For as long as I can remember, it has always taken me a while to fall asleep. My parents attributed it to a very active imagination. My brain seemed to have needed a while to process events of the day, upcoming events and even just to work through spontaneous thoughts as they occurred before it finally decided to switch off into the land of nod. Even as a kid, when sharing a room with my brother, I marvelled at how he fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

I must have had the bugs even then, as I had psoriasis – even if it was fairly mild as a kid.

I have always had a pretty full-on life – lots of energy, lots of enthusiasm and lots of fun. I always took on responsibility; was always the person to arrange to socialise and I was never ever bored.

Nothing changed in that respect as I got older. I married at the age of 21; I continued to learn and educate and ended up with good jobs (an Optometrist back then) and I performed always to the best of my ability.

Then one Sunday evening, after a team building weekend with my work, back in 1989 (I was 26 years old then) – I went to bed. I was exhausted.

But my brain went through its normal process of contemplating things as usual – and it didn’t stop. I started to get a little concerned by about 4:00 AM as I knew I had a full day at work the next day. And then the alarm clock went off and I knew that I had not had a wink of sleep. I felt awful, but I shrugged it off as a strange occurrence; showered and got through a day of work.

On Monday evening, I told my wife that I was going to have an early night as I hadn’t slept. And, hey, guess what…same again. Alarm clock went, up, showered and off to work – decidedly frayed around the edges.

That night, I thought…right!! Time to share a bottle of wine with Helena and then I’ll have no problem. I went to bed, more than exhausted, but relaxed from the wine. But my damned brain wouldn’t rest. Alarm clock went – not a wink of sleep under my belt; had a shower and off to work, basically on autopilot.

It was Wednesday evening…this time, I was going to tackle it with Gin – and I did it with style. I went to bed and the bed span! Did I get to sleep – the hell I did! I had this horrible buzzing sensation in my head all the next and I found it very hard to focus on anything at work.

Next night, no booze – relaxation techniques (I was as tense as piano wire). No good – I looked at my wife snoring next to me and wondered if something was seriously wrong with me – I was feeling very desperate – had I gone mental? I took a couple of pain killers for the buzzing in my head – but really it was in the hope that they would somehow knock me out. Nope! The alarm clock went and I smashed it with a right hook that sent it crashing against the wall, rendering it back into its atomic state. Helena was a bit startled and suggested that I take a day off and go to the doctor.

The doctor told me that I must have gotten myself out of rhythm and prescribed some sleeping pills. I was desperate and asked him if he was sure that they would work. He was and assured me that what I was going through was very common…but I asked him “what if they don’t work?” He said, “Take another.” What if they still don’t work? “Take a third!” He must have thought I was a fruitcake!!

My appointment was in the morning and I promised myself that I wouldn’t take the pills until it was time for bed. I wanted to get back into a normal rhythm.

That evening, at 7:00 PM I took a pill and went to bed. I waited 20-minutes and nothing happened. My head was still buzzing. I took a second pill and waited another 15-minutes. Nothing happened and I was getting very very scared – I just couldn’t take another sleepless night. I took a third pill and waited 5-minutes – nothing. I got up and joined my wife in the kitchen. She was eating cheese and biscuits and I told her with tears streaming down my face that the pills were useless.

She told me to sit down and have some cheese and biscuits with her – she made one for me and I suddenly fell asleep face down into the garlic cheese. She hooked her arms under my armpits and dragged me off to bed – I slept for 18-hours.

From that night onwards, it was very rare that I got a full night’s uninterrupted sleep. I actually started to really fear my bed and bed-time as I never knew how it would turn out. On a bad night, I would not get a wink but mostly I would seem to fall asleep between one and four hours before I was due to get up again. If I fell asleep early, I would usually wake up again a couple of hours later. If the phone ever rang once I had fallen asleep; that was it – I knew that I would be awake all night.

The strange thing is that I felt that I would never have any problem falling asleep at any other time but bed-time. Falling asleep on the sofa during a film was not a problem – but I would always wake up. I could even power nap at lunchtimes! The doctors all thought it was psychological – maybe it was.

It was a very special kind of torture lying there, clear awake, knowing that I had a full packed day the next day – one that would require my full concentration. I couldn’t let people down – not at work, and not at any of my other pass-time activities.

But I learned to cope – I learned to function well on the four to five hours of sleep that I managed to scrape together. If I couldn’t fall asleep within a couple of hours, I would get up and do some study until I started to nod off over my keyboard and then drag myself off to bed – usually successfully. This was my strategy for many years and I managed to get myself a second degree, a post graduate diploma and a master’s out of it, studying part-time. I would avoid all sleep medication but would take 5mg of Valium if I had something extra important I had to do the next day.

This was my reality until I started the MP in 2003. It was then that everything changed. All of a sudden, I could fall asleep immediately after going to bed and it would be a full uninterrupted eight or nine hours sleep – every time. I truly felt like a new person, and it was blissful! Oh, sure, I would have the odd herxy interruptions but nothing major. At first I didn’t trust it – it was too good to be true – I was sure the insomnia would return. But it has now been 20-months of good regular sleep and I believe that it is for keeps.

I know that everybody reacts differently to MP, but this is how I have reacted and I wonder now how I ever coped. I get tired these days when I don’t get my 8-hours.

Give me back my coughing; give me back my breathlessness; give me back my memory problems; even give me back my kidney stones - anything rather than letting my Insomnia return. Thank you MP!

PS...I read a really good article about insomnia written in Swedish. It likened falling asleep to catching a train – a train that takes you to the land of sleep…the sleep train.

For normal people, the train stops at the station and waits for the passenger to get to the station to board it – for insomniacs, the train arrives and leaves so fast, that if you are not there at exactly the right time, and if you are not fast enough to board it – you miss it. You have to hang around and wait for the next one – you never know when it will arrive, and sometimes it just doesn’t come. This is why, they say, that establishing a routine that you strictly adhere to before bed (your journey to the station) is very important.

My only reservation to this analogy is that, in my case, the train didn’t always stick to the time-table – and, very often, even if I did catch the train, the ride would only last a couple of hours. I did like the analogy though.
 

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