Of all the supposed cures for insomnia, there is surely none dumber than counting sheep.
The task raises too many questions.
Is it okay, for instance, that on a night of tossing and turning like this, the sheep conjured by my mind’s eye are grinning, cartoon sheep? That, to help me keep tally, I have them jump a little cartoon fence? Should I envision a more lifelike flock, maybe introduce an imaginary sheepdog to keep things under control?
Just the kind of mental vortex to push sleep further away, not draw it closer.
As far as my insomnia goes, tonight is pretty typical. It’s the second night running (the episodes, roughly monthly, will often cluster), so I’m already shattered. Of course I have to be up early tomorrow. Naturally there’s a work commitment that calls for sharpness and vim, poor performance spelling certain doom, destitution, the end of the world.
Little by little, though, the ringing in my ears grows to a shrill crescendo of certainty that far from dropping off, I’m digging in for the long haul, yet again.
For the first hour, even two, I ride it out. Relax, I tell myself, this is no big deal, you’ll soon drop off. Little by little, though, the ringing in my ears grows to a shrill crescendo of certainty that far from dropping off, my unquiet mind is digging in for the long haul, yet again.
I’ve chucked a pair of underpants over the bedside table alarm clock to hide its mocking, fluorescent face, but can’t resist peeking under them periodically to confirm my worst fears about how little of the night remains.
I turn over on to my back, try to focus on my breath, nothing else. Maybe if I get it in synch with my partner’s I’ll find the rest that she’s been enjoying since her head hit the pillow (how does she do that, how is it fair and how come all my melodramatic sigh-heaving has failed to wake her up?).
I’ve never found it easy, catching winks, never been a napper. Things really took a nosedive, though, when I hit 40, which coincided with parenthood. The kids came twenty months apart, with neither “sleeping through” until they were two, and even when they did, I never quite regained my shuteye mojo.
Maybe this is payback for all the partying I did in my twenties and thirties. Saturday nights that would start late and never end, punctuated with enough chemical intake to keep me dancing and ranting with like-minded maniacs long enough to see the pubs open up next day. How we prided ourselves on our appetites and endurance.
By the time Sunday night came around, I’d have drunk and smoked enough to fall into a coma. Mondays and Tuesdays were unspeakable, but somehow I got away with it, back then.
Or at least I thought I had. Could nights like this one be the chickens of decadence, coming home to roost? (My vaulting cartoon sheep are now replaced by decadent chickens, each with the wizened, beaky face of Keith Richards.)
I’m a lot closer to 50 than 40 now, and no longer blasé about my mental and physical health. The fact that my dodgy sleep habits put me at increased risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, depression and obesity has become one more thing to keep me awake at night.
Things got bad enough a few years back that I took an overnight test at a sleep centre. How many zeds a subject can be expected to catch with electrodes attached to their head, neck, chest and legs, plus rubber nozzles in each nostril and an irksome clamp on the index finger is a moot point, but an assessment like that is a good way to rule out apnoea, restless leg syndrome and parasomnias such as sleepwalking and night terrors.
My night at the centre was predictably wakeful. When I finally managed to fall asleep, it seemed only seconds before the duty clinician was shaking me awake because I’d yanked my wires from their motherboard, and needed reconnecting.
Performance anxiety drives us into bed earlier but our sleep becomes fractured, fatigue unrelieved and anxiety reinforced.
My consultant recommended “bedtime restriction” to cure my ailment. Poor sleepers will commonly spend around nine hours a night in bed, he said, in the hope of getting those three or so hours of good, restorative sleep that we feel we really need. Performance anxiety drives us into bed earlier but our sleep becomes fractured, fatigue unrelieved and anxiety reinforced.
Since then, I’ve attempted to follow his advice. Resist the urge to get too early a night, hit the sack when I’m tired, not before.
I avoid caffeine from afternoon onwards, screens in the bedroom, late night snacks and alcohol. Bedtime reading is non-fiction, and nothing too gripping.
I might go as long as two months between insomnia shifts. And when they do come, I try to greet them with magnanimity, take comfort in knowing I’m not alone, that on any given night there will be thousands of us out there, watching the clock, craving the crash.
On mornings like tomorrow’s my reddened eyes will sometimes meet those of a fellow sufferer. A barely perceptible, slack-jawed nod might pass between us, a moment of silent, insomniac communion.
If I were a bolder human, I might tell them this:
Take heart, brother, sister. These fully rested, bushy-tailed, complacently cheery masses – they might never know our doona-churning torment, but neither will they know the relief that follows, when exhaustion finally overtakes us and, instead of paddling in sleep’s shallows, we lose ourselves in its depths.
Tonight’s the night the sandman comes for us. And then, oh then, how sweet will be our dreams.
This thought, at last, sends me off.
And beneath the undies, the alarm clock starts to chirp.
