Confessions of a Professional Insomniac: The Blog

Los Angeles [2:30 a.m.]

I’ve been a professional insomniac for as long as I can remember. Of course, when you’ve been sleep deprived for as long as I have, it’s a wonder I can remember much of anything at all, the cumulative effect of prolonged sleep deprivation being the eventual erasure of all memory, both short term AND long term! (Okay, maybe I’m making THAT up, but it sounds good.)

From what I can recall, my career as a professional insomniac apparently had its roots very early on in my life. In fact, I have a fleeting memory of myself as a very small child, lying in bed eyes wide open, staring unblinkingly into the dark until colors and kaleidoscopic shapes would appear before me! Why I did this is anyone’s guess. I’m not sure if I was afraid of sleep, or afraid of the dark – perhaps it was a little of both. Maybe, too, I was merely a wee bit unhinged!

Over the years, I’ve considered many antidotes, remedies, or placebos. I say “considered” because, if the truth be told, I haven’t actually tried many – oh, did I say “many”?! I meant to say “ANY”! I did recently have a very brief flirtation with the idea of maybe trying a prescription sleep aid. Along these lines, I’d heard of something called “Ambien”. Prudent insomniac that I am, I figured I should first check out the relative side effects (“diarrhea; dizziness; drowsiness (including daytime drowsiness); ‘drugged’ feeling; dry mouth; headache; nausea; nose or throat irritation; sluggishness; stomach upset…”). Since I figure I can easily get these particular ailments WITHOUT the help of Ambien, I’ve decided to forego its usage. Besides which, I already experience “daytime drowsiness” from lack of sleep so why should I take a SLEEP AID to get the same effect?!

Some caring friends will now and again propose various sleep-aid suggestions (e.g., “just lie there, empty your mind and try not to think of anything…”) and my friend, Jeremy recently suggested I try counting the CAT (as opposed to ‘counting sheep’), so I dutifully counted the number of times the cat jumped on and off the bed -- “1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1…” Other than giving the appearance of speaking in BINARY CODE, nothing happened, save that the CAT got very bored and left me to pursue more interesting catty endeavors, and I still didn’t sleep (thanks though, Jeremy – I appreciate the thought, no matter how mental).

But don’t feel too badly for me – I’m comforted by the knowledge that there exist legions of similarly afflicted kindred spirits somewhere out there, pacing the carpet, staring at the TV, or surfing the Internet into the wee hours. In fact, looking on the bright side, no matter how late I happen to be up, there’s always someone else awake on some other part of the globe (of course, they’re probably also in a completely different TIME ZONE!) so I know I’m never really alone, which is a comforting thought. In closing, to those of you who DO sleep, I say “sweet dreams” and to all the others I say, welcome to the club and since I’m presently writing this in the wee small hours, I’ll see you shortly -- and we’ll sleep … eventually.