As I write this I may be feeling content on some prescribed medications. I’m desperate for some shuteye. I haven’t enjoyed more than two hours’ sleep at a stretch for weeks now. It’s rare that I stay awake all night, but the pattern tends to go like this: asleep around midnight, awake by 2am. I toss and turn for half an hour before switching on the laptop to watch the world news and listen to some calming music or podcasts with the intention of returning to sleep. That rarely works, so I generally start my day at 3am. I struggle to stay awake during daylight hours, so it’s not uncommon for me to have a siesta. Have you ever felt so tired that you simply cannot sleep? Sounds silly, doesn’t it! This ridiculous schedule has been going on for far too long and I don’t know what to do about it. Plenty of methods have been tried over the years, but it keeps getting worse. This can’t be good for my mental health, and it makes the day hard to get through. I have taken what I consider to be significant steps in an attempt to fix or at least improve my sleep hygiene. One cup of strong coffee to be drunk when sleep proves futile, and no more energy drinks. Those two changes should have helped, but they have been monumental at doing nothing for me. I’ve tried listening to ten‑hour YouTube clips of rainfall and thunderstorms. I meditate. I take medication. I pray. Nothing helps.
I take a medication called Nitrazepam that knocks me out but only keeps me asleep for a couple of hours. This is a strong benzodiazepine and was always my last-resort option for sleep. I have tried Imovane, chloral hydrate, every benzodiazepine imaginable and at very high dosages, and Temazepam, which proved absolutely useless. Velarium root — useless. I was also prescribed a drug that is now banned in Australia, Stilnox, and that medication deserves its own long warning. It caused prolonged, dangerous sleepwalking — not the mild wandering you hear about, but complex behaviours. There were thousands of reports of people finding themselves driving, doing groceries, and completing difficult tasks while apparently unconscious. That’s exactly what happened to me and to a mate I lived with at the time. I snapped out of a trance and found myself driving into Cranbourne with no idea why I was there — and I hate Cranbourne — so I’m 99 percent sure Stilnox caused it. Needless to say, I never took it again. This was about 15 years ago and nothing even remotely similar has happened since. My mate once cooked dishwashing liquid on a frying pan — not a good drug. As far as I know it remains legal in the United States under the name Ambien and seems to be heavily used. I also take Seroquel as a sleep aid, a drug normally used for schizophrenia. At one point I was prescribed a staggering total of 2400 mg — the average dose is about 300 mg — I was taking 800 mg three times a day. Most doctors or health professionals I mention this to say I should be dead. Thanks for that script, Professor Burrows. I also take a large dose of chlorpromazine.
I have been battling this problem since I was a child, and over the years it has steadily worsened. Because I have been on so many different medications for more than two decades, it’s often difficult to tell which drug is doing what. Without exaggeration, I have probably tried thirty or more different medications (Not just for sleep but my overall mental health)