Dominick Corvaisis's somnambulism

Dominick Corvaisis’s somnambulism turns an apparently ordinary sleep disorder into a threat to his safety, independence, and newly rebuilt life. Its forms change over December: nocturnal fortification gives way to hiding in a closet, then to words typed on a computer while Dom believes he is sleeping peacefully. Medication reduces the episodes for a time, but his escalating reliance on it makes that improvement uncertain.

Symptoms and medical response

On Monday, December 2, Dom visits Dr. Cobletz with Parker Faine. Because the doctor has recently examined him thoroughly and found no sign of physical disorder, he does not recommend immediate diagnostic procedures. He has instead read about somnambulism since Dom’s previous visit on November 23. In adults, he explains, the condition is often brief; in some cases, however, it can become habitual and difficult to break. Persistent sleepwalking may dominate a patient’s life, provoke fear of night and sleep, and deepen feelings of helplessness.

Dom recognizes himself in that danger. His recent nights have involved more than wandering: he has gathered weapons, barricaded his bedroom, and tried to secure the windows. The work is unusually strenuous for a sleepwalker, which helps explain Dr. Cobletz’s decision to prescribe medication rather than treat the episodes as harmless nocturnal movement. The plan is Valium during the day when anxiety troubles Dom and a 15-milligram Dalmane tablet before bed, with the aim of interrupting the nightly pattern.

Independence and retreat

Parker argues that Dom should not remain alone until the sleepwalking stops. Driving them back to Laguna Beach from the doctor’s Newport office, he offers Dom room at his home, says he can keep watch without hovering, and proposes helping him understand whether the episodes connect to the change Dom underwent during the summer before last, when he left his job at Mountainview College. Parker even imagines himself acting as a therapist.

Dom refuses. Staying alone in his own house seems to him preferable to retreating into the withdrawn life he had escaped. At thirty-three, he feels he has seized control of his life and entered new territory; the prospect he fears most is slipping back into his former dreariness. He suspects the sleepwalking may be connected to his earlier change, but prefers a simpler explanation: it could be an excuse to avoid the challenges and stresses of his new life. He decides to stay home, take the medication as prescribed, and endure the problem rather than retreat from it.

Changes in the night episodes

The first results seem encouraging. Before treatment, Dom sleepwalks every night; by Saturday, December 7, he has left his bed only twice in five nights, on the predawn mornings of Wednesday and Friday. The episodes have also lost their earlier, defensive intensity. He no longer gathers weapons, builds barricades, or attempts to nail the windows shut. Instead, on both occasions, he makes his way to an improvised bed at the back of the closet.

The change does not make the nights peaceful. Dom wakes stiff and sore, frightened by an unnamed threat from dreams he cannot remember. Even so, he takes the reduced frequency and less elaborate behavior as evidence that the worst may have passed. By Thursday he has begun writing again, returning to his new novel at the point where he had left off weeks earlier. The symptoms have interrupted his work as well as his sleep, so this renewed concentration marks a practical, if provisional, recovery.

That sense of progress is unsettled when Dom discovers what happened on his IBM Displaywriter. After a Wednesday night he believes he slept straight through, waking in exactly the position in which he had gone to bed, he finds proof of a nocturnal visit to the machine on the current work diskette. On earlier occasions he had typed the same expression of fear repeatedly. This time, he has typed that the moon is there, over and over. His sleepwalking has thus changed from physical efforts to defend himself to an unexplained message, made without his conscious awareness and encountered only afterward.

Medication, concealment, and uncertain recovery

The apparent success of the treatment becomes harder to trust because Dom does not follow the prescription consistently. He believes Dr. Cobletz is right that the episodes will soon be beaten, and does not want to worry him by admitting that he sometimes needs Valium to get through the day and takes two or three Dalmane tablets at night, washing some down with beer or Scotch. He tells himself he will be able to stop in a couple of weeks without the sleepwalking returning. The treatment seems to be working, but that confidence depends on a doctor not knowing how much Dom is taking.

By Tuesday, December 24, Dom has gone eleven nights without either somnambulism or the troubling dream involving the sink. He accepts a haze from the lingering effects of Valium and Dalmane as the price of keeping the midnight journeys away, and does not believe he is becoming physically addicted or psychologically dependent. Yet he has exceeded the prescribed dosage and nearly exhausted his supply. To obtain another prescription from Dr. Cobletz, he invents a break-in and claims that the drugs were stolen with his stereo and television. At moments he recognizes the deception as shabby; under the continuing tranquilization, he can also soften the truth to himself.

The quiet nights therefore do not establish that Dom’s somnambulism has ended. He dares not consider what may happen if the episodes return in January, when the drugs are supposed to be discontinued. His condition remains suspended between apparent relief and a feared relapse: the dangerous nighttime activity has receded, but the fear it leaves behind has begun to shape his decisions while awake.