# Sleep Deprivation Cures Social Anxiety?



## karoloydi (Feb 18, 2010)

When I am deprived of sleep and I get into that hyperactive fase I feel like my social anxiety is gone and I am extremely talkative.
Does this happen to anyone else?
What chemicals get released in my body to achieve this effect?


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## bowlingpins (Oct 18, 2008)

Not getting enough sleep does decrease my anxiety but I don't become more talkative. Infact, I probably become the opposite. I zone out, become lost in my own world. My mind doesn't work as fast, can't follow and contribute to conversations. 
Overall, it's a pretty terrible feeling to be constantly sleep deprived so even though it may help with anxiety, I absolutely try to get a decent amount of sleep in. One other thing that sleep deprivation does is that it makes it impossible for me to learn anything at a reasonable rate, which is very frustrating.

I don't know the answer to your last question.


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## metallica2147 (Feb 15, 2010)

That's not the case with me. I just become really tired and can't function well. Not that I normally can anyway.


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## Akane (Jan 2, 2008)

Lots of chemicals and hormones build when you are sleep deprived because sleep basically resets neurotransmitters. Adenosine increases steadily until you sleep. Part of the reason caffiene makes you feel more awake and increases anxiety in some people is that it's an adenosine antagonist. Cortisol levels are controlled by sleep. They drop when you go to bed and they spike when you wake up. People who are less active and outgoing in the mornings tend to have late cortisol spikes. Brain waves change during sleep when you are sleep deprived. You get different stages of sleep depending how much sleep you've gotten recently. This changes the impact on hormones, memories, and mood the next day. The hypothalamus and pituitary glands increase in activity. That also alters mood and other hormones in the body.

It's really hard to narrow down what exactly improves depression and anxiety when you lessen sleep. It's sort of like some meds which are referred to as "dirty". They impact so many neurotransmitters and can do so many things no one is entirely sure why they cause the results they do.

The downsides of sleep deprivation are many. It lowers the immune system and stressed the body in many ways. It can increase your risk for heart problems, blood pressure problems, diabetes, and impairs your ability to think. Sleep also impacts memory and lack of sleep can lead to poor long or short term memory and less ability to judge time or date of events both past and future. Sleep deprivation can also cause anxiety or depression. It's a fine line to walk on what level helps and what level does more harm. It's nearly as dangerous as trying various medications for anxiety or depression. Personally having lived it for years I would not suggest sleep deprivation to treat anything. My invitation to trade anyone sleeping problems for their anxiety or depression still stands.


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## broseph (Jan 18, 2010)

It happens to me. If I pull an all nighter the first couple hours of the day I feel really energized and confident. After the first few hours though I get really anxious and tired.


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## Paper Samurai (Oct 1, 2009)

I can't function without sleep :afr and I guess the fact that I my SA is quite closely linked to a poor self image means lack of sleep = look a mess = more anxiety. :b


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## Hank Scorpio (Oct 28, 2008)

Sleep deprivation is a lot like being drunk.


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## OregonMommy (Mar 3, 2010)

Sleep deprivation is horrible. It _is_ like being drunk! Can't think, can't walk in a straight line, can't drive without worrying about falling asleep at the wheel. I pulled all-nighters at the beginning of the year. My doctor put me on atarax.


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## ThatWierdGuy (Feb 20, 2010)

Weak D2 dopamine receptors in the brain are the cause of social anxiety

Sleep deprivation raises dopamine. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080819213033.htm

Sleep deprivation helps social anxiety by creating more dopamine? Seems possible.


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## AlwaysOnTheOutside (Jan 11, 2010)

Also I was ill last week and that reduced my SA. When you're body is fatigued, you just don't have as much energy to devote to anxiety.


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## karoloydi (Feb 18, 2010)

ThatWierdGuy said:


> Weak D2 dopamine receptors in the brain are the cause of social anxiety
> 
> Sleep deprivation raises dopamine. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080819213033.htm
> 
> Sleep deprivation helps social anxiety by creating more dopamine? Seems possible.


Thats a good find!
I knew it! It says here that dopamine competes with raclopride for the same receptors in the brain.When you dont get enoughsleep the raclopride has trouble binding to the receptors, so dopamine increses.
Is there a drug in the market that canreduce raclopride binding?


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## zomgz (Aug 17, 2009)

So I could just take a dopamine pill and be cured? :O


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## Akane (Jan 2, 2008)

Lots of things cause SA so no one thing is going to solve it. Some have found help from altering dopamine. Some have not. My brain just got so screwed up I couldn't even talk and I couldn't sleep despite the fact those meds are used for some sleeping disorders. I think it's actually a better thing to look in to than the more accepted serotonin causes depression and anxiety theory but there is no cure all for SA since there is rarely one cause.


