I have a love-hate relationship with sleep; sometimes it loves me, other times it hates me but I ALWAYS hate it!
I've had "issues" with sleep since I was a wee one: sleep always seemed to evade me until the last second and then when my mom would come in to wake me up for school in the morning I would be dead to the world.
I'm 21 now and not much has changed. I take sleeping pills and a medicine for Parkinson's disease so that my RLS (Restless Legs Syndrome) doesn't drive me insane. I'm up to 2 Lunesta now and despite what they say on TV, I am not being winged off to sleep every night and then awakening as refreshed as a butterfly emerging from her cocoon for the first time. F%!$ that! If I manage to fall asleep I get jarred awake, eventually, by a super loud vibrating alarm clock made for deaf people, or I don't wake up until around dinner time.
I hate it. When I get into bed at night, I never know whether or not I'm actually going to feel sleepy and get some shut-eye. And if I do, I never know what time I'll wake up. The sad thing is that I follow all the rules: I crawl into bed early after a warm shower and a hot cup of Sleepy Time tea (along with sleeping pills), I read non-thought-provoking books with a small book light; my room is dark and at an ideal temperature for sleeping. I do nothing in my bed but sleep (and occasionally eat in my sleep). But it's all for naught! Why do I have to try so ridiculously hard just to sleep!?!?!? And I've tried other medicines but they just aren't hip to my jive.
Oh and did I mention the one constant when it comes to my sleep? Nightmares...every flippin night! I don't mean "oo shit I got a D on my test nightmares" oh no I mean "this will scar Stephen King for life" nightmares. Murder, dismemberment....YIKES
Like almost every area of my life, there is no happy medium but like every other area of my life, I try really hard.
Thats all for now folks!
I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments!
-RRR
Well, if any given drug doesn't work very well for you, then you might consider discontinuing the drug (make sure you ask your doctor how to do that though; just stopping is generally a bad idea). Sleeping pills in particular are not always effective and some drugs just don't work for some people. Maybe you're even dependent on the drug now and stopping it (with medical supervision) might help you get to sleep after all. But check with a doctor of course.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if you get off the pill, you can then tell whether the tea is working. If the tea doesn't help, then no need to drink it.
I'm skeptical of reading before sleeping, is there any such thing as a "non-thought-provoking" book? Any book you read, even a book that's all blank pages, could potentially give you some thoughts. That said, does thinking really keep you awake? If you can't sleep anyway, why not spend the time thinking about some important problem?
I wouldn't be surprised if the sleeping pills are what causes the nightmares. But if not, just be glad it was only a dream! :) Or imagine some perfect idyllic place during that long time before falling asleep, get every little detail right, grass, flowers, people, whatever, maybe there's a small chance it will influence your dream.
Just relax. Don't try so hard to fall asleep! :)
Thanks for reading and commenting! I really appreciate it.
ReplyDeleteYou have some good ideas; unfortunately I've tried just tea and different medicine and everything in between. Lunesta is the best so far. I'm getting a sleep study done soon though so we'll see what that turns up!
Keep reading!
RRR