Sep
17
Check this out…
- September 17th, 2009
Insomniac was shortlisted for the Gregory Bateson Prize, Society for Cultural Anthropology, for being ”interdisciplinary, experimental, and innovative.”
http://sca.culanth.org/prizes/bateson/bateson.htm
Check out this cool article by Rubin Naiman, “How Cool Is Your Sleep?” It’s about how important it is to cool down, to get good sleep.
http://www.drnaiman.com/newsletter/october-2009
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Dear Gayle, thank you so much for writing Insomniac. What an informative and comforting book, and so well written, couldn’t put it down. I had no sleep problems at all until I was 58 (18 months ago) when I was counselling a severely traumatised woman with extreme insomnia - got a bad case of counter-transference and acquired insomnia! I slept about 2 hours a night for a couple of weeks, I immediately stopped counselling and slowly things improved, but I have had insomnia ever since. It’s like something got broken or a sleep thermostat was reset and I’m too old to bounce back.
My GP - doctor, I’m in the UK - insists I’m depressed which is so infuriating, in fact the older I get the happier I am, even with insomnia (I’m lucky in that I do get plenty of fairly reasonable nights to recover in). What’s more, when I had some problems she couldn’t diagnose some years ago, she insisted I was depressed then. Another doctor picked up that it was HRT withdrawal - you’d think she would have learned a little humility. Anyway she prescribed me 6 months of antidepressants (side effect - insomnia), I took one just in case it would help me to sleep and had a dreadful reaction where it was like my body was having a panic attack though my mind wasn’t. I found Valium to be helpful sometimes, but if I ask to be prescribed that I’m treated like a naughty child. OK to be made addicted to nightly antidepressants, not OK to be trusted with an occasional Valium when things are bad! If my insomnia isn’t too bad I can be tipped into sleep by a headache pill containing codeine.
I think one trigger for my insomnia might be chocolate - last night I had rather a lot of chocolate biscuits and couldn’t get to sleep until 5.30am in spite of codeine and Valium, awake again at 7.10am. Thinking back, there may have been a correlation over the last few weeks (though often it’s not a factor). In the past it had no such effect, but I think I’ll cut it out altogether. Trouble is, insomnia makes me crave chocolate and refined sugar the next day.
About insomnia personality - when I was sleeping 2 hours a night I was weeping all over the place, but it was a nightmare. I have profound admiration and respect for all you sufferers who keep going on such a regime. In fact most insomniacs seem to suffer in silence, when I started telling family and friends and colleagues about my insomnia, I found loads of them were also sufferers, often triggered by work pressures, but never talked about it.
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Hi Gayle, I am an insomniac in South Africa, I am near the end of my resources and feeling depressed and scared, I just wanted to let you know that you have a great site and it is comforting to read about other experiences like mine… It helps. Thanks.