At the ripe old age of 65 I’ve become an insomniac. I go to
sleep every night around 10 but bang, between the witching hours of two and
four I’m awake and I stay awake for at least a couple of hours until I fall
back asleep or give up and get up.
Not that my usual sleep patterns are all that great. They were
permanently interrupted upon the birth of my children, especially the second
one, Max, who didn’t sleep through the night until he was past two years old. I
can’t remember the last time I slept
through the night. But at least when I would wake up I’d get up and pee, go
back to bed, turn over a few times, push a few thoughts out of my brain, and go
back to sleep.
Now when I wake up there are a number of things going on
that keep me awake despite all my attempts to breathe deep. One is there’s
always a song playing over and over in my head. A couple of nights ago it was
the Eagle’s “Witchy Woman.” I don’t like the Eagles (except for my Guilty
Pleasure “Cryin’ Eyes”) and I certainly don’t like “Witchy Woman.”
Sometimes it’s a much better song running through my head, like “It’s Too Late
to Turn Back Now,” which is on my best of rhythm and blues compilation
playlist. But then there’ll be a night of “Build Me Up Buttercup” —not a guilty pleasure.
Of course, it’s the inner dialogue stuff that’s the worst.
It’s bemoaning the fact that I had to pay a lot more money to the crew
stuccoing my house because I fucked up and chose a color that was way too
orange instead of the reddish brown I thought it was going to be and made the
crew redo the wall with the right color. It’s worrying about the release of my
new book and wondering if anyone will actually read it and if they do they’ll
think it’s no good. It’s worrying about my teeth, which need some work. It’s
worrying about my kids, who are mostly fine but each facing some decisions and
life changing events (like a second grandkid in December). It’s wondering what
I’m going to do with the rest of my life now that La Jicarita is no longer demanding all my time and I’m not forced
to go to meetings unless I really want to.
I can’t turn off the inner dialogue so I resort to drugs.
About five years ago, after I’d had orthopedic surgery for a bone spur that
caused untold secondary pain and misery, I became addicted to Ambien. That’s
the sleep drug of choice prescribed by doctors who seem oblivious to its
addictive tendencies and ability to elicit nightmares of epic proportions that
cause some people to get up in the middle of the night and create havoc, like
driving their cars and smashing into other cars they happen to encounter on the
road.
The much better sleep drug is Valium, which I’ve had
intermittent access to over the years from sympathetic doctors who don’t cop to
its bad rap as “Mother’s little helper.” That began in the ‘50s, I believe,
when American housewives were supposedly taking it to enhance the drudgery of
their banal lives (and immortalized in the Rolling Stones song “Mother’s Little
Helper”). The fact that it helped take the edge off real anxiety—and helped one
to sleep—got lost in the myth, and the pharma industry was able to make lots
more money coming up with sleep aids like Ambien that have much more dastardly
side affects.
Mark, my partner, always used pot as his sedative of choice.
He suffered from insomnia as long as I knew him, and while smoking marijuana
couldn’t prevent it’s onset in the middle of the night, it did help him to
eventually get back to sleep. Since I’m out of Valium at the moment I’ve
decided I’m going to give it a try. Although I smoked a lot as a teenager and
young adult, it hasn’t been my drug
of choice for many years. I’m one of the ones whose experience with pot morphed
from “taking the edge off” to paranoia. I use alcohol to take the edge off, and
it works very well, thank you. But it doesn’t prevent me from waking up in the
middle of the night in insomnia mode.
I actually got a medical marijuana card at the urging of my
primary care doctor, who urges all his patients with chronic pain to give it a
try so he can wean them off opiates. I don’t really need the card to access
pot, which is as pervasive in our culture as Coca-cola. All I needed to do was mention my idea about
using it for sleep and voila, everyone was offering me some. Now I have a
little stash that will last me awhile, if it’s as strong as everyone says it is
and all I need partake is one puff.
I smoked a little last night and woke up at four am with the
Hall and Oates song “Rich Girl” playing in my head. No surprise there; I’d watched
part of their live concert in Dublin on TV before going to bed. Coincidentally,
Max and I had just had a conversation about them and he told me they were the best
selling duo of all time, but according to Wikipedia,
they were only second to the Carpenters—also not a guilty pleasure. I sat up
and smoked a little more pot, but I really don’t know if I went back to sleep
or not: I was either dreaming or remembering dreams in some vague space and
time. Was this the result of being too stoned or not stoned enough?
So I’ll give it another try tonight and see what happens. Or,
as I was just reading in The New York
Times Book Review, the “By the Book” writer of the week, whom I’ve never
heard of, recommended listening to a talking book to help one fall asleep. Not
that I give much credence to someone who includes Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Richard
Dawkins, and Sam Harris (these last two have given atheism a bad name) in his
list of most admired writers. I guess I could download something suitable on my
iPod, but in the meantime I’m going to take a nap. If you only sleep for an
hour you don’t suffer from insomnia.
