The Godfather: Peter Corris on those long sleepless nights
For more than 69 years I never had any trouble sleeping. As a kid I was very active, riding a bike to and from school and playing back-yard and street cricket and football after school until darkness fell. Later I pounded a tennis ball against the back wall of the house for hours, wearing patches in the lawn, to my father’s distress. As a teenager I played club tennis at the weekends, singles and doubles. Most weekend nights I was knackered.
I was a hard worker at university, putting in long hours at the library and preparing for exams. As a graduate student I did likewise; I burnt the midnight oil but never stayed up all night. Nothing much changed in that regard as the years went by. As a partner and father, as a teacher and writer, I had my share of emotional ups and downs, excitements and regrets, but my sleep never really suffered.
All that changed early in 2012 when I was in a rehabilitation hospital for six weeks following an accident in which my leg was badly broken. Initially, I was given a drug, an opiate of some kind, to ease discomfort from the damaged leg at night. I slept deeply.
Then, after about three weeks, the drug was withdrawn, presumably to avoid the risk of dependence and because such drugs cause constipation. I was distressed to find that I couldn’t get to sleep. I was given paracetamol, which didn’t help. Despite being tired after two gym sessions each day, I found myself reading until beyond midnight and then limping about the corridors trying to tire myself out.
The insomnia has persisted from time to time ever since. At home I’ve sometimes had the – for me – novel experience of staying awake all night, reading and writing, until mid-morning, when I’ve been able to get to sleep at last. I consulted doctors and was prescribed sleeping pills. When they worked, which wasn’t always, I felt stunned and wretched the next day.
As things stand now, insomnia can reach out and grab me unexpectedly. I can go days and even a fortnight without the problem and then be unable to sleep until 3 am. It is a torment and I find it almost humiliating to lie awake, my head buzzing with inconsequential debris – snatches of dialogue from films, lyrics from popular songs, desperate attempts to recall unimportant names and dates.
As far as I am aware I don’t have any anxieties or serious misgivings. Age is no doubt a contributing factor, older people needing less sleep, and I can’t exercise as I would like to because of health problems. This column is being written at 2 am during one such sleep-deprived night. I am wide awake, not yawning. The only benefit from what I feel as an affliction is that writing cleans out the mental detritus and I can get a hell of a lot of reading done.
Must be sure my Kindle is fully charged.
Hope you sleep well tonight and many thereafter. This not sleeping is a DREADFUL affliction. Too many of us suffer it. Keep up your great writing and inspirational being regardless!
Thanks for the kind words. Luckily the problem isn’t constant with me.
I’ve rarely gone to bed much before 2 a.m. since my twenties. Usually wake up refreshed about 7 a.m. the next morning. I sleep best when I’ve watched a film on DVD from midnight until 2. If I go to bed too early, say at at midnight, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to go back to sleep. Perhaps your sleep cycle has simply switched to the 2-to-morning schedule.
You seem to have it licked. I don’t mind when sleep is possible at 2 am, pretty disturbing when I’m wakeful into the next day. But it’s intermittent.
Apparently taking sleeping pills or medication is harmful to your body if you take it for longer than one week. It upsets your body’s natural cycle. I have no problems going to sleep but wake up sometimes in the middle of the night, and once I begin thinking of next day’s work I am still wide awake one hour later. Instead of counting sheep, here are a few suggestions:
1. Imagine you are going to a shopping mall, and fill your non-existent shopping cart item by item in your mind, I know pretty much what’s in my refrigerator and freezer so I can tell myself not to buy this or that item this week. The bigger the shopping mall the better, the more detailed your “shopping” the better. Didn’t they have this item or that one in stock this week? No matter, you’ll get it next week. And so on. After a while your mind stops churning and… presto! You’re asleep.
2. Drink half a glass of port wine while doing paperwork, looking up what on TV tomorrow, etc, for about half an hour. For me this works every single time, but I tend to wake up a few hours later and then I don’t want to repeat this as I don’t want to turn into an alcoholic.
3. Review a book in your mind. Don’t just review it, but try and remember the names of all the major characters, what they’re doing for a living, where they live, what car they’re driving, and so forth. As I “review” books in my mind in a language that is not my own, it takes a special effort, my mind relaxes and I go to sleep.
Why don’t you try it and see whether e it works for you? Good luck!
Luc
Am also an insomniac. What is really annoying is being too tired to get up and do something useful – too tired to write for example. I do catch up with a lot of reading – news and other bits and pieces on my phone though. Nice post about sleeplessness from Douglas Kennedy yesterday http://tinyurl.com/bnp5wrc
Paula