Take two of these and call me when it's all over

Everyone has troubling sleeping sometimes.

Everyone.

Maybe you ate or drank too much.

Or feel like you're being chased by a runaway brain.

Whatever the cause, it's not exactly rare.

Insomnia, however, is different.

I've been a frequent flyer on Air Insomniac on-and-off since my early 20s.  Being tired but not able to sleep is grim.  You lie there staring into the darkness feeling both alert and exhausted.  The noise inside my head some nights is almost deafening.  Sometimes only drowned out by the pounding of my heart.

And it goes on night after night sometimes for several weeks before I usually crack, hit the bottle and drink myself unconscious.  It doesn't help much immediately.  Drunk-sleep sucks and the hangovers can be bothersome.  But the night after a day spent keeping a hangover company I generally sleep really well.

Try as you might to be at the top of your game when you've had a cumulative 10 hours sleep over three days, the cracks will start to show sooner or later.

Lack of concentration.  Poor attention to detail.  All the obvious ones.

It's probably not safe to drive, but you do it anyway.  You eat too much because you feel permanently hungry.  And you guzzle so much caffeine that you start to shake.

But for me are lots of other leftovers from days spent with no restful sleep to punctuate them.

Self-doubt.  Anxiety.  Depression.  The latter was eventually diagnosed as such, rather than the theme of a Pity Party I decided to throw myself.  Although eventually I found myself amid the detritus of such an occasion and didn't like the mess that surrounded me.

In addition to the anti-depressants I was given (well, I did ask for them) I was prescribed something to help me sleep.

I wouldn't take them at first - the warnings about side effects were pretty stark.