Ok, I haven't really written 11 issues of "Adventures in Insomnia" but maybe I should. I come up with some pretty intriguing thoughts while unable to sleep. I've come to the conclusion that my new neighbors (who moved in at 11:30pm a few weeks ago) don't have the happiest marriage. They don't have the happiest 3 or 4 year old child either.
I've had trouble sleeping for as long as I can remember. Literally. I'm pretty sure it's got some sort of hereditary basis because I remember wandering around the house looking for a snack at 2am to find my dad lying on the couch in front of the television. When I asked what he was doing up he'd say something about not being able to sleep. That fact that I can remember that happening fairly often tells me that I've probably had insomnia for quite some time.
While I was still a spry young chicken, not being able to sleep was not that big of a deal. I could get up and read, write poetry, wander the house, watch tv, make a snack or just lay in bed and daydream. Although I guess it wasn't so much daydreaming as dreaming at 3am while completely conscious and alert. As I've gotten older and taken on a job that actually requires a good amount of energy and certain level of alertness, sleep has become a little more important and the insomnia is beginning to take on a less amusing feel to it.
So I miss my old neighbors. Who would think that two mid-twenties ladies with tons of friends would be quieter neighbors than a young man and his wife and cute little girl (ok, she looked cute at midnight the night they moved in but I'm rethinking that initial impression). I believe it was last night that I first heard my neighbors fight. The husband is fond of shouting. Very loudly. We share walls. Inappropriate. The little girl cries fairly often and fairly loud. Did I mention we share walls? The husband was just yelling which caused the little girl to start crying, then there was some fighting and more crying and then some one took off in their only car.
I had my first Ambien CR last night. Also worth mentioning is the fact that my heater took a dive last night. I nearly died in my sleep of hypothermia, but more on that later. I've only recently begun my search for the ever elusive good night's sleep. When I lived in Frazier Park and was extremely unhappy (some of you remember) I could neither fall asleep at night (for several hours) nor stay asleep (waking 3-4 times a night and staying awake for more than an hour each time. Yeah, take a moment to imagine that, will you? However, I only remember about 3 times in the last 10 years that I've fallen asleep at night and woken up to it being morning. Talk about freaky. I've spent the majority of my life being conscious of the night and the fact that I did exist at midnight, 3am, 4am, 4:30am, 5am, and I'll be damned...5:30am.
One of the times that I slept completely through the night was up at Redding. I don't even know what brought it on, I was possibly medicated. Anyway, the strangest thing happened. I crawled up into my bunk one night, got under the covers and fell asleep probably within 15 minutes of going to bed. The next thing I know, I wake up and it's morning. No, not like 2am morning, but after sunrise kind of morning. It freaked me out. I had no memory of anything happening during the night, it was as if I didn't even exist. No wonder I don't sleep through the night. It's disturbing to be missing that much of my life as if nothing happened. How can so much time go by without something happening? We're not talking an hour or two. We're talking 8-9 hours of my life completely unaccounted for!
Consider this for a moment. Most of you are reading this thinking I'm strange for thinking this way. Well imagine what it must be like to almost never have this happen; to spend the majority of your life perfectly aware of laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the noises outside, letting your mind wander, getting out of bed to get a drink of water, getting back in bed and letting your mind wander some more, getting out of bed to pee, going back to bed, remembering you forgot to take out the trash, getting out of bed to take it out, getting back in bed, getting back out of bed to turn off the porch light, getting back in bed, getting up and jotting down notes about the house you looked at earlier in the week, turning the light off and laying back down to toss and turn for another hour before falling back to sleep only to wake up an hour later and repeat the whole process (minus the trash and porch light). All between the hours of midnight and 4am. Then at 5am your neighbor wakes you up screaming. Yeah. Welcome to the wonderful world of insomnia for those who don't know.
