Tag: insomnia

Pill pals

~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

I’m an anxious person, shaky and fretful, and when anxiety gets the best of me, I pop a pill. I hold out as long as I can before grabbing the amber prescription bottle, but when the physical jitters and mental goblins won’t blow off, then it’s time for Clonazepam. Swallow, wait, ahh.

Sort of. But the meds — those sedatives, so tiny and pink they’re almost cute — can blunt the edge, like sanding a jagged thumbnail on an emery board. Magic? Hardly. Mellow? Kinda. 

I’ve blabbed about this, my fun, adorable neuroses, on these pages before. But it’s been a long time and things evolve. 

No. No they do not. 

I’m exactly in the same place I was in 2020, or, for that matter, 2010. I remain a quaking Jell-O mold, gulping pharmaceuticals to stanch dramatized grief. Get a therapist! you scream. Exactly a dozen therapists later, starting at age 13, I’ve sworn off them. They’ve been as helpful as talking to my dear Aunt Gladys, who’s deaf in one ear and has narcolepsy.

Meditation has been my most recent move. Like many novices, my frantic, hamster-wheel mind — Did I pay that bill? Should I call her? Do I have a brain tumor? — has so far derailed any quality concentration, but I’m working on it. Anything to snuff my mind’s overactive orgy of tripe and trivia.

The tiniest shard of unresolved thought can keep me up all night. So angst often translates to sheet-tearing insomnia. I will toss, turn, cuss up a storm. I finally convinced my doctor to prescribe me Xanax expressly for insomnia, as it is worrisomely habit-forming. (A previous doctor scoffed, “That stuff is crack.”) 

My sleep success rate with Xanax so far is about seventy percent, which I consider worthy of confetti and party horns. Yet when it doesn’t work, look out. My pillow becomes a cloud of fluttering feathers. I chew it. 

I take other meds for mental “stability” (insert: laugh track), but the anxiety tabs yield the most direct effect. The other ones are like background Muzak, a calm, ubiquitous hum. In thirty minutes or less, my low-dosage Clonazepam is like a mental muffle, quieting the chaos. (I’ve also tried cannabis gummies, but they just make me woolly and irrationally hungry. A whole box of Kraft Mac & Cheese, at midnight — not a good look.)

As I travel a lot, I’m blessed my anxiety is rarely a stowaway; it was never issued a passport. I’m sure that’s because I’m relieved of quotidian complaints and overblown worries, transported to a scrubbed reality. I’ve written: “In my travels, my angst all but evaporates. I am unshackled, life’s daily detritus dispersed by an existential leaf blower.” 

I don’t need the pills in, say, Paris, though I bring them along for backup in case life kicks in and I start pacing and perspiring through the hallowed halls of Musée d’Orsay. 

Who needs all this? It must stop. It’s not so easy, of course. I’m resigned to being wired this way, though nostrums like meditation and mindfulness and all that cognitive crap pave avenues of mild hope.

Meantime I have the sweet companionship of Clonazepam, itty pink pills that chirp, “It’s okay, pal. I’m here to soothe the dread and iron out life’s pesky wrinkles.”

I’ve heard it all before. Almost daily. I don’t believe a word of it.

A tossed salad of topics, memoirs to movies

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

In these mid-summer doldrums, a few rambling thoughts that amount to nothing in particular …

Best sentence all summer: “Her lipstick is a philosophically incomprehensible shade of chalky orange.” (From “Eve’s Hollywood” by Eve Babitz.)  

I have yet to read a memoir that didn’t bore me silly or raise an eyebrow or two. Nabokov’s “Speak, Memory” is a possible exception, and “Eve’s Hollywood” definitely is. I’m skeptical of minutiae only the writer cares about, like how their father flew planes in World War II and their sister married an alcoholic son of a bitch. I can hardly believe a word of what the authors say, especially when they do things like insert direct quotes they muttered as toddlers, forty years after the fact. (See: Mary Karr’s aptly titled “The Liars’ Club.”) It’s all magnificent hooey.

I’m sleeping like crap. Nothing new, but I’m locked in a stretch of relentless insomnia. I called my doctor and he gave me a low dose of Lunesta. It’s done nothing, even when I take more than the prescribed amount (whoopsie). I pop Benadryl and a dorky over the counter sleep aid as well. I’m all drugged up and I still don’t nod off till 4 or 5 or 6. Then I sleep till 9 and awake vaguely refreshed with murder on the mind. I feel like a Stephen King character.

Kamala’s got me revved. For now. The initial blast of flowers and fireworks — her spontaneous honeymoon — is about over, and now she must face the music … er, the monster. Trump, a hopeless buffoon, bigot and playground bully, will meet his match in the debates. Kamala will be the buzzsaw that Trump’s ignorant, lying face encounters and it will be beautiful. That ear boo-boo Trump’s so proud of will be shown for the nothing it is, except symbolic and specious martyrdom. He keeps blathering about the American “bloodbath.” Yes, indeed.

