Overview:

For much of my life I have slept in a sleeping bag. Not simply on the rare occasions in which I would actually go camping, but on regular nights when I would sleep indoors. This was never something I did just for the sake of being weird as has been suggested, but because I genuinely believed it to be the most comfortable way to sleep. Believing in this school of thought firmly, I always assumed I would be able to convert my friends, or at the very least, not have them snicker at and mock me for how I chose to live my life.

Of course, I failed to take into consideration that most of the people I would consider to be “good” friends unfortunately are people who seemed to live so far up their own assholes it’s borderline stunning that oxygen was able to reach their lungs. It was enough to make me give up on spreading the word forever.

Well detractors be damned. After trying to abandon the bag for a short period of time, I’ve finally returned to my preferred way of life, and it’s my hope I can not only convince people this will help you achieve the best night’s sleep of your life, but also train them how to properly deal with the walking undead who take their inability to rest out on those of us who are just trying to live an honest life.

Review:

Not surprisingly, the best environment in which to deploy the bag is in colder conditions. While blankets obviously serve a purpose, it can be difficult to keep them in place, and it’s an undeniable pain in the ass to wake up in the middle of the night to find yourself in an unpleasant tangled mess.

This is not a problem which will arise inside the cozy and comfortable bag. Zip it around yourself and it’s like a big inviting hug which helps you forget you spent your last two Friday nights eating at Arby’s alone. You wanna turn? Go ahead, it turns with you, assuring a never ending cycle of comfort.

One question I’ve been asked is, “if it’s so cold, why not just use two blankets?” Brilliant suggestion! It’s not as if I haven’t expressed how uncomfortable getting twisted up in one blanket is, why don’t I just double up on discomfort? Who wouldn’t love to wake up with one blanket around their neck while another smothers their feet, leaving the mid-section completely exposed to the unforgiving and biting cold of night.

Have you ever seen a frost-bitten torso? Well, I haven’t and now you know why I never will.

While controlling the temperature during spring, autumn and especially winter is no problem, smothering yourself in the bag is obviously not a good idea in the summer.

While I have used mine as a makeshift sheet in the past, putting it away for a few months isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially since it can make you additionally sweaty and work as a B.O. trap (more on that later). Trust me, absence will make the heart grow fonder, and when the brisk autumn air rolls in for the first time, all activities that don’t involve sleeping will seem meaningless.

If you do embrace the life of the bag I must warn you that you had better quickly develop a thick skin because if you let people into this aspect of your life, they will ridicule you mercilessly for it.

Don’t be surprised if your “friends” start telling you that you’re “weird” or “stupid” and that until you learn to “nestle up against the warm bosom of sweet lady normality,” you’ll “never know the satisfaction of living the rich and full life that comes with being an unpaid intern at a satirical news publication who produces about one quality article out of five on even its hottest of streaks.” Seriously, who the fuck gets so situation-specific when delivering a life lesson!?

And even if you do get depressed by the new betrayal, what better to chase the sadness away than about 17 hours of sack time? It’s like thermally insulated Prozac.

Of course, as I touched on above, this only covers you for three seasons, so my summer advice would simply be to tell you to suck it up. That or just abandon the idea of friends altogether. Take it from someone who knows, both situations are survivable.

I write this now as I am ashamed to say I am actually just now returning to the bag lifestyle after a brief sabbatical. Over the summer I was forced to move back in with my parents and when packing up, I made the choice to leave my old friend behind as it wasn’t in season.

Also, it was old and decrepit and smelled as if I had picked it up out of a mud puddle on the highway and brought it home after digging out the ejaculate-riddled corpse of the previous owner and decided to sleep in it without so much as wiping it off. I put physical comfort ahead of almost everything, but when you’re regularly waking up with vomit inside your mouth, it’s time to cut the chord.

But recently the season changed and I remembered what drew me to the sleeping bag in the first place. My bedroom is in an isolated back section of the house where no air, be it hot or cold, can reach. The sheet/blanket system I used during the summer wasn’t cutting it any longer and I realized I needed to get back to my roots.

And so…

…$21.27 later I am the owner of a new Coleman Alpine Sleeping bag and firmly back in comfort heaven (God help me that Coleman Max looked amazing but $50 is a bit steep when you make $8/hr.).

And if you can open yourself up to this new way of life, you can be on a nightly basis as well.

Final Words:

Why is it that we live in a world where the creepy weirdos who own Snuggies get to have big Macarena parties while a guy who sleeps in a sleeping bag has an unflattering cartoon series depicting him as some sort of weird human/hot dog hybrid about him created by his co-workers? That is this man’s definition of unfair.

While the realist in me acknowledges perhaps I should find better ways to excite myself than buying a new sleeping bag, the fact is this: I’m 26 and still sleeping in the same room as when I was born. At that point it’s not so much a bedroom as it is a chamber for me to eventually hang myself in.

While I’m not sure if this new bag is a testament to my perseverance or simply a confession that I don’t know how to properly manipulate a rope, I am super excited and cannot wait for winter to get here! I firmly believe this will create the best night’s sleep you’ve ever had and if they can stop scoffing at the alleged abnormality of using it somewhere other than the woods long enough to try it out, I believe several people will find this to be a true statement as well.

Final Score: 9.8/10 (Outstanding)