Insomnia: SF

Insomnia can be a serious problem when you've got an alien parasite living in your head. For one thing, consciousness or semi-consciousness allows a kind of access that the dreaming mind blocks out. Sure, once you accept a parasite, you're going to have weird dreams. It's kind of how they communicate. You’ll have weird dreams and strange impulses and other things that you'll believe really shouldn't, couldn't come from your own gray matter, and you may be right or you may be wrong. There's some preliminary research on the kind of people the parasites willingly choose that suggest you may be wrong. Insomnia, though, that can be a problem. If it carries on long enough, it can blur the boundaries between waking and sleeping to a degree that allows the little beasties to communicate in live fashion, and maybe even to alter your perception or to guide your movements. No helpful sleep paralysis here! So we're supposed to report it and get drugs and psychiatric diagnoses to help with resolving it immediately, and in the meantime they like to check us into the special "sleep hotels" that are really a lot more like a jail. Good luck getting out on your own unless you can show them a sleep scan printout that certifies you got your needed REMs for the night. They just aren't going to listen to you any other way.


Inspiration: Google "heart don't beat" -> "12 Ways to Beat Insomnia!"
Story potential: Medium
Notes: I like this as part of the setting of a symbiote/parasite story, but maybe not on its own.