I’ve always had trouble sleeping. When I was in high school I’d lay awake listening to KSFO, when it had a Comedy Hour and wasn’t Fascist talk radio 24/7. The best sleep I ever had was when I lived next to some railroad tracks — after a week of not sleeping at all, I started sleeping like a rock. When I lived in Studio City I told Darin I couldn’t sleep, and on the weekends when he came to visit he’d hear the shouting and ruckus going on and he’d say, “I think I know why you can’t sleep.” Even after 20 years I have trouble falling asleep if Darin isn’t with me.
Being able to fall asleep isn’t even the worst part of sleep, for me. Because eventually I always pass out. No, the problem with me is that I don’t stay asleep. I often wake up two or three times a night to use the bathroom. For a while I was fully awake at 3:33 in the morning — why that time? Was it significant? Was there something noise happening in the house that woke me up at 3:33? (Seriously, I even checked our watering system to see if it was coming on then.)
I worked on the problem with needing to pee: I stopped drinking anything after dinner. No comforting cup of Good Earth tea. As little water as I could stand. I noticed I slept poorly on nights after I had chocolate ice cream, so no chocolate ice cream after 6pm (which generally means…no chocolate ice cream).
Still kept waking up.
I started taking melatonin, which was popular for a while as the sleep aid that helped reset your internal clock. Except I noticed that it gave me a hangover. I’d fall asleep right away, with almost 99% certainty, and I’d sleep at least 6 hours straight, but in the morning I’d wake up still tired, my head pounding, not feeling as though I’d been asleep at all. I went from a 5mg dose to a 1mg dose. 1mg a)did put me to sleep and b)gave me a hangover.
I stopped using it. You’re not supposed to use it for very long anyhow — just enough to set your Circadian rhythms.
When you can’t sleep you’ll try everything.
On some web page I read about or maybe just on the shelf next to the melatonin I saw this product called GABA Calm. A sublingual tablet that would help you fall asleep.
And it worked. On nights when I couldn’t fall asleep, I would use one GABA Calm and with probably 85% accuracy I would be asleep within minutes. I would stay asleep for at least 6 hours straight. When I woke up in the morning, I could remember my dreams and my head felt fine.
Of course, the Wikipedia page about GABA (the main ingredient) says that the claims that GABA enhances calmness are probably false, because there’s no evidence that GABA crosses the blood-brain barrier. Well, okay, maybe these are extraordinarily effective placebos.
Who cares? I was sleeping six hours without interruption. Trust me, that was huge.
When I was taking antidepressants (having since stopped, because of a regular exercise program — don’t try this at home, talk to your doctor first), one that he wanted to try was called gabapentin, because it’s often prescribed off-label for anxiety disorders. Apparently it gets prescribed for a whole bunch of stuff:
Gabapentin is used primarily for the treatment of seizures, neuropathic pain, and hot flashes. There are, however, concerns regarding the quality of the research on its use to treat migraines, bipolar disorders, and pain.
Well, I don’t have any menopausal symptoms yet, so I don’t know if it helps with that, personally. I never noticed gabapentin having an effect on my mood (exercise worked much more regularly for me), but WOW did it knock me out. I had a crazy amount of dreams every night, extraordinarily vivid, and I woke up feeling almost refreshed. Which was awesome!
Then taking two pills at night started leaving me a little groggy, so I moved down to one pill.
Which now leaves me groggy and feeling slightly hungover in the morning…but I do sleep 8 straight hours if I take it. If I don’t take it…chances are I won’t sleep any more than 2-3 hours straight.
I refill my prescription for gabapentin whenever I run low, but I don’t take it every night any more. If I’m still awake at 1am, I take one.
I’ve gotten hardcore on anything that might be keeping me awake: I stopped drinking anything caffeinated after 12noon (since adjusted to 3pm, which seems to be my upper boundary for effects). I exercise frequently, but not even running a marathon is a sure thing for knocking me out, so who knows. I read boring books until I feel my eyelids start to droop.
I have considered going to the Stanford sleep clinic to see if there’s something else going on.
Because I’m not living next to train tracks again, no matter how poorly I sleep.
I’m a pretty good sleeper (knock wood), but during my first pregnancy (a long long time ago), I woke up every night at 3:33. Some nights I would wake up and look immediately at the clock, other nights I’d lay there a bit before looking, always 3:33. I investigated, too, trying to figure out what might be waking me, but I never found anything. Every once in a while it still happens, and I think it must be coincidence, but it still sort of freaks me out.