Dark Stranger

This has bee hapening on occasion for a while with me. I'll be in bed, trying to relax and pass out, and all of a sudden, my whole body will twitch. It's not a series of seizures or anything, but like one giant full-body muscle spasm, or like a giant shiver. It would happen once in a great while, and only once a night.

This freaked me out. A couple of nights ago, as I was trying to sleep, it happened again. This time, though, it happened more than once. Each time I felt like I was starting to make the crossover from consciousness to slumber, I'd have a body spasm and snap back into nearly-full consciousness. This happened about two or three times - these weren't violent spasms, but just a big twitch, I guess.

I'm not entirely sure why this is happening. I asked my DBF about it and he said he sometimes experiences similar things when he tries to sleep, but cannot. This is not the case with me - I was very tired and I wanted very much to sleep, but let's face it. when you're having a spasm, it's gonna keep you up. And this frightened me because I have recently begun taking a medication, for which one of the rare and serious side effects is seizures, so you can understand my discomfort. However, these full-body spasms were present before I began taking this medication.

I don't know if this would be classified as a sleep disorder, but does what I feel have a name? Is it normal? Could it be due to stress?