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Jan. 20th, 2003 01:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
strange_aeonsI have insomnia. This must come as a tremendous surprise to all three of you who are actually reading this and haven't already been told, at length, in tones of despair and frustration, because it's not as though I have the classic insomniac's personality. And even if I do, well, I have a very coffee-drinker sort of personality, but you don't see me with a mug grafted to my hand, do you?
What this means is that periodically I have to fix my sleep cycle, because I find myself becoming crepuscular. (I'm seasonal affective, so that's bad.) I've found only two ways of doing this. One involves waking up whenever I do — generally far too late in the afternoon — and staying awake until some reasonable hour of the next day, whereupon I fall into bed, sleep deeply and soundly, and wake up bright-eyed and bushy-haired the next day.
This does not work, except for the bit about my hair, which would do that anyway.
If I manage to stay awake for that long, rather than giving up and taking a ten-hour 'nap' at four in the afternoon, I will not fall asleep at a reasonable hour the next day. I will invariably fall asleep at five in the morning the day after next. So not only do I have to deal with residual psychosis from sleep deprivation, I'm discouraged, and I spend the rest of the week not knowing what day it is. Plus, six in the morning is the most boring hour of the day. If I'm tired, I'm not usually able to stay awake through it without a lot of help.
The other way is drugs.
See, my roommate is like a walking apothecarist's, and she doesn't mind me raiding the medicine cabinet occasionally because I'm much, much easier to live with when I've had enough sleep. I don't generally have anything of note in there, because I have to be held down and shouted at before it will occur to me to take medication when I'm sick or injured, so buying it when I'm not is out of the question, and I'm not on any prescriptions. I may have some epinephrine around somewhere. Anyway.
I tried the drug tactic a few months ago, with a muscle relaxant the name of which escapes me. I have a good history with muscle relaxants. I've had a couple of injuries that compelled me to use them, and they've always knocked me out. Not this time, though. No, this time I spent the entire night lying awake in bed, very relaxed but fully conscious. I finally went downstairs to the computer sometime after dawn, and discovered that I hadn't the willpower to make myself sit up properly or, you know, type. I spent most of the rest of the day on the couch. Sitting perfectly still had never been so pleasurable.
Last night I tried Promethazine, an anti-emetic known to friends who can afford brand name as the somewhat less silly Phenergan. It worked ... sort of. I'm naturally inclined to sleep not in a long block but in a lot of ten- to sixty-minute chunks interspersed with irritable wakefulness, and this is what Phenergan gave me, just a few hours earlier than it would have come on its own. I still feel sleepy, but I'm not sure if that's just because I didn't sleep very well, or if it's the drug. My roommate, when she described Phenergan's relevant side effect, used the word 'delicious'. The sleep I got was not 'delicious'. I feel cheated.
And then there is Benadryl, the perennial favorite, which clears my nasal passages and gives me eight hours of sound sleep, and which I am perpetually out of. I need to buy some fucking Benadryl. Somebody remind me on Thursday.
(Look, when I say 'tomorrow', obviously I mean sometime next week, maybe, if I feel like it.)
What this means is that periodically I have to fix my sleep cycle, because I find myself becoming crepuscular. (I'm seasonal affective, so that's bad.) I've found only two ways of doing this. One involves waking up whenever I do — generally far too late in the afternoon — and staying awake until some reasonable hour of the next day, whereupon I fall into bed, sleep deeply and soundly, and wake up bright-eyed and bushy-haired the next day.
This does not work, except for the bit about my hair, which would do that anyway.
If I manage to stay awake for that long, rather than giving up and taking a ten-hour 'nap' at four in the afternoon, I will not fall asleep at a reasonable hour the next day. I will invariably fall asleep at five in the morning the day after next. So not only do I have to deal with residual psychosis from sleep deprivation, I'm discouraged, and I spend the rest of the week not knowing what day it is. Plus, six in the morning is the most boring hour of the day. If I'm tired, I'm not usually able to stay awake through it without a lot of help.
The other way is drugs.
See, my roommate is like a walking apothecarist's, and she doesn't mind me raiding the medicine cabinet occasionally because I'm much, much easier to live with when I've had enough sleep. I don't generally have anything of note in there, because I have to be held down and shouted at before it will occur to me to take medication when I'm sick or injured, so buying it when I'm not is out of the question, and I'm not on any prescriptions. I may have some epinephrine around somewhere. Anyway.
I tried the drug tactic a few months ago, with a muscle relaxant the name of which escapes me. I have a good history with muscle relaxants. I've had a couple of injuries that compelled me to use them, and they've always knocked me out. Not this time, though. No, this time I spent the entire night lying awake in bed, very relaxed but fully conscious. I finally went downstairs to the computer sometime after dawn, and discovered that I hadn't the willpower to make myself sit up properly or, you know, type. I spent most of the rest of the day on the couch. Sitting perfectly still had never been so pleasurable.
Last night I tried Promethazine, an anti-emetic known to friends who can afford brand name as the somewhat less silly Phenergan. It worked ... sort of. I'm naturally inclined to sleep not in a long block but in a lot of ten- to sixty-minute chunks interspersed with irritable wakefulness, and this is what Phenergan gave me, just a few hours earlier than it would have come on its own. I still feel sleepy, but I'm not sure if that's just because I didn't sleep very well, or if it's the drug. My roommate, when she described Phenergan's relevant side effect, used the word 'delicious'. The sleep I got was not 'delicious'. I feel cheated.
And then there is Benadryl, the perennial favorite, which clears my nasal passages and gives me eight hours of sound sleep, and which I am perpetually out of. I need to buy some fucking Benadryl. Somebody remind me on Thursday.
(Look, when I say 'tomorrow', obviously I mean sometime next week, maybe, if I feel like it.)
