Freelancing has its perks -- work whenever, play whenever -- but without some type of set schedule it majorly impacts your sleep. In some ways, you’d think I’d be the opposite. You no longer have as many stressors throughout your day to keep you up at night, and you can technically sleep whenever you want -- going to bed at 5 a.m. and waking up at 3? No biggie.
However, I’ve found that without some type of basic wake and sleep schedule, whatever that may be, sleep becomes more and more difficult. When you know you can stay up as late as you want watching that TV show you’re on your fourth run of and wake up whenever you please, there tends to be less of an urge to go to sleep at a normal hour. And as the days go by, and you fall asleep later and later and sleep in longer and longer, you eventually find yourself totally out of sync.
I’ve always been a night person to begin with, and truly think I function better in the later hours. Without the noise of the day to distract me, my mind focuses better and my creativity comes to live. I’ve done most of my best work in the later hours of the night or wee hours of the morning. I also find calmness in the night, but the type of calmness I want to stay up and enjoy, rather than the calmness that makes me want to close my eyes.
For some context, I did have a sleep test done in my teens and apparently I go into REM sleep -- the type you generally need -- one-third of the time a normal person does, meaning I actually do need more hours of shut eye to get the same restorative effects a typical sleeper would get with his or her standard eight hours of sleep. Still, as absolutely exhausted as I feel waking up at 6 a.m. because I couldn’t fall asleep until 4 a.m., I couldn’t ever bring myself to fall asleep early, or even at a decent hour the following night.
Worst of all, I was always terrified I wouldn’t wake up. In my first apartment in New York I would set alarms that went as loud as the top volume of my Bose speaker along with five or more alarms on my phone and, in my half awake state, get up, turn each off and go to bed. I blame my room being essentially the size of a closet, but regardless, even the best alarm clocks couldn’t wake me up, and I woke up in panics at 11 a.m. much too often, finding myself forced to email my manager some type of excuse about why I was two hours late without any notification -- and sadly I became pretty good at coming up with them.
Over the years I’ve tried most all of the various remedies to help me fall asleep -- beyond drinking warm milk, because the idea of that just nauseates me. I was initially prescribed sleeping pills and hated them. I felt like my brain was awake but I couldn’t move my body. Basically, I felt paralyzed and it was frightening, so no thank you. Starting on the self-medication path, I began low key, with simply trying to stay active enough during the day and if I did exercise doing so later in the evening to drain myself of energy. After a while when that failed to work I looked at ways to control my environment for a solution. I closed any laptop and took TVs out of my room, as anything with blue lighting in the background is said to be stimulating. I went as far as putting red lights all around my room, and did so throughout college to try to ease myself into a more restful state.
From there, I moved on to natural remedies. Chamomile did absolutely nothing for me, and Valerian made me feel Xanaxed out, which wasn’t necessarily bad but didn’t help with sleep in any fashion. I found Melatonin to give me a deeper sleep, as I woke up more rested if not foggy; however, it didn’t make me fall asleep any faster, and the dreams I have when I take it even to this day make me feel like I’m tripping harder than any drug I’ve taken -- some seriously screwed up dreams that are just too much for me to handle every night.
Turning next to over-the-counter cures, I tried the basics, Benadryl and Nyquil. Benadryl oddly makes me hyper -- not sure what that means, while Nyquil makes me feel so groggy and out if it the next day, I can’t function after I take it until mid-afternoon. Neither seemed effective enough to continue with.
Playing with fire a little bit more I experimented with heavier substances. Marijuana definitely helps me sleep, some types more than other depending on the strain. I do wake up feeling more rested and restored, which is great but there are side effects (of course). First of all, the "eat everything in my kitchen or order way too much takeout before going to bed and feeling bloated" isn’t a fun way to wake up. The legality of it is also an issue, as is the fact it sometimes makes me paranoid, and I can never predict when that will happen. As a bonus, I’ve been told I talk in my sleep when I use it, which I’m not exactly comfortable with. On the legal end of things, red wine (not white at all) does help, but there’s a delicate balance of how much I need to sleep and feel rested vs. how much I need to sleep and feel hungover the next day. Liquor on the other hand makes me hyper, so that’s a no-go.
Over the years I have found certain prescription medications to just knock me out, but their side effects scare me. Seroquel puts me to bed, and for a while I may add, as does Geodon. I know your tolerance builds to these substances so I only use them in extreme cases - The class of drugs they are doesn’t exactly put my mind at ease. Painkillers I hate and refuse to take, and while muscle relaxers help me close my eyes they’re again not something I’m comfortable taking everyday, especially considering they have addictive qualities.
So, fellow troubled-sleepers, after 16 years of not being able to sleep, I’ve found only the following to dependably help. Red lights, red wine, staying out of my bed until I actually want to go to sleep, good sex, eating warm/spicy food before bed (I don’t know why that helps but it does), avoiding caffeine except in extreme cases, doing math in my head as I lay there, simply sleeping next to someone else (which is somehow calming to me as I fall asleep to their breathing patterns), and imagining and dreading having to wake up.
As for actually waking up, I still worry I won’t some nights when I have to be up early the following day and have found two solutions: Again sleeping next to someone else, who my multiple alarms will annoy to the point that person wakes me up, and this ridiculous app called SpinMeAround Clock, which makes you get up stand level to the ground with your phone and spin in circles multiple times to turn off the blaring alarm.
Do you have any sleep remedies beyond my laughable ones? Share below!