For millions, that cure can't come soon enough. I hate sleeping and always have. I see sleeping as an early form of dipping in and out of death. Sleeping is probably the most wasteful thing all humans do—we spend a third of our lives in basically a lobotomized state. I wish I could I will myself from doing it, but like everyone else, I'm a slave to my body and mind, and I require sleep to function normally.

In my 20s, while sailing across the oceans and being a journalist, I tried everything to not sleep. I chugged coffee and popped NoDoz (caffeine pills) daily, sometimes up to five tablets a day. For a year, I fought to keep my sleeping to about four and a half hours a night. Unfortunately, that was just not enough for my body and mind to be at its sharpest. And over time, caffeine just simply didn't wake me up anymore. To stay up and write my articles coherently, I'd often pull the hair on my arms until the pain was severe enough it jolted my brain to attention.