No Rest for the Chronic Insomniac?

 

I don’t think it is an exaggeration to call myself a chronic insomniac, even though I realize I am self-diagnosing . . . which is a bit risky, since I am also somewhat of a hypochondriac (also self-diagnosed, of course).

But I have trouble sleeping pretty much every night, and I’ve gone through long stretches of time (i.e., over a year at one point) where I could count my “good nights’ sleeps” on one hand. I remember teaching a 7 a.m. class when I wasn’t getting to sleep until 5 a.m. . . . my recollection of that time period is pretty fuzzy, but I think I somehow still managed to convince my students that Shakespeare was fun and that they really could write research papers. I thought I was about as tired as a person could get—and then I became a mom and was up all night with babies . . . only to have trouble sleeping once they had been rocked to sleep.

I’ve never fallen asleep in a class (and I took Old Testament from 7-10 p.m. one semester . . . as well as sociology at 7 a.m., and a upper-level linguistics course where I don’t think I understood a word of what my professor ever said), I’ve never fallen asleep in church or while watching TV—I was always the last one to fall asleep at sleepovers or on long car-rides as a kid. There just seems to be something wrong with my “off” switch when it comes to losing consciousness (unless you count fainting at the sight of needles. . . .).

 

Over the years I have tried all the natural remedies for insomnia, and some of the unnatural ones, too—warm milk, counting sheep, baths, more exercise, less exercise, yoga, going to bed later, visualizing relaxing scenes or concepts—for whatever reason, nothing seemed to help. Once I even tried my dad’s suggestion and took Nyquil (I did have a cold), but it left me so alert that I used the rest of it up by taking it before work in the morning—never a drowsy moment from that.

I was always afraid to try something “stronger” like Ambien (which, I've been told, "works like a dream"), because I wasn’t sure that I’d ever wake up (I’m also a bit paranoid, I guess. . . ).

The ironic part of all this is that I actually do love to sleep—and have a hard time getting up in the morning once I have slept. I feel like I’m being tortured if I have to stay up past 10 p.m. . . . in fact, my ideal sleep schedule would be “early to bed and late to rise”—if only it didn’t take me hours to fall asleep.

 

Recently I’ve started to worry that my insomniatic outlook will rub off on Benjamin and Janae—when I put them to bed they take an average of 1-2 hours to go to sleep; whereas if their much more laid-back father puts them to bed, they’re down in about 10 minutes. It is as though something about me says, “Don’t sleep . . . you’ll miss something,” or “You can’t sleep until you solve all the world’s problems.”

This is why I stay up worrying about global issues like poverty or child abuse—or personal decisions like where Ben should go to kindergarten or how to curb Janae’s obsession with princesses—and the later it gets, the less rational my problems and solutions become. Something in my brain won’t allow me to rest until everything is understood, solved, analyzed. . . . it really is a sickness.

 

So after all these years of insomnia and sleep research, I happened to start taking an anti-nausea medication called Diclectin. The drug information listed drowsiness as a possible side effect, and I thought, “Right.” But, you know, I have actually had the best two nights of sleep after taking it yesterday and the day before. I don’t know if fatigue is finally kicking in, or if my time on bedrest just made me a more tranquil person—but Diclectin seems to be enhancing my ability to sleep.

Now that I’ve written about this, I’m sure the effect will disappear, but I’m going to head off to bed and see what happens. Maybe my immunity to drowsiness is starting to wear off . . . and I’ve definitely got some catching up to do.