Most people have had nights—or weeks or months of nights—during which they have trouble sleeping. It may have been that you drank one too many coffees during the day or that you have too many worries to keep them at bay for the recommended six hours. Whatever the reason, there are people who have it worse than you do. Back in 2008, Stacy Conradt at mental_floss magazine compiled an article about "10 Sleep Snippets", detailing the horrific sleep lives of people all over the world. Let’s take a look at a few that will make your difficult nights look like nothing:

Thai Ngoc. Ngoc is a sixty-nine year-old Vietnamese man, who, by all accounts hasn’t slept at all since 1973. It all started when Ngoc came down with a fever that year, an illness that has kept him awake ever since. He doesn’t leave his small village for additional tests to figure out why he can’t sleep, but he doesn’t function relatively normally otherwise, and can still farm regularly. In 2006, Ngoc said that he was beginning to feel “like a plant without water” because of his lack of sleep.

Exploding head syndrome. I’ve never experienced exploding head syndrome, but the name alone explains why those who do are anxious afterwards. The phenomenon usually happens to people, typically women, who have been asleep for a few hours, and sounds like an explosion, a roar, loud voices or the like. Plus, it’s more likely to happen to people who are stressed or overly tired.

During the Industrial Revolution, people used to put their babies to sleep using opium. We often hear the jokes about putting rum on babies’ bottles to help weary parents put their kids down to sleep. It’s supposed to be horrifying, and any good parent is supposed to run screaming. This wasn’t the case during the Industrial Revolution when parents could buy sleep remedies like Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup and Godfrey’s Cordial, which included opium to induce sleep in babies.

Jonathan Husni’s PowerNap. Husni claims that his product can make users feel like they’ve slept for a complete three-hour sleep cycle in only twenty minutes. His product isn’t anything particularly high-tech, but rather is an audio recording that is supposed to link sleep waves to sound waves. He lists thousands of happy customers, and the product is only about $12. Isn’t Enya enough?

What are the worst cases of insomnia that you know?