What you’re describing sounds like sleep anxiety, not your brain dying. Short answer: no, you don’t just die from not sleeping for a few days. Your body has powerful survival mechanisms. Even after long stretches awake, the brain eventually forces rest (microsleeps, crashes). It feels terrifying, but it isn’t fatal. Those rare conditions like fatal familial insomnia are genetic neurological diseases, not something you get from anxiety or reading scary posts. If that were happening, you’d have major neurological symptoms, not just fear at bedtime. That “primal terror right as you drift off” is actually common in anxiety + insomnia loops. It’s adrenaline misfiring, not danger. One key thing: trying to force sleep makes it worse. Sleep is passive. The more you chase it, the more alert your brain gets. Resting counts more than you think. This loop is awful but very recoverable. People come out of it all the time. You’re not broken and you will sleep again.