Trend Alert: Sleep-Emailing/Eating/Fornicating Are The New Sleepwalking

After reading about a woman who emailed out insane party invites to her friends while asleep, we started to wonder: Is sleep the new excuse for doing shit we’d never normally do?

The woman in the most recent case reportedly got up and went to her computer where she sent out a bunch of party invites and other emails- all while fast asleep. She says she doesn’t remember anything about the incident but found out when her friends called her about the strange emails in a mix of upper and lowercase letters. One read “Come tomorrow and sort this hell hole out. Dinner and drinks, 4.pm. Bring wine and caviar only.” Another merely asked (?), ”What the…”

We don’t remember the last time we demanded caviar in the wee hours of the morning either, but that’s because we were blacked out at the time. Yeah, see, this phenomenon seems similar to how people used to blame their idiotic behavior on drinking- “I was sooo wasted, I can’t believe I fucked/dumped/stabbed him” is something we’ve all heard. Then people realized that all alcohol does is lower your inhibitions so it’s still you- just a rowdier, super witty version that can dance like MJ and is so totally fine to drive, man.

But no one likes responsibility- whether it be for over-eating, over-masturbating, straight up murdering someone- so excuses are made, and now, “I was asleep” is the new “I was drunk at the time.”

Obviously sleepwalking is an actual disorder, not just self-inflicted alcohol abuse, and people often don’t remember why they would even choose to do what they did while asleep. We can’t help but point out, though, that when people sleepwalk they do fun things like gorge on cheez-whiz or run through the neighborhood naked. No one’s ever heard of a sleepwalker filling out tax forms.

So is this excuse any more valid than the now-debunked “drunk” excuse? In terms of trying to defend the really serious somnambulist misdemeanors like rape or murder, what constitutes being “in your right mind”? We don’t have the answer but for five bucks we’ll mix Ambien with cough syrup and conduct a home experiment!

Emailing while asleep [Boing Boing]