Snooze Abuse? No need for alarm

I have a problem. And if the first step is admitting it, here goes: I’m a snooze abuser. If there’s a snooze to use, I’ll do it. Again and again.

I’ve been abusing and snoozing for several decades. When I was a teenager, I had a waterbed (because it was the 80s) with a built-in shelf on the headboard. One year for my birthday, my parents gave me a Sony Dream Machine digital clock radio because they were sick of dragging my lazy butt out of bed. I loved the clock radio and placed it on the shelf above my pillow, dutifully setting the alarm every school night.

And every school morning when that alarm went off, my arm shot out of the covers, and with eyes still shut, I smacked that clock radio on its cube-shaped head and went right back to sleep. Then I’d repeat this process every nine minutes until I cracked an eye open long enough to see that I’d over-snoozed and now had less than 30 minutes to throw on clothes and get to school.

Nevertheless, I continued this snoozy love affair during high school, college, and my early 20s. It didn’t stop until I became a mother and realized that babies don’t have a snooze button – an unfortunate design flaw if you ask me.

When the first snooze option was invented in 1956, it was a physical, smack-able button or bar on top of a mechanical clock. Most of us secretly loved slapping that magical button that doled out more sleep. But one snooze session often bled into another and another, and we became snooze addicts.

But when the smartphone came along, snooze cruised into the future. These days, most of us press snooze on a phone screen instead of a clock. One of the reasons phones need protective cases is that we’re likely to drop them off the side of the bed during desperate attempts to snooze our morning alarms.

For the past few years, I’ve been using one of those fancy smartphone apps designed to track sleep quality and record any snoring. When the alarm goes off in the morning, all I have to do to get an extra snooze is gently shake the phone. Even a nudge or two will usually shut it up. No need to open my eyes and poke a finger at the screen. I just shake some sense into it, and it leaves me alone for a few more minutes.

But the “shake to snooze” option is so easy that I can practically do it in my sleep, which makes snooze even more abusable. My college kids are such shameless snoozers that they had to start using old-school mechanical alarm clocks with traditional metal bells and hammers on top. They put one clock within arm’s reach and the backup alarm clock, set 10 minutes later, across the room. There’s no way to turn it off without getting out of bed. Without this system, I’d worry that they might sleep through half a semester.

Many sleep specialists say we should lose the snooze, but more recent scientific studies show the snooze button has an upside. Snoozing is a kinder, gentler way to wake up, particularly for night owls. Instead of diving headfirst into the day, we wade in slowly and wake up during the lighter stages of snooze sleep. The tricky part is not to overdo it. Thirty minutes or less is ideal.

It all comes down to personal preference and the changing circumstances on any given day. Early birds probably never slap that button and sink back into a cozy slumber. I admire that kind of disciplined determination.

But as for me and my house of night owls, we shall choose to snooze.

Gwen Rockwood is a syndicated freelance columnist. Email her at gwenrockwood5@gmail.com. Her book is available on Amazon.