As always, I’ve been watching lots of classic movies from early and midcentury Hollywood — the Golden Age of pictures when men were either gruff or suave (and glistening with pomade) and women were silky and soft-focus, radiating unreachable glamor. Black and white was king and the best pics were positively charged with swoony cinematography and dazzling chiaroscuro. Those were the days. (And I’m someone who name-checks “Alien” and “Jaws” among his favorite films, alongside “All About Eve” and “The Big Sleep.”) Recent viewings: “The Big Heat,” a crackerjack 1953 crime thriller by Fritz Lang, starring Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame, who gets a pot of scalding coffee tossed in her face by Lee Marvin and has to wear a giant bandage for half the movie; the unbearably charming Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in the 1937 screwball marriage/divorce romp “The Awful Truth,” which features the brilliant dog Skippy, who also plays Asta in the great “Thin Man” films; and 1955’s “The Big Knife,” where a fist-tight Jack Palance is a movie star sucked into the manipulative corruptions of fame. A rabid Rod Steiger noshes the scenery like it’s beef jerky. And that’s just three oldies I’ve recently watched (I’ve seen them all before). They beat the living crud out of big, dopey summer blockbusters any day.

I bought a hair dryer. I swear to god. It cost $15. It screams like Janis Joplin.

 

Sleep? In my dreams

~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

Counting sheep is for chumps. When I can’t sleep I engage in fun activities:  tossing, turning, kicking, getting up, lying back down, pounding the pillow, cursing like a Tarantino badass. It’s almost aerobic and so I don’t feel quite as horrible that I didn’t fall asleep until 5:36 a.m.

Wrong. It’s always crummy. I’ve had so many sleepless nights, I’m ready to press a pistol to my groggy noggin. Then, then, perhaps I’ll catch a few winks. But with my luck, no.

Why is insomnia so vexing? Partly because it’s so seemingly controllable. For instance, I won’t touch caffeine after 1 p.m. and even then the sandman, that skulking rascal, that creepy home intruder, will fail me badly. 

I can yawn all day, reading and writing, taking a brisk walk, watching some Netflix, and still I’m like Linda Blair in her jumpy two-poster bed, bloodshot eyes glaring at the ceiling, arms spread Christlike, mouth a satanic rictus, steam billowing from that hideous maw. (OK, that last bit is slightly embellished.)

I am possessed, but not by the devil. I am bedeviled by churning thoughts, junk my brain can’t turn off, even when — and this is true — I’ve taken a full eight Benadryl antihistamine pills, which are famous for their soporific powers. I know people who can take half a Benadryl and sleep through the next three days. Yet the stuff won’t pierce my impervious wakefulness.

Occasionally a Clonazepam or two works wonders. That is rare. And when I do nod off, I’m haunted by uncomfortably vivid dreams quivering with cameos by my late parents, old co-workers, deadlines, writing, weird travel, ex-girlfriends and a random monstrosity, like Marjorie Taylor Greene. I can’t remember the last time I had a truly pleasant dream. In that case, maybe sleep-deprivation is a blessing, not a pillow-punching curse.

Nope. I’d trade a long night of exasperating insomnia — which entails a full bleary-eyed day of feeling like the cranky undead — for a good snooze with bad dreams. Insomnia, after all, is a waking nightmare.

What am I on about? I’ve been sleeping pretty soundly lately, though the other night required pills and pejoratives to achieve a solid snooze. At one point, I kicked the comforter off the bed, bolted up and tried to read, fuming. It was well past 3 a.m. I read two pages, doused the lights, tossed, turned, eventually falling asleep around 6:30. I was a positive joy to be around that day. 

I can’t sleep on trains or planes, a bad look for this inveterate traveler. Once upon a time, equipped with an eye mask, ear plugs and the occasional jacket thrown over my head, I could zonk out on a red-eye flight. No more. For reasons unknown, I’m now Malcolm McDowell in “A Clockwork Orange,” eyelids cranked open with medieval clamps.

It’s all so tiresome, literally. I’d prefer eyes wide shut, to name-check another Kubrick film. For now it’s a battle, a nightly crap-shoot, will I snooze or lose? Let me sleep on it. Please.

Winkless at 35,000 feet

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

Right now it’s 104 degrees at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, which seems appropriate considering the facility’s infernal namesake. I have arrived from the East Coast, where it was 74 at 10 a.m. — it will hit 94 — and I am connecting to a flight that will take me to the land of 54 degrees, for it is winter in Buenos Aires, my latest destination on my quest to see as much of the world as I can before it blows up.

Hours later, I write this in the dark on a punishing nine-hour redeye during that weird interval when the pilot douses the cabin lights so his human cargo can go sleepy time. I’m a jet-plane insomniac so that trick ain’t working. Instead I atrophy in my seat, reading a bit, maybe watching a few minutes of a movie (or eavesdropping on what others are watching — almost uniform tripe), but mostly fiddling my brain’s thumbs and sneaking the occasional mini bottle of scotch that I smuggled aboard. (Contraband. I rule.)

