Sleep Talking

A little more than a year ago, several interminable weeks passed where I struggled to get a complete night's sleep. I either couldn't get to sleep or I would wake up with a handful of hours to go before the alarm sounded and I lay there arguing with myself about why I couldn't get back into the healing dreamless. It was more than a little upsetting but it wasn't my first bout with intermittent sleeplessness. I knew that, sooner or later, I would get back to regular slumber patterns but like all such disruptions, it was agonizing in the moment. It was like the voice that Macbeth thought he heard which said: 

“Sleep no more!

Macbeth does murder sleep: the innocent sleep,

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,

The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,

Chief nourisher in life's feast.”

Insomnia can be caused by a number of things: too much sugar or caffeine in one's beverage intake or an unhealthy diet. It can also occur because of psychological problems; too much stress at work or with the bills. Insomnia may be a side effect of a lifestyle or medication. A significant disruption of the body's sense of where it is within time can cause serious damage to slumber. However, although any of these might have been the motivating factor for my inability to get forty winks, it was most likely idiopathic insomnia, which is a fancy term for “who the heck knows why this is happening?” Anyway, although in the middle of the night while I tried to understand my stupid brain's refusal to let me plummet into golden slumbers, whatever instigated the problem seemed moot. I couldn't get my beauty rest and that was obvious and horrible.

The family was gathered around the breakfast table one Sunday during this time when I was unable to get rest and the subject of insomnia arose when our youngest mentioned that I looked like deep fried hell. His description was apt. I felt like it too. I was beyond haggard, beyond even the borders of exhaustion. The world felt like clear jello and I was moving through it numb and dumb and staringly, as though I was semi-catatonic. He told me that he used melatonin for his sleep issues and that it really helped. It was not my first exposure to melatonin, of course, since it had become a commonly available supplement on display in the aisle at the market where St. John’s Wort and ground Wolfbane could be purchased. I had previously avoided it mainly because I was loath to develop a dependence to any substance. 

Other aids, whether available over-the-counter or by prescription, had developed notorious reputations for causing the people who used them to rise from their beds like vampires and paint the nursery or plant rows of tulips in a recently excavated hole in the basement floor and yet retain no memories of their nocturnal actions the next day. One drug—Ambien—had become infamous for its side effects. So much so that some celebrities or notable personalities used the pill as a scapegoat when they inevitably said something racist on air or displayed their genitals to an unsuspecting assistant. I wanted none of it. I had spent enough time in my life with consciousness-altering substances.

Although melatonin is not a drug in that sense, he reassured me, I still had trepidations. Despite its apparent efficacy, any sleep aid had to survive a gamut of questions and requirements in order for me to try it, no matter how desperately I needed to fall into the arms of Morpheus. Fortunately our kids are avid researchers and why should they not be? Their parents are a teacher and a reference librarian respectively and they understand the importance of well-cited, verifiable sources when they look things up. The boy had done his homework on the topic. It still took a lot of convincing, but I eventually conceded that it was the best option for what ailed me. It was not habit forming, didn't require a prescription, is a naturally occurring substance within the body and was relatively inexpensive. I still held off for a while, perhaps out of sheer stubborn determination to get through my insomnia unaided but I had no more reservations about melatonin.

Meanwhile, true restfulness continued to evade me, so on one particularly dragging, droopy day he offered me a chewable tablet to take before bedtime. I cannot remember much except that it obviously worked. I slept like a rock, if rocks sleep. Pardoning the obvious cliche, I felt like a man in the desert who finds an oasis. My body and brain had been ravaged night after night by seemingly unending wakefulness and then finally, I rolled off the edge of insomnia’s beetling cliffs and into sweet oblivion. After that, I purchased a bottle of sugar free melatonin gummies to keep on the nightstand and began using it nightly. 

As long as it was working, I kept using it, fearing to return to that place of unrest high on the rocks of the island of insomnia. I was motivated by the idea of lapsing back into the fitful, flailing restlessness that would eventually become a flat inability to catch even a nap overnight. That was a forbidding possibility to face especially now that I had decent restfulness back in the daily routine. If sleeplessness returned, I knew that I would again become that half-awake, shambling creature that yawned and gibbered and snarled all day like an old dog. The long term consequences of not sleeping were plain. During the day, when I ought to be spry and sharp, I would be unfocused and blinking stupidly, dozing at stop lights and in my office and being more than usually ill-mannered. Following those symptoms come the deeper issues; loss of memory, confusion, unhealthy eating habits and soon enough, serious health problems not to mention hallucinations, paranoia, delusions, hearing voices, cosmic dread and finally, a full-on psychotic break. 

No thank you.

So I kept taking the melatonin gummies before bed. Perhaps it is ironic to note that the plaguey things had begun to be less efficacious than when I first got them. I would fall asleep hard then wake up a few hours later and need to roam the halls like a Victorian ghost, yawning and moaning until I felt tired enough to get back in bed. I more than once startled our youngest and his partner, when they would wander over into our kitchen to borrow an onion or hot sauce and there I was, like Jacob Marley, half awake and staring sightlessly.

I was unhappy with these new proceedings. So I upped my dose. I was exercising regularly during this period too and I felt that the combination of a strenuous workout and the melatonin would help me find a good night's rest. I refused to go back to straight up insomnia. Even so, I became worried that my issues with being unable to kip were developing an immunity to both. Regardless of how tired I was or when I had my last cup of strengthening Irish Breakfast Tea, around midnight, I would pop awake, fired out of dreamland and into wakefulness like a man from a cannon in the circus show.

It was around this same time that our son—he who introduced me to melatonin—began to make plans for a cross-country journey to take a new job. He would move from Asheboro to Portland, Oregon in the early Fall. The scheme was still fairly unsettled, but while we were all playing in the pool one roasty June day, he lightly discussed possible strategies to make the whole thing workable. From then until August, he solidified his itinerary for the trip and during that time it was decided that I would go with him, acting as a copilot and helping to drive. I will not write more about the trip (because the events of that amazing experience are recorded in more detail elsewhere and will be available in due time) except to say that I decided to use the opportunity to stop chewing the melatonin gummies and to get back to regular, unaided ZZZs. In August he spent a week in Oregon to hunt for an apartment and get familiar with the city. When he returned, the three hour time difference shattered him. Instead of giving in to temptations to take a midday siesta, however, he went back to his regular east coast bedtime schedule. This seemed to force a reset in his circadian rhythms and he admitted that he was consistently snoozing like a baby.

When we finally departed in October the many time zone crossings, the unpacking of his furniture and the long haul driving exhausted me. All of this coupled with a red eye flight home (in which I went a total of 36 hours without closing my eyes) seemed to reboot my circadian rhythms. Two weeks after our adventure, we turned the clocks back to standard time and coupled with regular exercise, my inability to drift into Snoreland vanished like a nightmare on the wings of dawn. 

As of this writing, insomnia in its fullest sense has departed. I have not yet needed to dip into my melatonin stores, either. The Spring time change has not yet disrupted my sleep (anymore than usual) either, despite the longer days and darker mornings. I still exercise regularly (though not at the YMCA) and I feel in mid-season form. I go to bed most nights quite tired and wake up refreshed, if groggy. My nighttime dreams are less psychedelic but that's an agreeable alternative to the swirling, brightly colored flower explosions that melatonin-induced fantasies caused. Sleep truly has knit up the ravelled sleeve of care.

I know that I will again have battles with sleeplessness but if they begin to drag out into weeks-long campaigns, I can reach for the gummies. It is pretty certain that a period of insomnia will return again, but in the meantime, hopefully I can avoid it via diet and exercise and careful adherence to a nightly routine.