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## adsf321dsa (Dec 4, 2008)

Not the case at all for me. If I haven't gotten enough sleep, I feel retarded...like a mush mouth walking around with little coordination. I can't handle it.


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## Jericho187 (Jan 18, 2011)

I know this is an old thread but I just wanted to reply and clarify something here.

I have been using sleep deprivation to get rid of my social anxiety for the last 8 years now, and it works great for me. So yes, to the original poster, you're not crazy.

The reason this works is because sleep deprevation raises SEROTONIN and DOPAMINE in multiple areas of the brain. 

All I do is sleep much later and force myself to wake up earlier. Typical day for me (like right now lol its 2 AM) is to sleep at 2 AM and wake up at 6 AM.

I know it sounds stupid, but this works, and I don't do it everyday, just before important social engagements, meetings etc.

Try it, seriously.


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## PickleNose (Jul 11, 2009)

Hmmmm.

I just get miserable and mean. Sometimes if I get really tired I fantasize about cutting my own toes off with scissors. 

Overall, I don't think it helps me much.


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## Jericho187 (Jan 18, 2011)

Well my message to everyone is to at least try it once. I've spent years searching for a cure, tried SSRIs, MAOIs, SNRIs, benzos, neurotransmitter precursors, CBT, the works. Nothing helped me without having side effects that i could not handle. 

If you don't respond fine, but if you do, its a great feeling! 

I've kept a DAILY logs of everything I took and how I've responded to them for the last 3 years. I found a pattern in that my social anxiety was directly related to my sleeping pattern. 

It was hell trying to figure out what exactly was helping me over the years. I would try one thing, and say oh this is the magic bullet only for it to poop out later on. Soo frustrating. For example for me, if I take a benzo at night, I would sleep great, and feel very anxious the next day. If I sleep in on the weekends, I always had an anxiety riddled day. During university when I would pull all nighters, I would have fantastic days. Taking my Paxil at night helped less than taking it in the morning, why? Because paxil knocked me out, and I slept like a log. Supplements like choline taken at bedtime helped me, because they screwed up my sleep. I'm happy I kept a log because I can now say with confidence that my SAS is related to my sleep. No doubt about it.

Again to reitirate, I usually sleep at 2 AM, set myt alarm for 630-7 AM, drink a cup of coffee and I'm golden for the day.

Again if it doesn't work for you, at least you explored it. 

Good luck to you all. I genuinely hope everyone finds something that helps them with this horrible condition.


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## losinghope (Mar 29, 2011)

I find my anxiety is not as bad with less sleep too. I wonder why that is?


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## kanra (Nov 27, 2011)

I just sit there like a zombie, staring into space. Sometimes I can get stupidly silly, but that doesn't happen often anymore.
Seems like I'll be a zombie again tomorrow.


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## Unkn0wn Pleasures (Nov 24, 2011)

:O YES! 

Every couple of weeks I work a morning shift. The only way to ensure I'll get there is to stay up all night. It's like a magical SA cure.

Makes me a half-brained zombie. But a calm, confident, even chatty zombie. Who always has something to say, interesting but not weird or inappropriate.

It always makes me feel happy, and motivated. (Which are as foreign to me as a smooth conversation).


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## Nefury (May 9, 2011)

I get this, at about 4 in the morning I'll just have about 20 epiphanies and think about my life. Then I wake up and stop giving a ****


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## Omgblood (Jun 30, 2010)

I've had a couple a days where I was near anxiety-free after getting 0-3 hours of sleep. Like one of my best days ever in my life happened where I felt like I was free from anxiety and was actually socializing and pretty talkative. The night before I didn't get much sleep. 

Though I tried to replicate this and it didn't have the same effect. Sometimes it made my anxiety and speech worse. Sometimes it just made me lethargic, made me didn't so tired and didn't care about anything.

I feel like certain processes in the body are too tired to produce the physical symptoms of anxiety. Idk thats my take


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## Venkska (Oct 29, 2011)

The complete opposite for me. When I don't get any sleep I become auto depressed for some reason and begin too worry about everything.


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## aw1993 (Aug 8, 2011)

Yeah this happens to me too but I'm not really willing to give up restorative sleep just to feel kind of disoriented and fatigued so I can socialize easily. Just a thought but maybe your mind compensates for lack of sleep with a chemical it releases that gives that motivated/mindless/chatty energy


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## DazdNConfuzd (Jul 11, 2011)

OregonMommy said:


> Sleep deprivation is horrible. It _is_ like being drunk! Can't think, can't walk in a straight line, can't drive without worrying about falling asleep at the wheel. I pulled all-nighters at the beginning of the year. My doctor put me on atarax.


