On the 8th of august in 1988, a general strike began in Myanmar (Burma) as part of the 8888 Uprising, with mass anti-government demonstrations throughout the country demanding multi-party democracy from the ruling one-party state. Over the following days, the mass demonstrations devolved into violent riots as the military fired into crowds of protesters.
The 8888 Uprising, also known as the People Power Uprising, took place in the context of an economic crisis in the country, governed as a one-party state by the Burma Socialist Programme Party, led by General Ne Win. Students and farmers had been engaging in protest and campaigns of rebellion against various state economic policies since 1985.
On August 8th, 1988 (thus the uprising's name) mass anti-government demonstrations took place throughout the country. Participants came from a wide variety of demographics - Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, students, workers, young and old participated.
The protests began relatively peacefully, with only one casualty reported on the first day, the result of a frightened traffic cop who fired into the crowd and fled. Over the next few days, the protests devolved into violent riots as the military and police fired on the protesters, at one point even shooting doctors and nurses tending to the wounded.
Protesters responded by throwing Molotov cocktails, swords, knives, rocks, poisoned darts and bicycle spokes. In one incident, rioters burned a police station and killed four fleeing police officers.
On August 26th, Aung San Suu Kyi (eventual leader of the country and complicit in the rohingya genocide), the daughter of anti-imperialist revolutionary Aung San, addressed half a million people at Shwedagon Pagoda, becoming an international figure in the uprising, supported by the West. Her party would later go on to win elections in 1990, however these results were ignored by the military government and she was arrested.
On September 18th, the military retook power in the country, with General Saw Maung repealing the 1974 constitution and imposing martial law. The demonstrations were violently suppressed and, by the end of September, at least 3,000 people were killed, however estimates of casualties vary widely.
Eventually after another mass protests in the saffron revolution and the 2010-2015 reforms Aung San party the NLD would take power in 2015 and be overthrown by a coup in 2021 and banned 2 years later.
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it can be so draining and isolating. I also have issues getting to sleep and sometimes pull all nighters for no reason, and it really fucks with my ability to socially mask and not come off weird to people, so I end up avoiding people.
In my case, there’s probably a lot of factors but I think part of it is lingering fear from an incident in undergrad where I stayed up for four days straight as my increasing desperation to sleep made it paradoxically harder to. I think my adderall prescription at the time might have been too strong and it gradually threw off my brain chemistry. I use a lower dose these days and take tolerance breaks to reset, and an incident like that has never happened again, but I’m forever scared of “trying to sleep” now
Yeah that was pretty much how I got out of it. I decided to try to stay up instead of trying to sleep, and eventually sleep crept up on me. That first night of sleep relieved some of the "how will I ever sleep again" fear and made it easier to sleep the next night, and I gradually returned to a kind of normalcy. It's been years now, often I can lie down alone with my thoughts and drift off, but when I have something the next day that I really need sleep for I often find that I have to stay up and distract myself until sleep catches me unawares, so end up feeling like shit on the days I most need to be on my game lol.
Anyway, I relate to what you're going through and I really wish you the best with it.