Every waking moment of his life Carl Kozlowski is in a struggle just to stay awake. He's fighting narcolepsy, that chronic disorder rendering the sufferer helpless against the often overwhelming urge to go to sleep. For Carl, it's meant more than a decade of adapting his busy life to the reality that he will at some point find himself in asleep in places most people can't imagine allowing themselves even a quick doze: his desk at a brand new job, backstage at a comedy club as he's about to go on, in rush-hour traffic on a busy freeway, on a first date on a late night city bus, shoulder to shoulder with LA's nocturnal denizens. My Life With Narcolepsy traces Kozlowski's sometimes funny, sometimes torturous road from total denial that he suffered a sleep disorder to something resembling a cure. Much of that road is traveled on an LA Metro bus, the 180, a route whose final stop is the world-famous show biz crossroads of Hollywood & Vine.
Here's a piece that Carl Kozlowski wrote for Pasadena Weekly about life on the 180 bus.
Kozlowski jokes that he may be the only person
in the history of Hollywood to sleep his way out of a job
Kozlowski lost a number of friends during the worst of his disorder.
He says that now that his condition is improving they're willing to give him a second chance.
(This program originally aired on Friday, August 5, 2011.)