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I blame it on alcohol. If I drink I’m always up for a few hours in the middle of the night. And I’m quite sure they were doing a lot of that back in that time.

atarian 5y ago
Funny how they call it a nightcap, but ends up doing the complete opposite.
- Moru 5y ago
  the name is for the excuse to drink, the effect is totally uninteresting at that time :-)
AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
Ah yes. Having an evening drink, falling asleep at like 9PM, and then waking up wide awake at midnight to dick around for a few hours until finally falling back asleep at like 3 AM. It still happens to me from time to time.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
yeah and after a day of labor? a little drink with some bread is all it takes…
nottorp 5y ago
> And I’m quite sure they were doing a lot of that back in that time. Technically, they were all drinking alcohol because water was unsafe. However, beer at least had half the alcohol content that it has today and the wine was strongly watered. For women and children they even added water to the beer. Googled it once. The information should still be available.
- williamdclt 5y ago
  Funnily, there was a HN thread a day or two ago that was calling _that_ a myth
  - naikrovek 5y ago
    everyone on this site thinks they're an expert after reading an article or three. this site is kinda insane that way. almost no one here is willing to admit, in the heat of a discussion, that they don't know everything about the topic at hand, and it is maddening.
hnbad 5y ago
Oh, so it's not just me. I've always interpreted it as the first sleep (hah) being my body being busy trying to sober up and the second sleep being the actual normal sleep now that the body can focus on something other than getting rid of all that poison. Of course actual blood alcohol takes longer to go down than that but no matter how much I had, I'd invariably feel significantly more sober after the initial sleep than if I just stayed awake and stopped drinking. Given that alcoholic drinks (especially various concoctions we'd hardly recognize as "beer" today) were fairly widespread especially when pure water was not always potable, I wouldn't be surprised if this didn't at least factor in for some of the reports. Then again this doesn't explain the observation of polyphasic sleep developing under experimental conditions.

atarian 5y ago

Funny how they call it a nightcap, but ends up doing the complete opposite.

Moru 5y ago
the name is for the excuse to drink, the effect is totally uninteresting at that time :-)

AdmiralAsshat 5y ago

Ah yes. Having an evening drink, falling asleep at like 9PM, and then waking up wide awake at midnight to dick around for a few hours until finally falling back asleep at like 3 AM. It still happens to me from time to time.

micromacrofoot 5y ago

yeah and after a day of labor? a little drink with some bread is all it takes…

nottorp 5y ago

> And I’m quite sure they were doing a lot of that back in that time. Technically, they were all drinking alcohol because water was unsafe. However, beer at least had half the alcohol content that it has today and the wine was strongly watered. For women and children they even added water to the beer. Googled it once. The information should still be available.

williamdclt 5y ago
Funnily, there was a HN thread a day or two ago that was calling _that_ a myth
- naikrovek 5y ago
  everyone on this site thinks they're an expert after reading an article or three. this site is kinda insane that way. almost no one here is willing to admit, in the heat of a discussion, that they don't know everything about the topic at hand, and it is maddening.

hnbad 5y ago

Oh, so it's not just me. I've always interpreted it as the first sleep (hah) being my body being busy trying to sober up and the second sleep being the actual normal sleep now that the body can focus on something other than getting rid of all that poison. Of course actual blood alcohol takes longer to go down than that but no matter how much I had, I'd invariably feel significantly more sober after the initial sleep than if I just stayed awake and stopped drinking. Given that alcoholic drinks (especially various concoctions we'd hardly recognize as "beer" today) were fairly widespread especially when pure water was not always potable, I wouldn't be surprised if this didn't at least factor in for some of the reports. Then again this doesn't explain the observation of polyphasic sleep developing under experimental conditions.