To sleep perchance to wake

There are countless things about the general life experience that I find inexcusably irritating. However one thing above all rears it's ugly head time and time again on, what I feel, is an unreasonably common basis.
The simple fact that as a living creature we are required to lay in a state of unconsciousness for a good period of any given day is something I have a hard time dealing with. It's something that so many people take for granted. The facts are, doctors say that to remain a healthy individual one must sleep eight out of every twenty-four hours. Now with some pathetically basic math we can conclude that that means we must lie unconscious completely unaware that time is passing us by for a third of every day of our lives in order to be able to live at all healthily. At the average life span of 72 years that translates to and even 24 years. TWENTY-FOUR YEARS! Twenty-four years of our lives on average are spent lying prone to the world in a short term coma unable to experience that life that we have been blessed with by whatever divine providence we believe in.
Now I realize mind you that to rail against something so intangible as the concept of needing rest is rather a waste of breathe in a lot of ways. But damn it we have so many doctors practicing so many different methods of attempting to increase our lifespans that I don't see why no-one has attempted to devise a method for allowing us consciousness for the fullness of our years without the obvious detraction that sleep-dep can cause.
Why is that so much to ask.
Yeah, so that's what I think
*(shrug)*