Okay, first off I'll get the apologies out of the way for the cringey, 'song reference in a blog post title' behaviour on my part. I mean, I really couldn't resist. Secondly, I must emphasise greatly here that I am possibly the least medically informed person on the internet. Perhaps even in real life, who knows? I once convinced myself that a blister on my toe was a spider bite. And by once, I'm talking just a few months ago. It's not totally out of the question though. I remember watching one of those deadly animal programmes ages ago and one of the pieces of strong advice given was to ensure you tip your shoes upside-down before putting them on, so that you rid them of any hidden, creepy-crawlies. I'm not entirely sure if this applies to people living in Finland, or people living anywhere outside of Australia, America or the jungle, but I guess it's always better to be safe than sorry. My point being that if you are looking for anything more informative than an over-tired 26 year old 'adult' wittering on about her lack of sleep, this blog post is probably not for you.
So, Insomnia. It's a funny word really, but one that seems to fit really well. It's kind of almost 'Insane' and that's definitely how having Insomnia makes me feel sometimes. I don't remember how old I was when I started having difficulty sleeping. I just remember being at college and lying awake through the night until sunrise the next day. I went through whole periods of time, somehow surviving on an hours sleep per night, although I do use the term surviving very loosely. Throughout most of my life since then, I have had varying degrees of difficulty sleeping. I guess it comes in waves as such. The struggle is always there, just some days it's not as tough.
The idea of medication is not something that appeals to me. I hate the thought of having to drug myself up in order to have a good night's kip. Being the resourceful girl that I am, I took to some 'alternative' remedies. Now, don't be getting any funny ideas... I learnt some breathing exercises designed to aid relaxation but these just made me forget how to actually breathe properly and I ended up just feeling out of breath and a little bit daft. Next, I took to YouTube for sleep videos. You know, the kind that play slightly spooky music with the sound of trickling water and crackling fires. These worked for a little while, but in the end, I think I just got used to them. I don't drink much tea or coffee, and even when I do, it's never any later than lunch time.I don't really know what else to do. I feel like tearing my hair out over the fact that when it comes to the time to sleep, I just can't switch off. Perhaps I have an over-active imagination or maybe my brain spends too much time arsing about during the day that it feels bed-time is the appropriate time for some more serious thinking, your guess is as good as mine?! The worst thing is about that though, is I usually end up falling down a Google-shaped rabbit hole and end up reading up on conspiracy theories and/or diagnosing myself with a whole wealth of different illnesses and diseases; including spider bite poisoning. It's never really beneficial to anyone.
The Mothership always used to tell me that if you go to sleep late and wake up really early, then you'll be tired the following night. In theory this sounds all fine and dandy, but in reality, it just doesn't work for me. The amount of sleep I have the night before has zero bearing on the amount of sleep I'll get the following night. That is, until I hit a stone wall of exhaustion and end up sleeping for a bazillion hours. Even so, that doesn't happen all that often. I kid you not, my best night's sleep are after I've had a skinfull of alcopops. Probably not the message I should be portraying here, and I doubt this will feature on an NHS poster any time soon, but sometimes I do feel that life would be that little bit easier if I became a jolly drunk. If you excuse all of the other obvious flaws, of course.
Does anyone else have difficulty sleeping? What things have you tried to help you drift off and what do you find works/doesn't work for you? Maybe I'll give Faithless a call and we can share tips.
