You do appreciate how important a good night’s sleep is until you aren’t getting them anymore. Most children are exhausted and sleep well; when you get into your teens and twenties you can party all night and keep going (of course biologically this is so that parents can cope with the disturbed night that babies and small children give them, but humanity is changing in the UK with childbirth delayed).
The closest I ever came to not sleeping were the 24-hour D&D game (https://wordpress.com/post/fivemilesout.home.blog/1194 ) and the first night of the 2004 Olympics. I got up at 5am to go to work, getting in to the office 6am. Having worked all day I drove to Neil’s in Colchester arriving there at 8pm. We went out and drank, grabbing fast food and ending up in a club. We walked all the way back across Colchester to Neil’s house, getting there at 4.30am. I felt ill for days after that.
A woman who I used to work with did something similar. She went out with some women from work as she had not been out for over two years. She had been up at 7.30am and got back to her parents at 6am the following day – 30 minutes before her son woke up and with a raging hangover.
I have not slept through more than half a dozen nights in the last 20 years. Even when I am prescribed drugs that make me sleepy (like amitriptyline). Even when these were short walking periods it was incredibly disruptive. If my mind started working – worrying about problems or what I was going to do at work that day these waking spells would get longer.
I do fall asleep quickly, which I know is a problem for many people. This is not luck – it is my medical condition. I pass out at the same time every night and it is not satisfying. I can only offer the standard advice to people – stop watching TV or using a screen at least 30 minutes before you sleep. Get in bed, relax and read (Kindles are ok as the liquid paper display is not the same as LCD screens.
You get to the point where you wonder if you should go back to sleep again – knowing that if you do you will be woken by the alarm clock and feel terrible for that.
Then there are the nightmares that come in these light sleeping spells. Vivid, graphic – often in the same fictional city built of deep rust brown sandstone in the middle of a desert, yet serviced a river. The streets are narrow and tight, unless driving is part of it. The city is like none I have ever seen. It is also the home of lots of weird creatures that lurk in the darkness. Not a good way to wake up.
For the last three years I have been using a band that monitors sleep. The band gets it wrong as it is based on heart rates so being still and calm will fool it. The positive is that it often shows that a night when I think I have slept very badly was really a night of badly fragmented sleep.
I have tried listening to calming music and other remedies. On the worst nights I have to get up for an hour and mimic going to bed again. Listening to a podcast by someone with a boring voice sometimes work too. The History of the Crusades works well for me – interesting subject, but dull voice.
The worst thing is all the symptoms that it leaves you with. The constant exhaustion and inability to focus properly.
Not a great fan of Faithless but the full-length version of this is a tour de force
Insomnia
Five Miles Out 