When You Fuck Like Crazy in Your Sleep, Wake Up, and Remember Nothing

Sexsomnia can be disturbing for both the sufferer and whoever they happen to be sleeping next to. Emily* was troubled enough by her sleep sex behavior that she went looking for answers online. We spoke in greater detail about her problem over email. "I tend to feel embarrassed and sometimes even guilty when I've had an episode," she says, "mainly because I worry about what I've said or done." In her waking sex life, Emily describes herself as much more vanilla and tame than her sexsomnia persona:

Sexsomnia is a type of parasomnia, like night terrors or sleepwalking, and only about ten percent of the population is afflicted by such disorders. One recent study found that four percent of women suffering from parasomnias report having sleep sex behaviors. A 2007 study broke down sexsomnia behaviors by gender; the researchers found that women sufferers of sexsomnia are much less likely to initiate sex. They reported that "females almost exclusively engaged in masturbation and sexual vocalizations, whereas males commonly engaged in sexual fondling and sexual intercourse with females."

So why would someone be more aggressive in their sleep sex? "[W]hen I hear that I do things that are completely out of my comfort zone, it makes me wonder if it's a repressed part of me trying to come out," Emily says. Other sexsomniacs report the same oddly aggressive behavior. "I am much more aggressive [when asleep]. Any sense of foreplay seems abbreviated, to say the least," says Joseph, who estimates he has one sexsomnia episode a month. "[My partners] were definitely confused by the sudden intensity of it all."

Sleep is much more complicated than it looks from the outside. What seems like a powering down of the brain is actually more like the "rest mode" of the Playstation 4 that is your beautiful mind. Certain background functions are still happening. You are downloading new software, recharging controllers, or, in the case of sexsomniacs, trying to fuck the Xbox 360 lying next to you. Sleep occurs in several stages, which affect different parts of the brain and body. Sexsomnia episodes occur in stage 3 non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. During stage 3 sleep, the prefrontal cortex is offline. The prefrontal cortex is in charge of our rational thoughts, decision making, morality, etc. Baser functions like breathing and the fight-or-flight response are still very active. Most importantly for people with sexsomnia, the body isn't paralyzed like it is during REM sleep. Sexsomnia is only one of many ways the body responds to interrupted stage 3 sleep. Sleep talking, walking, and eating all occur when someone is partially woken up from stage 3 sleep. Without the prefrontal cortex steering the ship, the body is left to its own devices. It tries to satisfy very basic needs: hunger, safety, horniness.

You are not yourself without the prefrontal cortex. Rather, you are a walking (or in this case, lying down) flight-or-flight-or-eat-or-fuck response center. "I went through a period where if I got woken up I would immediately have a panic attack and would get up and pace it off," says Joseph. Joseph's underlying issue may not be sexsomnia or panic attacks, but rather sleep apnea. Emily also has additional sleep problems. She suffers from extreme nightmares and restless leg syndrome. If those problems was treated, the sexsomnia would most likely disappear. A Stanford medical study treated 11 people with sexsomnia. By treating the underlying sleep disorder, the doctors were able to cure ten of the 11. In a press release accompanying the study, Dr. Christian Guilleminault said that "what your state of mind is will color the presentation" of the sleep disorder, but the main problem is still sleep.

So is sexsomnia the result of repression? Is the sexsomniac acting out a "true" self unfettered by their waking minds? Legally, the answer is no. Waking people are not beholden to their sleeping alter egos. "Sexsomnia is a legitimate sleep disorder for which case law now exists to support its use in legal defenses based on automatism," concludes a 2015 medico-legal study of the disorder. Automatism is fancy legal speak for "not in control of one's actions." Broadly reached out to attorney Bella Bravo, who says automatism as a legal defense comes in two flavors. There's non-purposeful repetitive movements (ie: twitches or seizures), and a semi-fugue state—what they call a "blackout defense." Sexsomnia can fall under either version of automatism, as it can either be the result of seizures (option one) or a sleep disorder similar to sleepwalking (option two).

Just because sexsomnia is becoming an accepted disorder, it doesn't mean the court gives carte blanche to people using it as a defense. "The court can weigh that evidence however they want and may decide that it wasn't enough to make the defendant's otherwise criminal actions involuntary," says Bravo. One such case was sent to Broadly by Dr. Michel A. Cramer Bornemann, a lead investigator at the Sleep Forensics Association. "Since our group's inception over ten years ago, a significant number of investigative inquiries from law enforcement and the legal communities involve an inquiry into sexsomnia," he tells Broadly. In the case he sent us, a man was accused of molesting his daughter. He claimed a sleepwalking defense, but he did things which indicated to Bornemann that the man was not a typical case: His opening and closing of his stepdaughter's door and repositioning of her pillows indicated higher brain functions were at work than are present in an episode of sexsomnia.

As seen with the cases of Joseph and Emily, they were both more aggressive when asleep, but neither left their beds. If you can take the initiative to get up and open a door, you're not a sexsomniac. You're just a creep.

*Name changed to protect privacy