Have anyone ever experienced these sensations while extremely sleep-deprived (or with drugs)?

I have a couple of health conditions that severely-limit the amount of sleep I get. There are some good times and there are some bad times. When things get bad, they get pretty bad, and I have noticed some patterns. The effects I experience from extreme sleep-deprivation are many. But here are a couple. I’m wondering if anyone has had similar experiences, and I wonder if there are explanations (how the brain works and what happens to it without sleep for extended periods of time).

There are a couple of things that happen sometimes:

1. Everything appears without meaning. This is really difficult to explain, and there are a couple of layers to it, but I’ll try.

While walking across the parking lot, lines appear as swaths of color – they don’t appear as indicators of where to park. The large building in front of me appears as just more light and color, and is completely lacking in context. Ok, this is actually more challenging to describe than I imagined. It takes a virtual shake of the head and conscious effort to start assembling what I am seeing into the conceptual models that they are. And when it comes back, it isn’t always at once. Rather, it starts off as distinguishing objects from other objects, then intuiting purpose, and finally recalling personal associations (memories, preferences, etc). The final stage may not appear for some time after. My description of this whole process seems to completely miss the whole experience – what it feels like, but I guess my inability to express myself in writing isn’t helping.

2. The second, more troubling experience:

I may be out and have a thought of my children, which fills me with warmth. But I am struck by how my cold, lonely surroundings provide no evidence of anything other than what I am currently experiencing. Thoughts of my life appear in consciousness, but I struggle to try to determine if these thoughts accurately reflect my “life” (my past experiences, my “current” relationships, etc). I am struck by the thought of what it’s like to dream. In fact it feels almost indistinguishable from a dream.

When I dream, I will have a thought such as: “Hmm, since I have gone to school for fixing cars, I should be able to diagnose this sound my car is producing”. The dream doesn’t require that I have a real-time experience of going to auto school. All that is needed is the thought to appear that I have. In my dream, my past is experienced in the present moment as thoughts, memories, emotions, etc.

And even the events that happen in dreams. There are times where the first moments after waking from a dream, there is a bit of confusion concerning what is real and isn’t. Did I just get back from Ireland or not. Wait, if I did get back from Ireland, that also means that I just accepted that job making whiskey, etc. But fairly quickly, we’re able to assess fairly quickly that that whole concept of being a whiskey manufacturer setting up a distillery in Ireland and being single is not real. This experience of trying to distinguish if my rich, vivid memories of my life are real or imagined is most similar to what I’m describing. And there’s something very upsetting during this moment, and all I want to do is find a connection to what I think is real – my beautiful family.

Has anyone experienced anything similar to this.

Note: Seriously, I’m not crazy or anything. No need to call 911.