Yep, I played a football match earlier in the year without going to sleep. My alarm was set for 8 and at 7 I was still awake so just got up instead. The whole day was like a big blur. Anxiety does go away a bit but at the same time you can hardly function! You'll do or say something and forget about it straight away!


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## BKrakow (Jul 8, 2010)

doesn't work for me. if I haven't gotten enough sleep I just feel irritable and want to be left alone. and conversing with people is even more draining than usual.


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## forumuser (Aug 28, 2011)

> Not getting enough sleep does decrease my anxiety but I don't become more talkative. Infact, I probably become the opposite. I zone out, become lost in my own world. My mind doesn't work as fast, can't follow and contribute to conversations.


Describes me, decreases my anxiety but I feel tired, less active. Now normally with less anxiety I'd feel better about social encounters but eventually I'd become to tired to be focused of whats going on and would not be in an appropriate state to do much. If your interested in whats going on this tiredness might not be as noticeable, but lets face it your body cannot go without sleep forever and you will succumb after some time. Its not good for your health either.


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## cgj93 (Dec 13, 2010)

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## broflovski (Feb 1, 2011)

I feel the same zombie-like but confident after sleepless night. Sleep deprivation may have powerful, but not sustainable antidepressant action. It is hypothesised to be via compensatory dopamine release (as it has been already mentioned).


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## InfiniteBlaze (Jan 27, 2011)

Pretty much. When I'm sleep deprived EVERYTHING is funny and I just don't give a ****.

However, I don't really become talkative all of a sudden.


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## RibbleRabble (Dec 18, 2014)

karoloydi said:


> When I am deprived of sleep and I get into that hyperactive fase I feel like my social anxiety is gone and I am extremely talkative.
> Does this happen to anyone else?
> *What chemicals get released in my body to achieve this effect?*


Sorry to any forum etiquette nazis but I felt like I needed to answer the OP's question because it wasnt appropriately addressed in the responses.

From wikipedia:
"Recent studies show sleep deprivation has some potential in the treatment of depression. As many as 60% of patients, when sleep-deprived, show immediate recovery, although most relapse the following night. The effect has been shown to link to increases in *brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)*.[61] It has been shown that chronotype is related to the effect of sleep deprivation on mood in normal people; those with morningness circadian preference show an increase in depression-dejection scores while those with eveningness preference show a significant decrease.[62]

Anyone who prefers original source material should check out this paper- Gorgulu, Yasemin, and Okan Caliyurt. "Rapid antidepressant effects of sleep deprivation therapy correlates with serum BDNF changes in major depression." Brain research bulletin 80.3 (2009): 158-162.


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## babocali (Dec 25, 2016)

*Yes, but.....*

To be fair: I've noticed that this's a very short-lived fix (a few hours). It's how I found this thread.

BUT by not sleeping I am hurting myself. It impairs every bodily function.

A real solution is meditation. I can't put into words how much it has helped me. 100 deep breaths focusing on nothing else. I'm 20 and will practice every day til I die.

If I ruled the world, mindfulness meditation would be mandatory.


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## Memories of Silence (May 15, 2015)

Mine is even worse than usual if I don't get enough sleep.

Last month, I had to go in an elevator in a motel by myself after getting pillows and bags from the car. There were other people in it, and I didn't want to be in it with them, so I waited for it to be empty. Then I kept waiting, standing there almost asleep, with a headache and not feeling well and my heavy bags. After about two minutes of waiting for the elevator to come back and the doors to open, a man walked back over, pressed the button, then walked away again. I had forgotten I had to press it, and I felt stupid. That's what I'm like when I'm tired.


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## Xtreme2damax (Feb 20, 2016)

Thanks to my hypomania I can often pull all nighters and still feel energized, awake. Sleep deprivation has decreased my anxiety and I got curious why. I do eventually end up crashing after a while though. Some good news is I have been feeling less anxious since getting myself out more, taking Gabapentin and exercising. More energized, confident, clearer mind and coordinated.


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## TheLastShy (Sep 20, 2014)

Happened with me. Last year I was often sleep deprived. After a few days sleeping very little I was so energized that I was having trouble sleeping.


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## 2Milk (Oct 29, 2014)

Same, when I state up for a whole day I feel less anxious.


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## roxslide (Apr 12, 2011)

Yeah! I noticed this. It's like I'm so tired I can't muster the energy to care anymore what people think anymore. I am also more likely to do things I would never do because of fear/anxiety. It doesn't lend towards conversation though, I tend to speak in one syllable sentences and talk a lot less.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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