Sleeping Tips

Originally written 1/3/8

So you can’t sleep either, huh? Neither can I. I have trouble falling asleep. I have trouble staying asleep. I have trouble getting up from sleep. I tried to start a sleep-sufferers support group. No one ever showed up. I held the meetings at 3 AM, so it shouldn’t have been a problem for anyone.

For almost as far back as I can remember, I have had trouble falling asleep. It’s never been easy for me. I’d just lie there in bed, wondering where the Sandman was. At least with Santa, you knew to leave out milk and cookies. What do you leave out for the Sandman? Warm milk and cookies?

Now that I am well into adulthood, this problem hasn’t eased. It also doesn’t help that my wife is a total narcoleptic. She can fall asleep at the drop of a hat. No, really, I’ve timed it. As soon as her head hits the pillow, I drop a hat, and before it hits the ground, she is asleep. Damn, this fires me up. She can literally fall asleep anywhere. I’ve found her passed out dozens of times with a book in her hand. I’ve found her sleeping on the couch, remote on the floor and being chewed by the dog. I’ve found her sitting up. I’ve found her sitting down. (If I was Dr. Seuss, I would tell you she does it all over town.) I’ve often said she could fall asleep on a bed of nails that were on fire.

So that doesn’t help my case. I’m struggling to fall asleep, and there she is right next to me. Gently snoring. I don’t know how she got this problem beat. I will ponder it the rest of the long, dark night.

You’ve no doubt done some research on the topic. You know to only sleep in your bed, and not do anything else. Well, almost anything else. You know to make it dark and cool. You’ve read to not take caffeine before hitting the sack. Don’t watch TV in bed (yea, right). Make sure your bed is comfortable. So who am I to tell you what works? I am no doctor, just one of millions of net-sperts on the topic. I will tell you of what works for me, and you can fell free to try them out.

Reading before bed sometimes work for me. It doesn’t seem to matter the topic, as long as it’s something I enjoy. However, it’s probably a bad idea to read about nightmare interpretation. I’m not the best reader in the world, so for the sake of easy bookmarking, you might want to get a book with smaller chapters. There’s nothing worse then getting halfway in a chapter, putting the book down, and upon resuming, realizing you forgot what just happened.

I also watch TV to fall asleep. I know this is frowned upon by some, but it generally works for me. Here you have more options. I like to watch something boring as all get out. Man, if there’s a late night baseball game on, forget about it, I’m out like a light. What could be more boring than watching a bunch of drugged out millionaires trying to hit a ball with a stick and run around in circles? I can watch baseball in the middle of the day, and it has the same effect. You really want to find boring programming. Infomercials are a wonderful aid in getting you some shut eye. Over the years, I’ve had every iteration of the Ginsu put me down. There’s nothing like some c-level celebrity telling me how I have to check out this time share. If it’s good enough for Ponch, then it must be good enough for me.

Other favorite infomercials are anything to do with health and beauty. You see every kind of suspect gadget and snake oil. There’s Tony Little on some sort of contraption. There’s Jaclyn Smith going on about some sort of skin cream. Seriously, if you’re up buying that stuff at 4 in the morning, sleep deprivation is just one of your many problems.

Music works for me, but it has to be specific. It has to be mellow. And the volume has to be low, to the point where you can gently hear the music. I found this one group, The Blue Nile, who did this CD called Hats that I have listened to just as many times awake as asleep. So I recommend putting in your favorite mellow CD (or mix on the iPod) and letting the music be Calgon and take you away. Also, personal experimentation has shown no known link that playing REM will, in fact, lead to REM sleep.

You can always try the warm milk route. I don’t know about you, but my bladder doesn’t need any more encouragement to wake me up 3-4 times a night to go whiz. And then the whole cycle starts over again. But, on the odd occasion, I have found an exorbitant amount of alcohol has hastened my fall to sleep. I just don’t think we can actually count that as ‘sleep’ though. Especially when I wake up feeling like I need a nap. Kinda defeats the purpose.

A few Xmas’s ago, my wife got me one of those alarm clocks that plays nature sound effects and shoots the time up on the ceiling. I have found this to be relaxing, and I use it more than the underwear and socks I got that year. I have the time projecting on the ceiling right above me. This puts a nice blue glow in the room. The bad thing is that when I have trouble falling asleep, there’s the time, staring down at me. Mocking me in all its eerie blue glory. We recently started using a humidifier on my wife’s side of the room. The humidifier glows green. It’s almost laser Floyd. Without the music. Or the weed.

Some of the sound effects help me, but not all. It is pretty cool to hear the ocean in land locked Pennsylvania. The summer evening effect is cool to hear to drown out the humidifier. Rainforest is cool to listen to as I hear the snow and ice bounce off our windows. However, waterfall is nothing but white noise, and thunderstorm sounds like someone breathing. Yea, I don’t think that is gonna help me.

If none of this works, I have one trick left for you. If I don’t feel tired yet, I’ll go to the next room and read my work email, memos, announcements, etc. I mean, if this stuff puts me to sleep at 2 PM, it will do the same thing at 2 AM. There have been times I’ve woken up in my office, heels up on the desk, leaning back in my chair, drool running down my chin. If you feel so inspired, you can also send out an email or two. This creates the illusion you work late into the night.

I’ve never gone the medication route; not even the over-the-counter stuff. I’d be too worried I’d overdose. I could see it in the Twilight Zone already; poor sucker who tried everything to sleep finally finds sleep via drugs. Then overdoses to the big sleep. Not the way I’d wanna go out.

Still, I know there will always be the occasional night where none of this stuff works. It’s just me versus the night. My mind will race out of control. I will find myself worrying; worrying about the job, worrying about money, worrying about the future, etc. Sometimes, the darkness just wins.

So those are my tips. I hope they help. I can also say I hope this is the only time I hope something I wrote put someone to sleep.