CPAP gave me my life back
Hey guys, bit of a lengthy read
Before all of this I never really stopped to think about who I was. People gravitated toward me naturally, friendships came easy and ran deep. I was witty, decisive, genuinely into life. Whatever I did I enjoyed it so much people just joined in. School clicked, early career clicked. I just felt sharp.
What made the years that followed so hard is that I never forgot what that felt like. I kept trying to get back there through supplements, medication, routines, sheer willpower. Nothing worked.
Covid hit and everything fell apart. Chronically online, late nights, uncontrolled snacking and my weight shot up roughly 20% in 6 months. Parents commented I'd started snoring badly, looking back I didn't think much of it at the time. I felt slightly off and went down a supplement rabbit hole. My drawer eventually looked like a sick person's.
A year later I was becoming someone I didn't recognise. The banter disappeared. Small things would set me off. Anxiety and low grade paranoia crept in where they never existed. Constant fog, couldn't focus, couldn't self motivate.
My girlfriend stayed over one night and woke me up alarmed. Said I was snoring so loud I sounded like I was suffocating, stopping breathing multiple times. Got a sleep study. Came back 9 AHI off only 4 hours of sleep so probably conservative. Trialled CPAP, couldn't keep the mask on, told myself it wasn't my problem.
Lost one job, got let go from the next. Had another lined up and knew I needed to lock in so I looked into ADHD treatment as the symptoms matched. Initially worked really well then I burnt out and started rotating through every option trying to chase that first feeling. Each one left me worse off than before. All these stimulants were tanking my sleep which fed right back into the cycle.
At the same time my friends started getting frustrated and annoyed frequently commenting that I couldn't make decisions, that I was unreliable I used to be the one who'd just go do the thing and because I genuinely loved it, it was contagious, people wanted to come along. That person was completely gone. I became extremely irritable, hanging out with me would end in arguments over nothing. I started overthinking things, reading into things that probably weren't how it actually was. The anxiety and the paranoia just fed each other. The scariest part was I started believing this was just who I was now. That my personality had permanently changed. I'd bring the energy down without even realising it. I stopped expecting to feel like myself again.
At some point I even convinced myself I must be depressed, even though deep down I knew I wasn't. That had to be the explanation. I eventually trialled a non-stim medication and it help me start seriously building routines and dieting. The weight loss mean my sleep started improving and I did feel better, I slept 7-8hrs every night but still wasn't quite where it needed to be. I was functioning, building good habits, losing weight but something still was off. I wasn't low exactly, just apathetic. Cognitively I felt stunted, couldn't retain things, memory was terrible and the tip of tongue feeling was stronger than ever.
Still, I had this fog that wouldn't lift. Then it hit me, sleep was the one thing I hadn't actually fixed. Didn't bother redoing a sleep study. Just thought fuck it and bought a CPAP.
A month in and honestly I'm just grateful. Grateful in a way I didn't expect to feel, it feels emotional and quite bittersweet, writing this thinking about how many years I lost.
Safe to say I'm a completely different person. My enthusiasm is back, my wit is back in full force and memory is the sharpest it's been in years. I'm the most social I've been in a long time. Anxiety has evaporated. Relationships are getting back to where they were. I'm organising social catch ups again. Getting back into old hobbies. And for the first time in genuinely years, I wake up feeling amazing ready to seize the day. I don't even use my ADHD medication at all now.
Honestly I'm quite emotional writing this. Not because of how bad it got but because of how good it feels to be back. I didn't realise how much I of myself was missing until I got it back.
If you see yourself in my shoes, from the fog, the irritability, the apathy, feeling like a shell of yourself, throwing everything at something you can't identify. I urge you to please look into your sleep. I spent years solving the wrong problem and even If I help one person figure it out thats something I'd feel good about