To Sleep...Perchance to Dream

Insomnia...
I've had it almost all of my 55 years. Lately it's been even worse. I have even quit trying to go to bed before midnight. Part of me screams "Go to bed" and the other part that always wins the argument says, "What's the point?".

If I get two hours of sleep a night, I'm doing good. You would think I could get a lot done since I don't sleep, but I'm no Tom Edison. At least he did something useful with his insomnia. I just stay in bed. I don't get shook up because I can't sleep. Nothing is bothering me. It's just my chemical makeup.

The only time I was cured of insomnia was when I was taking Paxil for panic attacks. Paxil fixed the serotonin problem I had with my brain. I slept like a baby, eight hours at a stretch. When I awoke, I was in the same position as when I fell asleep. After years of being on Paxil, I decided to take myself off of it. It took months. If I missed a dose, my eyesight would jiggle. If I quit taking it cold turkey for a few days; not only would my eyesight jiggle, I would also be in a constant state of extreme anger.

So I went off of it very slowly, gradually reducing the size of the pill to a grain of sand. Now I'm back on the generic version of Paxil, and it's not helping in the least. So next time I get it filled, I'm going to get the brand name.

I don't like taking sleeping pills. I have to get up at 4am and sleeping pills leave me groggy half the day. That's way more miserable than staying awake all night. Years ago, my doctor put me on Halcion, telling me it was completely safe. One night I took the Halcion, then went out on the deck to relax in the lounge chair for a while. The next thing I knew, it was morning and I found myself in bed, fully dressed with even my shoes and socks. And I couldn't remember even going to bed. That was my last dose of Halcion. Later, I heard reports of people taking Halcion and waking up in other towns with no idea how they got there. So it's hard telling what I did on all those other nights and just never woke up until morning.

I remember being as young as four or five and not being able to sleep all night. One night I stared at the bedpost so long that it turned into the Wizard of Oz...and not the nice old man Oz behind the curtain, but the mean one that smelled of brimstone and screamed all the time. That's scary stuff for a five-year-old, but I never screamed. I was too scared to scream.

That same little kid used to lay awake and listen to the wooden stairs creak. I just knew those stairs were actually little bitty coffins, and at night the skeletons that lived in them would open the lids and come out. They'd spend a few hours every night going up and down those stairs. By morning, they were always back in their little stair coffins and quiet. At least those skeletons eventually got some sleep.

My insomnia got even worse as a teen. Being an avid reader, I would just turn on the light and pick up a book. But one night someone saw my light. The jerk knocked on one bedroom window three times, then went to the other window and knocked three times. I thought I was going to have a heart attack at 14! All I could do was shut off the light and lay there. That really happened. It wasn't a product of my fertile imagination and lack of sleep.

At least my insomnia is no longer accompanied by outright fear of skeletons or knocking neighbors. I have to have the TV on, mostly due to the tinnitus in my ears. The TV noise helps drown out the roaring and high-pitched noises playing in my head. I rarely ever get interested enough in something on TV to actually watch it, since about 90 percent of the TV channels have those stupid infomercials on all night.

Insomnia and fever are a really bad combination. When I was six, I had such a high fever that Mom put me in my little sister's crib to keep me from falling out of bed while I was thrashing around. The fever really stirred up my imagination.

Sometime in the middle of the night, a full-sized skeleton appeared in the doorway of my bedroom. This wasn't one of those little bitty guys that lived in the stair coffins. The skeleton started walking towards me, and as he walked, skin started appearing on his bones. By the time he reached the side of my bed and turned towards me, the skin had been covered by a suit. Then a face manifested itself. OH MY GOD...it was none other than... Lawrence Welk! He didn't have his baton with him, but I'm sure that would've been the next thing to materialize.

That was one time I was finally able to let out a really loud blood-curdling scream. As soon as Mom turned on the light, Lawrence vanished. Terrified, I had to tell her about the skeleton that grew skin, and then turned into Lawrence Welk. She must've thought I was nuts. That hallucination is still firmly embedded in my mind. And I never liked Lawrence Welk again.

Now when I have a fever, I end up in a halfway state of sleeping and being awake. A bizarre slide show plays in my mind. Thousands of Salvador Dali-like images play, flipping from one to the other in half-second increments. If I could only remember all of them and paint them like I see them, I'd be a rich artist. At least the slide show isn't scary. It's bizarre, but at least I'm not being scared out of my wits.

The lack of sleep doesn't keep me from going to work and being productive. That is, unless I am forced to sit in a meeting that holds absolutely no interest for me. At one meeting a few years ago, the room was packed. I wasn't able to sit at the conference room table, so I just grabbed a chair. During the next hour, I did everything I know to do to stay awake. I fidgeted and changed positions constantly, but it didn't do much good. At one point, I leaned forward and put my arms on my knees. That was a bad move. I fell asleep and began to tumble forward out of the chair.

Luckily, I woke up halfway between the chair and hitting the floor with my head. I caught myself with my hand. Then I pretended to have dropped something and acted like I was merely picking up something I'd dropped. I just hoped to God I hadn't been snoring.

Well, it's getting to be close to a normal bedtime. I like to get my pajamas on fairly early, and watch a little TV in the living room. But lately, I've been sitting in front of the PC. That may be part of my recent "really-bad" insomnia problems. So for now, I think I'll sign off...get my jammies on, brush my teeth, and take my meds. But if you see another blog I've written tonight, you know I've failed again.

...wish me luck and sweet dreams.