When I was growing up, it was a running joke in my family about how loud my dad snored. It was REALLY bad, and I could never figure out how my mom put up with it.
One year we were on vacation, and we stopped at a motel for a night on the way to our destination. My dad – who we also joked was the “cheapest man alive” – got one double room for our family of five, and I ended up sleeping in the bathtub in the middle of the night because I couldn’t handle the snoring. It didn’t help, as I could hear him sawing logs through the wall.
Being in the same room with a person who is snoring loudly can drive you insane, especially when you are trying to fall asleep. When you are in the free world, you have the option of leaving the room or waking up the snorer and telling them to roll over.
On the flip side, if you are the one who snores, there are things you can do or items you can purchase to help you reduce or eliminate the snoring. But, what happens if you snore in prison?
In this blog post, I will cover the following topics:
- What is prison like for someone who snores?
- How do inmates deal with a roommate who snores?
What is prison like for someone who snores?
This is a difficult question to answer because every inmate has their own unique experiences when it comes to prison. It’s also impossible to have a huge, one-size-fits-all answer because things that happen behind bars aren’t a universal experience.
What you have to deal with and how things are handled vary greatly between state and federal prisons, male and female prisons, maximum and minimum security prisons, cells and dorm-style, etc…
One thing I’m sure of is that inmates who snore will not get any kind of medical treatment or device to help them with their sleeping or to eliminate snoring. Unless it’s a life and death situation, chances are you aren’t going to get any medical care.
If you snore in prison, it’s possible you will have a roommate who doesn’t like it and who has trouble sleeping because of it. But, there really isn’t much that can be done about it.
During my four years in prison, I was lucky enough to only have one roommate that snored…and it was LOUD. I had no problem waking her up and making her roll over, but I was an OG and she was a newbie. If it would have been the other way around, I guarantee I wouldn’t have done that.
Sure, you might get bullied or beat up because no one else can get any sleep. But, it’s not like the snoring inmate is bothering everyone on purpose.
How do inmates deal with a roommate who snores?
Again, this situation is handled in different ways, depending on the prison and the inmates. Prisons are rarely a quiet place, so you learn to sleep through just about anything. But, for those who are in an extremely violent prison, they might not sleep much at all out of self-protection.
Inmates who have a snoring roommate can try to go to sleep first, sleep with earbuds and music, put their fan next to their head to drown out the snoring, or go as far as to request a room change. Everyone handles it in a different way.
I did find one story about an inmate in South Africa who was released from jail because of his snoring. Apparently, the judge agreed with his argument that his snoring put him in danger, so he was granted bail for his appeal, despite the fact that he had been convicted of murder.
That’s some serious snoring!
What would you do if your prison roommate snored? Let us know in the comments below.
Sources: Snoring Gets Murderer Out of Jail https://www.whywesnore.com/snoring-gets-murderer-out-of-jail/