My first attempt at real sleep medication (besides Valerian root, melatonin and warm milk) was a drug called Dalmane. Oh wonderful Dalmane. The first night I took it, it pissed me off. I lay awake except I was much more tired...but still awake. The second night I took it, I actually slept most of the night. Very impressive. I even felt ok the next day, not sleepy or groggy or uncoordinated. That is until I attempted to walk up a snow covered mountain with a drip torch in one hand and a 5 gallon jerry can of burn mix in the other, with my full gear on. My legs were anything but cooperative. When I got home and read up on the Dalmane, it turned out it could stay in my system for up to 72 hours. Seriously? Who would take a sleep medication that stays in your system for 72 hours? Well I suppose people who don't need to do much with themselves. But then again, if I didn't need my sleep and energy, there's a lot I could get done while the rest of the world was sleeping.
So I switched to Xanax, which in itself is not a sleeping pill. It does, however, turn off the mind when it incessantly spins around from topic to topic while I lay there helplessly trying to sleep because I have to be up at 5am to go to work. It doesn't last more than a few hours though, and 2am rolls around pretty quickly. It's disappointing to say the least.
I have begun to sleep pretty well when I'm at home these days. I fall asleep fairly quickly (less than an hour to fall asleep is pretty exciting to me) and only wake up 2 times on average and both times I usually fall back to sleep in maybe half an hour. Strangely enough though, I don't sleep when I'm on fires. When I'm my most tired, my days most demanding, at my most sleep deprived and exhausted, and in my most dire need of sleep... I don't sleep. I ache for bed hours before I lay out my sleeping bag and struggle to keep my heavy eyelids open. And finally! Finally I get to crawl into my nice cozy sleeping bag and get all snuggled in, and...... and lay there awake. To the point of outright rage. I apparently have woken other people up by wandering around looking for a Gatorade at 3am. Ooops. Sometimes I'm tempted to wake one of them up and play a couple games up checkers to see if it helps. I'd probably get my butt kicked. Apparently people like their sleep.
So last night I took one of the samples of Ambien CR that my doctor just gave me (after he informed me that the dosage of melatonin I'm taking should be 6 times higher... I'll give that a shot... only 3 times higher to being with. Let's not get crazy). I fell asleep before I could get halfway through the warning label. I woke up twice during the night (haha, some wonder drug huh?) but felt so groggy that I promptly fell back asleep (ok, not too bad). Then at 4am I woke up again, still feeling drugged and groggy. I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep. I was uncomfortably warm under my down comforter so I stuck my arm out from under the blanket and laid it on top. It got so cold so quickly that I jerked it back under the covers and tried to get back to sleep. I rolled around a bit and looked at the clock. 4:15. Grrr. 7 hours after I had taken the sleeping pill. I closed my eyes again and willed myself to fall back to sleep. The grogginess began to wear off. I looked at the clock again. 4:37. Good lord. Nope, go back to sleep.
At this time it occurred to me that my heater was running like crazy. It was pretty cold outside my blanket. Overnight we had winter roll in on us and we've been getting sub-freezing weather every night all week. My heater has been over worked lately. It's got a long winter ahead of it so it better buck up. Finally at 4:43 I gave up on sleep and got out of bed. AAAGGGHHH!!! It was freezing!!! Shivering from cold in my t-shit, pajama pants and socks, I stumbled to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, muttering to myself and swearing at the cold air coming from the vents. I turned on a light and squinted at the thermostat. 64 degrees. That may sound warm to some of you, but when the sub-freezing air from outside is being pumped into your house that has the heat set at 70, 64 degrees is extremely unpleasant. And 64 degrees is so far below your normal body temperature that it just isn't safe anyway. By struggling to get the cover off the thermostat, I managed to get the auxiliary power to turn on and the air warmed a bit. By the time I got back from the gym, it had heated up to a balmy 67 degrees. I turned it off for awhile to possibly re-set it then turned it back on. I figured if it wasn't warm by the time I got home, I'd either call my landlord or build a fire ring on my kitchen floor. Thankfully it appears to be working again.
So tonight I'm trying good ol' fashioned melatonin (at a slightly higher dose) and a snuggly blanket. Hopefully my heater lasts throughout the night and I don't have to get up at 2am to turn my oven on. Let's see how this goes.
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