THE ACCIDENTAL INSOMNIAC

Emily Hourican

Ilove sleep. I love it with a passion that is active, not passive. It is, for me, a friend, a comfort, a thing to be sought out and joyfully anticipated. I sleep because I love sleeping, not just because I need to rest. It’s a far bigger part of my life emotionally than simply the Yang to the day’s Ying, and always has been. I average a good eight hours, and will happily do nine.

I have used sleep to cope with bereavement, trauma, illness, stress and misery — all the usual arrows in life’s quiver. I have woken unwillingly for night feeds and gone straight back to sleep afterwards. I have slept through a lot of cancer treatment, only finding it eluded me towards the end when I was unable to eat, and discovered that no food and no sleep go hand-in-hand. For most of my life, sleep has been my front line of defence, my reliable go-to.

So when sleep abandoned me for about four months last year — literally dropped me, ghosted me even, like a really bad boyfriend — it was traumatic.

Suddenly, from one night to the next, my body forgot how to sleep. It no longer understood the mechanism by which consciousness yields to unconsciousness. This happened in early January, after a Christmas of being unusually tired. I had slept late most mornings, and by the time New Year rolled round, I was looking forward to getting back to a routine. I went to bed as usual on January 2, and I didn’t sleep. Didn’t sleep, didn’t sleep, didn’t sleep. Every time I dropped off, I woke within 10 minutes (yes, I checked), heart pounding and thudding as if someone had let a klaxon off beside me. Each time my mind dipped into the deep part of sleep, it was rudely ejected, thrown up and out, back into frantic consciousness.

I didn’t think much of it — one bad night. That can happen. But not twice. Certainly not night after night after night.

Days went by, then weeks. January moved into February, and I got to a stage where I thought I would never sleep again. Every night I went to bed and lay awake, calm initially, doing all the tried-and-tested, the deep breathing, yogic breathing, visualising, meditation, sleepy noises on an app someone suggested. As the hours wore on, I would become less calm, then not calm at all, and finally frantic. In the dark and lonely hours of the night, it takes a stronger person than me not to give in to dread, worry, agonising over things done, not done, done wrong. Yes, worry kept me awake, but it was being awake that started me worrying.

A friend recommended melatonin, which I bought online and took. I upped the exercise from running three times a week to running every day. I increased the distances, from 5k to 10k. I began to swim in the sea every day rather than once or twice a week — the icy water shocking me out of the grey lethargy that comes with too many nights spent too alive to the world around me. I started going to the gym again, which I had been neglecting because it’s boring and I prefer running.

I built up so many routines — fresh air, meditation, downtime, pre-bed stretches, morning yoga — and supplements (evening primrose, calcium, magnesium, B vitamins, L-theanine, CBD oil) that honestly, there was barely a second of the day that I was not prepping for bed. I tried Alexander Technique breathing, acupuncture, lavender, yoga, white noise, meditation, journaling, gratitude lists — many were expensive, and all were alien to someone who had only ever fallen into bed and fallen asleep. No caffeine, no alcohol, no sugar, no screens after 8pm, no working late, lots of wind-down time. After a few weeks, I was at risk of boring myself to sleep. Except of course I didn’t. I was bored, yes, but I was also sleepless.

Sometimes it worked — there were nights I went to bed and went to sleep like I used to — mostly it didn’t. Long, long nights of getting up at 2am, going downstairs, reading til 4am (thank you, Sinead Moriarty and Marian Keyes for keeping me company on those lonely night-time vigils), back to bed, sometimes a few hours of sleep. Sometimes not.

Over the weeks, I developed a kind of nipping anxiety that followed me around all day, like the frog from the well follows the princess in the fairy tale, even though she hates it. All day, I would contrive to ignore the frog, then, come night-time, it would crawl onto my pillow and spend the night right there, beside me, so that I could hear it breathe beside me in the dark: in, out, in, out, pouring rancid thoughts into my face.

I was so tense that my shoulders ached and my step-by-step whole-body relaxation exercises were reversed even before I got to my toes. No sooner did I consciously relax each bit of me and move on to the next, than the first bit would tense right up again. It was like one of those cartoons where the mouse pops out from behind the skirting board and waves every time the cat looks away.

All of this was new to me. I’ve had bad times — who hasn’t? — but always for a reason. Death, illness, upheaval. There has been a cause, and therefore the understanding that ‘this, too, shall pass’. Hard to believe something will pass when you have absolutely no idea why it’s there in the first place.

I went to my GP and we planned a comprehensive analysis of bloods: hormones, vitamin levels, thyroid. While waiting for the results of these, I booked in to see a cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) professional because ‘the internet’ said this can work wonders for insomnia.

CBT was an interesting experience. We worked out, together, the therapist and I, that I am, more than most, devoted to sleep. It occupies a starring role in my emotional landscape. You might say I have an addiction, in that sleep is my coping mechanism. We worked on techniques to make it all feel a bit less personal, this summary rejection.

We rationalised — “plenty of people function on four hours” — and she was bracingly direct with me: “You don’t have anxiety disorder or sleep disorder, so stop behaving as if you do”. Her advice? Stop the routines, the micro-management, the endless prepping: “If you want coffee, have coffee”.

I liked the advice. It’s my kind of advice — ‘relax, just get on with it’ sort of stuff. But all the same, it didn’t fix me.

I went back to my GP for the results of my blood test. Everything tested was “within normal range”. That was a bit devastating. I had my hopes pinned on an answer, a proper one, not “it’s one of those things...”

“What are you worried about?” the GP asked me. “This,” I say. “Just this. Everything else is good.”

She decided to supplement me with oestrogen — apparently some women need a boost before their bloods show them to be outside normal limits — on the basis that if it wasn’t the cause, it wouldn’t be the solution either, and that we would know that fairly fast and I could just stop taking it.

Lo and behold, it was. The cause. Certainly the solution. Within two days, whatever had happened began to unhappen. Within a week, I felt different. Or rather, I felt the same. As in, the way I’m used to feeling. Just, you know, normal. I began to shed the bedtime rituals and routine bit by bit, dropping them like breadcrumbs down a forest path. I hope I never need to go back and pick them out again.

That was a year and a half ago. Since then, I have had the odd night tossing and turning here and there, but nothing more. And yet, I take nothing for granted. Every day, now, begins with a moment of silent thanks, for sleep, for rest, for a peaceful night.