sheep count: one million.

“The pleasure of insomnia is one I’ve never found,” quoth the Barenaked Ladies. (It is currently 3:15am.)

I got back from Alaska on August 29th, and slept more or less for two days straight. Then I never slept again.

Okay, that is a slight exaggeration. I’ve slept about four or five hours a night, but the sleeping has started no earlier than 3am. I spend the day in a mild fog, summon the energy to go do some acting, come home, think about going to bed, go to bed, lay there, turn the air conditioning on, turn the air conditioning off, turn the white noise on, turn the white noise off, lay on my side, lay on my stomach, lay on my side, and don’t sleep.

I tried everything I could think of. The walking hasn’t helped. I cut out caffeine for a few days. I tried a bath before bed. I tried wine before bed.

Finally, I went to see the PA in my doctor’s office. We discussed my options and because I have never been on a prescription sleep aid before, I was willing to try something that seemed a little more user friendly than Ambien. She recommended trazodone, an anti-depressant that is apparently quite commonly prescribed for insomnia.

It’s not working. I take it, and about 45 minutes later my head gets very heavy, and I get in bed and close my eyes and do. not. sleep. After about an hour, the feeling goes away, and it’s like I never took anything at all, and I am once again wide awake until close to 4am.

When I do finally fall asleep, I can sleep for a decent amount of time, but I often get woken up before 8am. We had a freak microburst storm in the neighborhood about six weeks ago, and there is much tree-trimming and roof-repair construction going on. I am rarely able to fall back to sleep, but I wouldn’t want to even if I could, because if I do, I have horrible, horrible nightmares. Like ones where my parents are trying to kill me.

I have a follow up appointment next week, where I may just go ahead and get the scary Ambien. I want to get this sorted before I go to San Francisco, so I am not a complete zombie during the training.

:::