I hate working 3rd shift now. It was hard to adjust the first week, then i adjusted, but I never went back to feeling "normal". I would usually stay up at night, because i enjoy the layed back less-stressful atmosphere and nobody bothers me. The problem is, unfortunatly, the human body requires us to sleep some at night, every day. It is fine to miss a night every now and then, perhaps once a week, but to wake up between 7pm and 10pm and stay up until 6am to 8am at a job before returning home for 6 months will really tax your body. No medications or drugs will be able to correct the problems it creates both physically and mentally. I have been working 3rd shift for 6 months without a week off, and I am sooooooo screwed up, I lost my mind and nearly quit my job. It didn't help that for the past 2-3 months, I have been working overtime every single week too.
I asked a few times to have my hours cut and my co-worker kept asking for more hours. I was about to ask for a week off, and they gave him a week off. There was a miscomminucation and lack of understanding that I needed time off, and that I am going to have to quit because I can not handel working a 3rd shift job and that even though there are many advantages to working at my job that I have never had anywhere else (such as AWESOME free food, and they cook and bring in the most tasty and healthy foods I have ever had and it kills me to miss out on, perhaps when I get a high paying job I can pay them to make extra of some of the food so I can still enjoy it), but 3rd shift is ruining my life. Sure I can spend every single day with someone in the morning from 7am-noon however, the entire time I am awake, I feel dizzy and horrible, so although I do it, I never feel good, so I don't get to enjoy it as much as if I only got to do it once a month with a 1st or second shift job.
Don't take my word for it. Here are quotes from websites about why 3rd shift is bad for your health.
"Working the night shift first became associated with higher rates of cancer. This may be due to alterations in circadian rhythm: melatonin, a known tumor suppressant, is generally produced at night and late shifts may disrupt its production. Multiple studies have documented a link between night shift work and the increased incidence of breast cancer.
"3rd shift is a time when it’s difficult just to stay awake, you are expected to function at a reasonable level. Unfortunately, laboring through the night can wreak havoc on your body, weakening your immune system and causing a destructive decrease in energy. It’s difficult for the body’s internal clock to adapt to shift work, and laboring through the night often causes insomnia and indigestion."
"Sleep is often the hardest element to "get right" if you are working 3rd shift. Your body is ready to crash halfway through the shift, but when you return home your family is up and about. Spending quality time with them often stands in the way of enough sleep, and it’s almost impossible to choose between the two."
"Sleep is one of the most important gifts you can give your body. But you are fighting your body’s natural sleep-wake cycle by staying up through the night, and sleep loss can be dangerous. Even if you are sleeping during the day instead of the night, third shift workers break up their sleep in order to spend more time with loved ones and do activities that they enjoy. Of course, this is key to a happy life and positive relationships, but it keeps your body from going through the proper sleep cycles, rotating from light to deep sleep. If you are sleeping for a few hours in the morning and then an hour or so before work, your body will not be rested enough and ready for the next shift."
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1/1/2011:
I have once again started working a job on 3rd shift and for the past month or so I have once again felt like i was not "normal" and once again, no medicine, exercise, sleeping, food, counseling or anything at all is able to fix the problem. Also, I am unable to ingest anything that alters my mind, including caffeine because i have become offensively sensitive to everything to the point that even the slightest amount causes me severe anxiety.
October 31 2010 was the second time I worked a 3rd shift and some time in the last week of November or the first week of December (once I had been working quite a few 3rd shifts nearly or every week) I noticed one day that I felt "off" like something was wrong with me and I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I thought about all the things I had done and tried to figure out which thing I had done that created this problem and none of them seemed to be the answer.
It became obvious to me today, that the only problem I have, is that I am working 3rd shift again. I enjoy working 3rd shift for a few reasons, such as less people to deal with, more laid back, more freedoms, fun people to work with, but above all, there is the problem where I feel like something is horribly wrong with my brain.
I feel like I am delirious, absent minded, dazed, drunk? intoxicated?. I have lack of focus, learning seems difficult to impossible, anxiety is through the roof, sensitivity to bright light (causes panic attacks) and probably other things, but the thing that I need to address most, is that these symptoms are overpowering me to the point I can't function normally. I never get a "break" from this, if I am awake, these symptoms are occurring! The only time I get a " break" is while I am sleeping, and that is just assumed because I am not consciously aware of how I feel.
I've worked both 2nd and 3rd shifts back and forth, but as stated before in my first post, even working several months on 1 shift, I still can't ever adjust and the ONLY solution to this problem, is to stop working 3rd shift. It is not a matter of like/dislike, it is a matter of feeling like my brain is useless as opposed to feeling "normal".
3rd shift = bad. (sorry, but this is a fact [for me] not an opinion)
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