Non 24 + occasional spurts of non-REM sleep?

Hi.

For about 8 years, I have been working from home on my own schedule. I am a programmer and I make my own games so I basically would sleep as long as I wanted and wake up when I damn well felt like it.

I started frequently doing late-night coding sessions and over the years, my schedule has been crazy and unresponsive. As a result, My sleep schedule is more like 26 hours than 24. I usually sleep for 10 hours and will be awake for 16. I am trying to break this with melatonin and light therapy but I have been mostly unsuccessful so far. Its been very ingrained from the past years of no-schedule that trying to get on a normal one is proving resilient. I very much so do not want to use any prescription drugs if I can help it.

One other weird side effect (or possibly unrelated?) - Every few months, sometimes less often and sometimes more, I will go 3-4 days with no REM sleep at all. I wont feel tired at night when I know "Ok, I have been up for 16 hours, I should be tired" and I wont be able to yawn either, with the yawn being sort of prematurely closed. Even though I wont be tired, I will force myself to go to bed for 8-10 hours and will mostly just lie there trying to sleep, but unable to do so. When I do get up in the morning, I will not be tired in the slightest and it will feel like I just slept a full night even though I did not.

In the past, I had panic attacks. I think I may have had about 5 total, but none in the last 4 years. Could my sleep be anxiety related? I dont particularly feel like anything I have going on right now is any more stressful than normal, but hey what do I know.

Would really appreciate any insight or thoughts you all have. I can live with the non-24 issue but the 3-4 day no sleep bouts get scary after a while, not knowing if/when they will end.

Thanks!