#3: Narcolepsy -- "Rat Race"

Sometime in late March of 2008, I watched the movie "Rat Race" that had a man in it who struggled with narcolepsy. It was very humorous because many people in the film were attempting to race across the country to find an extremely large sum of money waiting for them. Whoever got to the money first won the prize: all of the money. One of the contestants to this wild game was a man with narcolepsy. All throughout the race, he would randomly fall asleep, causing a great deal of chaos. He was the first one to start the race, but he fell asleep in the lobby of the hotel from which they started. Miraculously, he was the first one who made it to the money. However, he fell asleep right before he opened the locker full of money and everyone got to the locker at the same time.

This man relates to the narcolepsy and other sleep disorders we learned about in chapter four on consciousness. Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder that causes people to abruptly enter, without warning, REM sleep straight from them being awake. A helpful treatment to this disorder is a combination of taking naps regularly and taking stimulant medication.