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1 All I want to do is sleep, slumber deliciously, dream deeply, wake rested. At sleep, I'm a failure, failing at something that babies and dogs and the dead do so well. My mother tells me I slept poorly from the day I was born, and I'm inclined to think that since I emerged at 10:00 a.m., this is an appropriate time to rise. I was her only child of seven who had to be induced to birth with pitocin, which kicks the baby out of the womb. I was sleeping in the day of my birth. Late to my own party, my own life. I imagine I arrived tired and cranky, which, not surprisingly, has been my general disposition ever since. One of my earliest memories is of not sleeping. When I was five or six, my sister, Joanne, and I would sing in bed, but eventually Joanne's voice faded. I'd whisper, "Are you asleep?" Silence. I remember wondering when I would get to sleep, but knowing that as long as I was wondering this, I would not fall asleep, that I could not witness myself losing consciousness. Lying awake, waiting for sleep to drag me away like a huge wave at the beach, I'd trace my fingers on my wallpaper, like reading Braille, embossed ballerinas in arabesque, plié, en pointe. Pioneer muckraker Nellie Bly suffered insomnia as a child: "So active was the child's brain and so strongly her faculties eluded sleep that her condition became alarming and she had to be placed under the care of physicians." People with "nervous tension" may be more susceptible to insomnia, says Dr. Judith Davidson, who runs an insomnia clinic in Ottawa, Canada, "people with a tendency to worry and to internalize emotions." I was the nervous kid, the one who wrung her hands as her mother sewed a missing button on her blouse before school, worrying about missing the bus, on the verge of tears, racing out of the house as soon as my mother trimmed the thread (with her teeth, I recall), and still I was the first one at the bus stop. I am not alone tossing and turning in the stormy sea of my bed (meta-phorically speaking). Various polls and studies estimate that 35 to 40 million American adults suffer from a sleep disorder or are sleep deprived, with 20 million reporting chronic insomnia. A 2008 survey by the National Sleep Foundation found that 65% of U.S. adults experienced sleep problems at least a few nights a week, with 44% having trouble sleeping every night or almost every night. In 2007, U.S. doctors wrote 49 million prescriptions for sleep drugs--enough to soporate every person in South Korea or Spain or Iraq. Insomnia is classified by types: difficulty falling asleep (just seven minutes on average for "normals"--the term used by sleep researchers); difficulty staying asleep; and premature or early morning waking with inability to return to sleep, called "terminal insomnia," which makes me think I will die from lack of sleep. In fact, humans can survive longer without food than without sleep. (Sporadic fatal insomnia, a rare disease, progresses over several months from bouts of insomnia to panic attacks, hallucinations, a complete inability to sleep, dementia, and finally death.) The worst type, called "paninsomnia," a combination of the above three forms, is the type I routinely experience. Paninsomnia makes me think that no matter where in the world I am, I will not be able to sleep. If you are one of the "normals" who think this is not your concern, consider this: sleep deprivation and its concomitant fatigue were causal factors--at least partially--in some of the world's worst disasters. The third officer in charge of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker when it struck a reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound had slept only six hours in the preceding forty-eight. He fell asleep on... |