Have you managed to get caught up on sleep yet @MechMK1? When I get really behind on sleep it usually takes at least 2 good nights of sleep before I start feeling "normal" again. Actually, I think I usually feel the worst after my first night of good sleep. Apparently that's when the sleepiness finally catches up with me?

@ConorMancone I sleep, but not well. The dreams get weirder

Which level of sleep deprivation have you reached?

I've only ever reached that last one, which seems like the less extreme one to me...

Level 2, definitely

Yeah, sleep deprivation sucks. I hope it passes soon

It's not like I can't sleep. It's that whenever I sleep, my dreams are...like the weirdest shit. Not weird in the sense of just random stuff but, weird in the sense that I cannot explain the feeling of dread it evokes in me

Like, when I genuinely ask myself "What if I never wake up? What if this is the new reality?"

That sounds... unpleasant. Never had that experience myself

It is honestly a dreadful experience. It made me think of the "Brain in a Vat" thought experiment and the fact that all our perception of reality is nothing but electric stimuli in our brain.

So if I would fall asleep and get "lost" in a dream, how would my brain know that the stimuli aren't corresponding to an external reality?

In short: How can I know the dream isn't real?

I can state with confidence that your dream definitely isn't real. But if you're a brain in a vat then my own thoughts on this matter are pointless...

The rational side of my brain tells me that as well. It can't be real, because it must not be real.

But then the other half - and I keep forgetting which one is the weird half of the brain - chimes in and yells "But how do you know for sure?"

And I don't. I don't know for sure. For all I know, this could all be one large hallucination and when I am dead I am an alien holding a bong and my fellow alien friend would say "And? Did you feel it?"