niccamarie

I just want to second angelica's comment - if your grades are suffering, you should ask for more accommodations. Narcolepsy is a real disorder that causes real impairment of functioning, and you shouldn't have to suffer academic consequences over it. Speak up for what you need. A tape recorder for lectures is a very reasonable accommodation (and no one would bat an eye if a student with, say, a muscular or skeletal impairment who was unable to take notes on their own used a recorder). There are plenty of them out there that aren't part of phones and don't have any distracting abilities - all they do is record. Talk to your guidance counselor or advocate or whoever deals with special education services at your school, let them know that falling asleep in class is hindering your ability to get good notes/absorb the lecture. Narcolepsy is a recognized disability, meaning you're covered by the ADA and IDEA - your school is legally required to provide reasonable accommodations to help you keep your narcolepsy from adversely affecting your education.

I was 19 when my narcolepsy was diagnosed, and I sometimes wonder about a few classes I had in high school - if I'd been diagnosed then, and had some accommodations, there are a few classes I expect I would have learned a lot more in (my physics class comes most to mind...I'd regularly fall asleep during the lectures, and missed a lot. The only reason I managed a B- in the class was a lot of tutoring from my friends).

When I'm awake, referring to something that I believe happened because I hallucinated it when half-asleep. I end up in this partially-awake, partially-asleep state as I'm waking. The things I experience then are essentially waking dreams - I'm partially aware of my surroundings, but my brain's still firing away in REM. My husband doesn't have the world's greatest memory, so it can sometimes take him a bit to convince me that what I'm remembering only happened in a hallucination. The arguments aren't the hallucination, they're about whether the content of the hallucination was a real memory or hallucinated.

Well, the last time I needed a tape recorder, my mom dredged one up out of a drawer somewhere, so I actually have no idea whether walmart sells them. I'd imagine that if a store like walmart/target doesn't have them, an electronics store like best buy might, and I'm sure you could find one online on amazon or newegg or somewhere. Your school may also have some for students to use - it never hurts to ask.

I'm not the OP, but I'm also narcoleptic. Hypnogogic hallucinations are different for everybody - mine are often auditory. I've had many arguments with my husband in which I insist he told me such-and-such that morning, only to eventually figure out that I'd just hallucinated it. I haven't had a tactile hallucination in a long time, but when I was very little (maybe 6ish) I can remember regularly waking up in a panic, convinced that someone had come in my room and smacked my bottom. My mom always brushed it off saying that I'd probably just woken myself up by rolling into the wall, but the wall near my bed was just a short one (it only went a little past my pillow), and I'd been facing the right way when I woke, so her explanation never made sense to me. It was only when I got diagnosed that I figured out what it actually had been.

If you haven't already, you should come join us over at r/narcolepsy!