SNOOZE, YOU LOSE
Rather than feel slumber-deprived, insomnia fuelled a way back into life
I have insomnia and not only does it not bother me, but I have come to enjoy it.
Before I came to this land of perpetual consciousness, insomnia struck me as a nightmare not bearing contemplation. While my companions tossed and turned, counted sheep and watched clocks, I submerged into somnolence like a dolphin diving down into the blue.
I slept in cars, on planes, on beaches, by swimming pools. Once, in the same day, I slept in the Knesset, at an Israeli Guide Dog Training School and in a Haganah bunker turned museum.
And I wasn’t even hungover. But for the past three years, I’ve been sleeping around three hours a night. Why?
To be blunt, it started when my son, Jack, committed suicide in the summer of 2015; the sleepless nights that I lived through for the rest of that year were sad, to say the least.
But as the sorrow faded, the insomnia stayed; as I started to feel my way back into life, I relearned all the habits of happiness — except sleep.
Sleep deprivation is the new mania of the worried well. Insomnia has become the subject of competitive boasting on Facebook, a platform that I’ve come to appreciate more in my wakeful years, as there’s always someone awake on another continent.
There are books about how to get it and courses on how to do it; if sleep hygiene is the new clean eating, then sleep is the new sex. All those years when “sleeping together” was a yearning metaphor, now many people are seeking sex as an aid to a good night’s sleep.
I’m not denying these experiences, but I’d be lying if I said that insomnia has ruined my life; during it, I’ve cheered up immensely, lost loads of weight, and co-written a brilliant play about sex and Brexit — People Like Us, which will debut this fall.
I know my experience is not typical.
For a start, my lifestyle and character make sleeplessness far easier for me to handle than it might be for others.
I am an only child, keen on both their own company and on being married, thus I love being awake, alone at 4 a.m., even if I only got to sleep well after midnight. Being wide awake this early feels like I’m part of a secret, solitary world of people, free of having human society thrust upon them, but also free to access it at the touch of a button.
It’s true that sleeplessness can cause depression, weight gain and mental illness, as well as putting people at greater risk of strokes, heart attacks and diabetes, but the blood tests I had this year came back clear. I haven’t even had a cold during my restless years, while all around me well-rested mates go down like runny-nosed nine-pins.
We’re told that insomnia makes people stupid. But I’m pretty sure that hardcore insomniac Samuel Johnson didn’t feel that way when he was putting together his Dictionary of the English Language on a couple of hours a night. It’s like those claims that exercise is good for the brain. If that was true, athletes and trainers would be the cleverest people on earth. Or that clean living will lead to good looks, and then you look at supermodel Kate Moss. We don’t expect one size to fit all in appetites for food, sex and music, so why should sleep be different?
A study published some years ago in Science magazine reported the discovery of a genetic mutation which estimated that around five per cent of the population can show no signs of deterioration on far less than the mandatory eight hours. And the idea that more sleep per se makes a happier life is one I question; some of the saddest people I know sleep a lot. Indeed, I witnessed this at first hand when my son was in the extreme phase of his mental illness and, clinically depressed, he could easily sleep the entire day away.
There seems something perverse about the idea of striving for more unconsciousness when, let’s face it, we’ll all be unconscious forever soon enough.
Loss of sleep may be the price we pay for knowledge; babies sleep the most, teenagers easily get 10 hours, but when I was a girl sleeping over at my grandmother’s house, I’d be amazed that, whatever time I woke up, she’d always be bustling about. Babies don’t know they’ll die one day and teenagers believe they’re immortal, but I’ll be 60 next year; one day relatively soon, I won’t wake up. Maybe that’s why I call my insomnia “Extra Life.”
And if at my age I’m still so excited about being alive that I leap out of bed at daybreak, I’m not complaining.
The Sunday Telegraph