Insomnia

[cjsmith]

Insomnia is a lot more boring (but more pleasant, for all that) without Facebook.

Woke up about an hour and a half ago for Yet Another Cleanup Party and boom, that’s it, no more sleep tonight. That’ll give me a total of three and a half hours for the night. Last night - hmm, terminology gets weird: Saturday night - it was about three. Another night or two of this and I won’t be safe to drive a car. Already the other day I caught myself waiting for a stop sign to turn green.

How do people deal with this kind of thing? (By “people” I mean “people with jobs they have to show up for at regular times”; I know how I would deal with it if I had flex time and sick days and the like.)

Comments

[wcg]

Back when I was doing mission ops shift work, if I couldn't get to sleep (or get back to sleep) I'd take a swig of Nyquil. That was usually good for insuring I'd get another 4 hours of sleep.

[cjsmith]

Nice! When there’s more than four hours left, that would be a good bet. (Was it the antihistamine? I’ve apparently developed some resistance to the sleepiness induced by those. Overuse, probably.)

[wcg]

Doxylamine is the antihistamine in Nyquil.

FWIW, sex is also a good way to induce sleep.

[cjsmith]

It’s an enjoyable way! Not always available to me, much as I’d love to live a life where it were. :-D

[cjsmith]

Ok, tonight I am learning that a half a bottle of wine is utterly insufficient. Antihistamines are already out; used those far too much in internship. May need prescription pharmaceuticals - which means time to go see the gatekeeper and money to pay the gatekeeper. Sigh...

[hitchhiker]

aww, i was hoping the wine would be helpful :(

[cjsmith]

Maybe more of it would be. I think my liver has seen an awful lot of wine... :-D

[zahraa]

Well, I don't get out of bed. I know the wisdom is mixed on this, you want to associate your bed with sleep, but at least if you're in bed, you might be sleeping some of the time. I don't pick up my phone and start looking at it. I do try to meditate.

[cjsmith]

Agreed that I too have seen a ton of mixed commentary on whether or not to leave the bed, and that looking at the phone is counterproductive. I’ve actually started going through a little self hypnosis routine and that helps a leeeeetle bit.