The Enduring Mysteries of Sleep and Insomnia

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

In my pale, haunted face, I glimpse my father, who felt equally betrayed by sleep's unfaithfulness. If there's such a thing as an insomnia gene, he passed it on to me, along with his green eyes and Irish melancholy. I grew up in a family where the question "How'd you sleep?" was a topic of genuine reflection at the breakfast table. My five sisters and I each rated the last night's particular qualities: when we fell asleep, how often we woke, what we dreamed, if we dreamed. My father's response influenced the family's mood for the day; if it was "lousy," the rest of us were lousy, too.

I often lay awake in bed as a young boy, my mind racing like the spell-check function on a computer, scanning all the data, lighting on images, moments, fragments of conversation, impossible to turn off. As a sleeping aid, I would try to recall my entire life—a straight narrative from first to most recent incident. If my boyhood story didn't lull me to sleep, I'd sneak into the den, where I could find my mother watching Johnny Carson and drinking Coca-Cola, smoking Pall Malls as she folded laundry. After she put me to bed, I would occasionally wander back again, sleepwalking. I would never sit with her, my mother recalls, or respond to her voice. I appeared to be looking for something. I remembered nothing of these night visits. I learned of them at the breakfast table, next morning, where they were the source of laughter from my sisters. This sleep disorder, a "parasomnia" that rarely appears in adults, lasted about a year. In some ways, I find sleepwalking more perplexing than sleeplessness—perhaps because it afflicted me while I was so young, then never returned.

Though I no longer walk in my sleep, I do wander at night, still seeking the peerless soporific. Everybody has a cure to recommend, whether it's warm milk, frisky sex, or melatonin. One friend solemnly prescribes whiffing dirty socks before turning out the lights, but I've found that home remedies are no more effective than aphrodisiacs. Sleeping pills can force the body into unconsciousness, it's true. I've had my jags on Halcion and Xanax, Ambien and Restoril. I've slept many times on those delicious, light-blue pillows. But the body is never really tricked. The difference between drugged and natural sleep eventually reveals itself, like the difference between an affair and true romance.

My lifelong search for sleep has led me to ponder the state in others. You might find me on the subway staring as you come out of nodding off. When people doze in public, the human animal comes out. They burrow into their own clothing or nestle into a friend's shoulder. Undefended from their own small indiscretions, they scratch, grunt, fart, drool, grit their teeth. Sleep also has the uncanny ability both to infantilize and to age, which is especially strange to see in the person with whom you are intimate. After a night of insomnia, I sometimes stand at our bedroom door, coffee in hand, watching Steve sleep. One morning, he's curled up in the fetal position, legs tucked up to his chest, arms hugging a pillow, vulnerable as a baby. With a snort, he rolls onto his back and suddenly he's middle-aged. Another morning, as I hover over him, his sleeping self somehow senses me—and vanishes in a heartbeat. He wakes up, startled, wondering what the hell I'm doing.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print