When the attack occurs during the day, sleep usually last for less than 30 minutes, but sometimes the patient stays asleep for several hours. Cataplexy is an abrupt loss of voluntary muscle tone, usually triggered by emotional arousal. Attacks can range in severity from a brief sensation of weakness to total physical collapse lasting several minutes. Hallucinations are intense, vivid, sometimes accompanied by frightening auditory, visual, and tactile sensations, and these hallucinations occur just when awakening or falling asleep. Occasionally, they are extremely difficult to distinguish from reality.
Sleep paralysis is a momentary inability to move when waking up or falling asleep.
This condition can be terrifying, especially if it occurs with a frightening hallucination. Narcolepsy is a lifelong illness. There is no known cure, and no report of lasting remission has been confirmed. Symptoms are subtle at first but become increasingly severe over the years. Patients usually learn to pinpoint conditions likely to induce sleep or cataplexy, and they try either to avoid such conditions or, with proper medication, control the symptoms.