politricks and other distractions

It's an Ambien World

We've heard about how people who take Ambien are sleeping driving and sleep eating, now it seems "sleep-divorcing" is happening. Of course, if I were a woman in a country where a man could divorce me by just saying "I divorce you" three times, I might claim I heard him say it in his sleep, too.

I doubt, somehow, that Ambien is to blame in this case of sleep-divorce in India. But it does bring up the issue that people everywhere are having a hard time sleeping. I'm not the only person I know taking Ambien occasionally. I have friends who can't get through a night without it - and one who has to take it in combination with another drug to make it work. What are we doing to ourselves?

My current sleeplessness is about, as usual, work. I bolt awake around 2 am many nights, wondering what I'm doing trying to start my own business when I have a mortgage to pay and a dog to support. The mind fills with "what ifs" and leads to several hours of tossing and turning. Sometimes I get up and make my dog keep my company in hopes that the sound of her snoring will lull me back to sleep. It's times like that that I'll reach into the night stand and break off half a tab of that dreaded pharmaceutical to knock me out. I hate to respond so well to it - and to the ads that promise a new controlled release version that will get me past 2 am.

But more and more of us are dreading bed and sleepwalking through our days. Is it the constant diet of fear we're fed? Is it too many bills and not enough jobs to pay them with? Children? School? Living up to high expectations?

I don't know what the answer is. I'm walking an hour a day up and down the hills around my house, in hopes that exercise will soothe the brain. It's not helping yet, but at least I'm not getting flabby as I work at the computer all day.

And it's spring in Oregon. Who wants to be inside and unconscious? Maybe sleep is over-rated after all.

posted by dcnative @ 10:02 AM