Sleep, where art thou?

Last night was not a good night of sleeping. I think I may have got a total of 3 very light hours. No real reason for it, just sometimes I can't sleep.

I used to have chronic insomnia. I'd say from about 1995 until around 1998 is when I had it. Several nights a week I'd literally get maybe 1 hour of sleep. I visited my "primary physician" several times for it, and you could tell he had no clue what to do. He'd offer me the simple advice I had already read and heard hundreds of times before: "Go to bed the same time every night. Avoid caffeine after 5. Read a book. Use your bedroom for only sleep and initmacy.." and blah, blah, blah.

He also recommended a psychiatrist because he thought my sleeplessness was due to other factors in my life; stress, depression, you name it. But it wasn't. I simply could not fall asleep. I would get nervous as soon as I put my head down because I wanted so badly to fall asleep. Every night of bad sleep made the next night even harder to sleep.

He eventually prescribed me some drugs. I probably went through about 4 or 5 different kinds, all of which had terrible side effects (Elavil is one I remember; I can't remember the names of the others). The drugs weren't really meant to cure insomnia; they were for other conditions (mostly depression) but the side effects were drowsiness. However I wasn't depressed, I was just friggin tired, so these drugs messed up my mind and barely helped my sleep.

I finally took things into my own hands. With the coaxing of my dad, who worked at University of Illinois at Chicago's Medical campus as a professor, I got a visit with a "sleep specialist". I finally got prescribed a wonderful little drug called Ambien (apparently, which my primary physician never heard of). I would get a good 6-7 hours of sleep, with no side effects in the morning. It was a miracle.

Now, now, I'm not here trying to push some sleeping pills on you. You should only resort to these if all the drug-free methods have failed you. Lots of people can get their sleep back on track simply by exercising, avoiding alcohol and caffiene at night, and scheduled bedtime hours.

Well, after trying the "non-drug" method for about 3 years, I was fairly desperate to say the last. The drug helped me get my sleep back on track. After about a few weeks of a light dose, I was pretty much back to somewhat normal sleeping patterns. Just having the pills in the house itself helped me, because knowing that I had them took away the nervousness of falling asleep, and I'd drift into sleep on my own, drug-free.

But, as last night, I do have my relapses sometimes. I already knew at around 11pm, after lying in bed for 30 minutes, that I wasn't going to sleep much. I avoided taking any drugs, and just watched some late-night TV from about midnight til almost 4am. I went back to bed, got about 3 hours of sleep, and got ready for work.

So anyways, if you or anyone you know has trouble sleeping, feel free to talk with me. I've been through it all. Almost any kind of supposed "treatment" there was, I went through. Basically a little pill called Ambien and some strict bedtime hours got me back on track. I haven't had a bad week of sleep in almost 7 years now.