The woman works one job, gets twice as much.....no, make that THREE times as much sleep as I do and she's always whiny and "tired" and groggy. Not to say I'm not a walking zombie, b/c I absolutely AM, but man, if I got 1/2 the sleep she does, I'd be a bouncy-wouncy Tiggerr-type kinda guy! I work two jobs, I work Job#2 three nights a week and those days are 18-hour days, I get an average of 3.5 - 4 hours sleep per night and I still manage to get up on time and get up early on my days off to get stuff done.
Found this thread doing a search.
I met this person recently over the internet, not "met" as in dating but through a support/chat group.
He had a similar problem, starting at around 16 he always felt fatigued and tired. There were bright spots in his day where he didn't feel so bad, but that was the exception, not the norm.
His father was a 'pull-em-up-by-the-boot-straps' type, constantly told him he was lazy. 'You're a no-good lazy piece of sh-t, I don't know whose kid you are, but you're definitely not from my gene stock. My gene stock is made of hard workers, we get up before dawn and we don't go to sleep until we've put in a hard day's work. Here you are sleeping all the G-D time, sleeping whenever you can get an opportunity...what's wrong with you? Good for nothing, lazy ass kid.'
He heard similar sentiments, though not as harshly worded, from his high school teachers and counselers. 'Demonstrates no initiative, poor work ethic, often doesn't pay attention, sleeps in class, undisciplined, lacks direction.'
Employers responded the same way, he never managed to keep a job more than two years, got fired for poor work performance, tardiness, absenteesim, etc. His personal relationships buckled under the strain of it all.
He finally got sick and tired of being sick and tired, so he started taking the strongest stimulants as he could get OTC. All those Ephedra/Herbal Energy tablets, he was buying them by the box. They helped at first, but soon even that didn't work anymore, so he graduated to cocaine and speed. Again, they helped at first, but that created a whole new world of problems for him, and soon he was spiraling out of control from drug abuse. He was barely clinging on, barely able to function.
Then he lost his job and became severely depressed, tried to commit suicide and was hospitalized for a few weeks. While he was there, he mentioned to this doctor (psychiatrist) that it all started because he always felt tired, was always sleeping, and never had any energy. The doctor wanted to know more.
After a couple months, he was diagnosed with narcolepsy; a disabling neurological sleep disorder characterized by uncontrollable fatigue, sleepiness, among other symptoms that manifest behaviorally and are often construed to be hallmarks of character flaws. Narcolepsy was first described more than 100 years ago by a French physician.
The typical onset of narcolepsy is during adolescence, around the age of 17 or 18, but younger and older onsets are not unusual. This guy was so furious upon learning none of this was his 'fault', he wanted to beat the sh-t out of everyone who ever implied that he was lazy. To this day he has emotional and self-esteem issues from the nearly 18 years of being told he was a lazy no good piece of sh-t by everyone.
There is a sort of 'conventional' or 'popular' wisdom that our levels of energy are controlled by some voluntary mechanism, that we decide how much sleep we need or do not need, through some act of will. Sorry, you have no more control over your hypothalamus than you have control over how tall you will grow or whether you will go bald.
Before you judge someone, try to look for other explanations before deciding that they're just lazy or a complainer. You may even get an opportunity to really help someone.