I am a self diagnosed insomniac. I didn't need a doctor to inform me of my condition. I had plenty of spare time to diagnose myself as I lay in my bed wide awake for yet another night. Insomnia is torture. The feeling I hate the most is when I've been in bed, staring into the dark and then suddenly the wardrobe becomes visible as daylight creeps in and I realise I haven't slept a wink for seven hours.
I recall chatting to my mother one day in her kitchen about my sleep deprivation and she thought maybe I wasn't active enough. "Sexually" I replied. She left the kitchen pretending that she could hear her mobile phone ringing in some other room. She does have a point. I don't exercise but that's because I have the best excuses/reasons for not exercising and use them with pride when people tell me that if I tired myself out, I'd probably sleep better at night. I also like to live life to the least, so most activities make me feel like I'm making the most out of my life. A feeling I'm just not comfortable with.
Insomnia is painfuly boring, even though you have all these spare hours. You're too tired to do anything productive with them, so you waste them all by lying in bed weakly willing sleep on. You're afraid to get out of bed and do anything in case sleep does make an appearance and you happened to be looking in the fridge at the time and missed it.
Insomnia is also a lonely way to tiredly spend huge chunks of my life, as most of my loved ones eventually fall asleep. I find the internet comforting during these lonely hours. I spend my nightime internet browsing doing the following three things:
1) Reading about insomnia. Which probably doesn't help ease me into a gentle slumber.
2) Scouring a Porn site to see if I recognise anybody from school. I haven't yet but then again I haven't finished the website and they update it regularly. Which probably doesn't help ease me into a gentle slumber.
3)Checking online obituaries for ex-boyfriends. I haven't found one yet, but the odds are that one day I will, if they don't find my name on it first.
So I decided to take sleeping tablets to put me out of my misery. People lecture me on the dangers of their side effects and addiction. So I lecture them back on the dangers of a sleep deprived Carol Tobin.
And who's to say that my waking hours haven't led to a porn or internet addiction? I can honestly say that I would rather be addicted to sleeping tablets and sleeping, than not addicted to sleeping tablets and not sleeping. I would rather risk suffering the adverse reactions of a sleeper should I have such a reaction to one : drowsiness, headache, dizziness, confusion. These are the same reactions I also get from not sleeping. Insomnia also makes me suffer from mood swings, hatred of most things, inability to make eye contact as I'm aware that my eyes are too red, dehydrated hungover feeling even though I haven't been drinking, inability of ability, hallucinations, escessive yawning, panic attacks, the feeling that rats are running over my feet and the feeling that spiders are forming webs behind my ears.
So I'd rather medicate and be guaranteed dreams, than stay awake and live a nightmare.
(this blog was not sponsered by a drug company, an online obituary website, Youporn or my mother
Follow Carol Tobin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@CarolGertrude
Tracey Marks, M.D.: Electronic Sunset: What Overstimulation Does To Our Days And Nights
Me too, any time.
I sometimes suffer from the same hideous insomnia that you describe. Aside from Valium the best sleeping pills I have ever taken are plain old NyQuill. They are the American version of NyTol. I don't know what they have in them but they have never not sent me into a deep slumber. So much so I could sleep for 12 hours.
You get them anywhere in the US. if you know anyone there get them to send you some. Definitely worth a try x
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904279004576524321377942288.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
"Women Sleep More but Men Complain Less". Women get more total sleep, better sleep, and cope better with loss of sleep, but complain more.
Not only that, but your offhand mention that "for some reason" this piece was not ref'd on HP could also make one think that you are suggesting something untoward or other.
But because I don't know any better, I won't think any of that, of course, especially since your comment is thoroughly logical.
More seriously (as if we weren't serious enough), as you well know (or maybe not), what matters most is the subjective feeling of restfulness and not objective indicators of the length of deep sleep, etc.
The fact that these objective indicators showing more and deeper sleep for women are in conflict with women's first-hand subjective reports about their restfulness suggests that those objective indicators are not telling us the whole story about what makes for a good sleep. For women, at least. Therefore, as always, more research is needed (yay for research grants!)
(And just a bit more compassion, methinks -- but, hey, who am I to say that.)
It seems to me in this case that what would be called more compassion from me would not only be me saying (as I do) "it's so nice of you to worry about how to treat you mother better" but stop saying "how about worrying about us better once in a while".
"Probably a lot more compassion all around."
Yes, Brother Tuvok, your efforts at compassion have been duly noted. You still voice them in impersonal terms, but slow progress is still progress.
I sympathize with your insomniac hell. In our house, everyone is on a different and crazy sleeping schedule, and only our dog seems to be fully content with his. Napping throughout the day, if possible, may be something to consider. We should all use a siesta.
After my brain surgery, I stopped sleeping for several months. No good reason, according to my docs, yet I could only drift off on Valium. And recently I've been diagnosed with an autoimmune problem that, among other things, makes me feel sleepy during daytime no matter how much night sleep I get (and it's usually not much). There is no winning in that battle, I think.
www.hard-truths.blogspot.com
1. There is someone.
.....Ask them to tell you to walk three miles a day. Do it or you lose face. That is not good.
2. There is not someone.
.....That is your problem.
I wanted to stop smoking. tried and failed. Then I got patches, then told someone I had stopped. End of story. Could not lose face. That was two years ago.