so groggy, after they wake up, they might as well be drunk, researchers said on Tuesday. "For a short period, at least, the effects of sleep inertia may be as bad as or worse than being legally drunk," said researcher Kenneth Wright of the University of Colorado at Boulder."

Comments

drunk according to statute

[Quadraginta]

If your blood alcohol concentration is above certain limits set by law, typically 0.08% these days, then you are defined by law to be drunk, whatever your state of reflexes, ability to concentrate, et cetera. Otherwise, whether you are drunk or not is a matter of judgment -- not yours, of course, but typically that of the policeman who stops you and the judge who hears the case.

However, the limit used to be 0.10%, and that is actually fairly sloshed. You would be pretty happy, typically, although people vary. The point is that it used to be the case that you could be definitely drunk, and know it, but still be under the limit at which you would be defined to be drunk by the law. Naive people would imagine, therefore, that you could be drunk but not legally drunk (because you were under the 0.10% limit). This was never the case, of course, since even under the 0.10% limit you could still be determined to be drunk by a policeman and a judge. But it was a popular fiction.

From this beginning I think nowadays "legally drunk" has morphed into a colloquial expression meaning mostly just "pretty definitely drunk" versus just feelin' good -- you know, at that point where friends argue happily with each other -- hey, I'm not drunk, man, just...relaxed...g'wan, ask me anything...look! I can balance a beer bottle on my nose (crash)!

It has nothing to do with the legal drinking age.

Sleeptracker

[Freaky Spook]

The sleeptracker watch is what your talking about, it monitors your body signals to wake you up at the best moment, you set an alarm window & it will wake you up at the best time, they sell on Amazon for 139.95.

Re:Easy to scoff

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Is there anyone, anyone at all in the world who thought it would be a good idea to perform critical medical procedures just after waking up?

I worked in emergency medicine for nine years, and I can tell you that unfortunately, the answer is "yes." In small, rural ER's, there's almost always only one doctor on duty, and on night shift he's napping until someone comes in. In bigger, urban teaching hospitals, most of the doctors are interns and residents, and they're so exhausted from working their absurdly long hours that they grab sleep whenever they possibly can. And it's been a dirty little not-so-secret in the medical community for ... well, pretty much ever ... that this kind of thing kills patients. That's why this subject needs investigation; it's not just a waste of your preciousss tax dollars.