Of course, as always, the guy next to me is comatose, swaddled in a blue airline blankie, a rivulet of drool squiggling down his chin — paradise. And there I’ll be when we disembark, sleep-deprived, pissed-off, testy, tetchy, impatient — and singing glory hallelujah I’m in South America, my first time on the continent! Bloodshot eyeballs, bewhiskered, frowzy hair — who cares. The miracle of modern aeronautics has delivered me someplace new and far, uncharted and exciting. I have no idea what I’m getting myself into.

And that’s the gist of it. No matter how physically miserable I am right now — there’s six hours left on the flight and I’ll be burning untold calories fidgeting, not to mention enduring fearsome temblors of turbulence — I still have much to look forward to, lots of which I’ll probably share here. 

Meanwhile, I have a funny novel to finish, some hooch to furtively sip and a few episodes of “Rick and Morty” to watch. Things could be a hell of a lot worse.

You are getting sleepy. Not.

~ Chris ~ 3 Comments

The other night I couldn’t sleep, so I took a dog sedative. 

That will do it, I thought. That will put me down like a tranquilized caribou. The Benadryl isn’t working, the Xanax has flopped. It’s 3 a.m. and time for the big guns, even though the dog, Cubby, weighs about as much as a couple of gallons of milk.

So how much doggie dope to take? I haven’t the foggiest. I don’t want a measly Cubby dose. Well, this chunky pill looks about right for an adult human. Gulp.

And it worked. A little before 4 a.m., the tossing, turning and cursing ceased. I was out, and it was good. I woke up with paws and a tail, but it was worth it.

My accursed insomnia comes in waves. I’ll have a few months of it, then it clears up and I sleep like a normal person, six to eight hours if I’m lucky. But those sleepless stretches are agony. So I medicate, with reckless abandon. 

And it rarely works. I’ve tried Ambien, melatonin, Benadryl, booze, Xanax and Clonazepam, sometimes all at once. Maybe they’re cancelling each other out.

Everyone sings the drowsy praises of Benadryl, a common over the counter antihistamine. I know people who can’t even wake up the next day if they take one and a half pills. That’s insane. I’ve taken up to eight Benadryl in one night and got zero winks. I think I need a shot of sodium Pentothal.

I don’t like how many drugs I ingest, everything from Pristiq and Benadryl, to Zyrtec and Xanax, to Clonazepam and Advil. My blood must be a sludgy brown, or a nuclear green. It can’t be good.

In college, the pharmacist at the student health center told me he puts nothing in his body medicinally, not even aspirin. I mulled if that was even humanly possible. I wonder where he is now. Probably a heroin addict. 

Last summer was especially slumber-free. When insomnia strikes, the mind reeling in futile spin cycles, I typically get up and try to make myself tired by doing stuff. I write, read, plan trips, watch videos, get a head start on the day’s online news. Once I went ahead and shaved in the middle of the night, an existential triumph of baby-soft smoothosity. And I rarely neglect my journal, like this bit from August:

“2:40 a.m. I cannot sleep and I’ve taken two Clonazepam, a Xanax, three Benadryl and three more just now, making that six Benadryl. I am tense and restless, bored. Went downstairs at 1 a.m. to read and sip a splash of rosé and still nothing. I’m so damn antsy. … 5 a.m. Cannot get to sleep. Two more Benadryl and whole body cramping and restless. No sleep whatsoever. Zonked in the head yet my body wants to run a 5K.”

Those are the tedious musings of a fatally bored, somewhat drugged individual. Where’s the dog pill when I need it?

About that pill: Turns out the sedative given Cubby to calm him before vet visits is an antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication for humans, so it’s not like I was eating dog food or committing a creepy interspecies caper. The pill is Trazodone, which in 2017 was the 30th most commonly prescribed medication in America. So I’m in good company.

Sleep shouldn’t be so elusive. While it’s a precious and pleasant commodity — cuddling, dreaming, flipping the pillow over to the cold side, snoring with roof-rattling gusto — snoozing is also mandatory. I for one become a deep-fried ogre without sleep. Just as scary: some reports say up to 50 percent of adults suffer chronic insomnia.

That’s a rotten figure, yet one that makes you think. Those hours swiped of sleep, when you’re desperately, hopelessly awake, can be surprisingly fertile. I can’t tell you how much world-travel mapping I’ve accomplished in the wee morning gloom of sleep deprivation.

Sure, I’d rather be unconscious and under the covers, but maybe some good can be wrung from the midnight malady. Maybe in the restless hush books can be read, letters written and Tokyo hotels booked. Maybe we can commune with ourselves with a kind of meditative calm and aloneness. Maybe, after all, sleep is for suckers.