My Sleepwalking Experience - (Or Retrograde Amnesia?)

by Gabby
(US)

I think I was in 3rd or 4th grade. My mom told me I feel asleep onto the couch in the living room. She told me to get up and go to bed. She said I got up and walked up the stairs and into my bedroom. When I woke up, I was wearing my clothes that I was wearing that day and found my bed made like I would have done if I were awake. I don't remember falling asleep on the couch or going to bed in my room. It didn't feel like me so I asked my mom what happened that night and she told me everything. It was very odd. Although, she doesn't recall seeing my eyes opened--but that question was asked four years after that happened.

Kevin's Thoughts

Hey Gabby!

Thanks for writing and sharing that story. It's possible that what you describe could even be an example of retrograde amnesia.

Retrograde amnesia is a term that when used in the context of sleep describes the common phenomenon of us sometimes forgetting things immediately preceding sleep (usually from around 1-15 minutes before sleep begins). The amnesia occurs when the short term memories of experiences just before sleep onset are not transferred to long term memory storage at the moment of sleep, resulting in an inability to remember what happened just before falling asleep. Thus, it is possible to be woken up, walk up to bed and fall asleep and then have no recollection for those events at all in the morning.

Of course, this certainly could be a sleepwalking episode, but I merely wanted to point out the retrograde amnesia phenomenon as an interesting tidbit and another possibility for what you have described here :-)

All the best,
Kevin

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