The Curious Incidents of the Pills In the Nighttime

“I rise when the sun goes down
Cover every game in town
A world of my own
I'll make it my home sweet home “

These are a few lines from “Deacon Blues”, my favorite song by Steely Dan, from their wonderful album, Aja. Steely Dan is my favorite musical group of all time—EVER—and this song is perfectly suited to those of us who never slept that much anyway. Its relevance to this tale, however, remains to be seen

Like my father before me, I am a night owl. Right around 10:00 every night, my brain kicks into high gear, my eyes pop open, my heart beats a little faster, and I am ready for what may come. If I were a wolf or bat or some other nocturnal creature, I would be perfectly attuned to the midnight labors of my species. However, I am a human, something you may already have surmised. My species, as a whole, doesn't operate in the way of bats and wolves, and like my father before me, my labors often begin long before the midnight hour. In my 20's and 30's it wasn't all that difficult to get by on 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night; indeed, there were often any number of disreputable endeavors commanding my attention far into the wee hours, the frisson of the moment far outweighing any sleep-deprived work demands of the following day. (And, by the way, just so you know, I have always wanted to use frisson in a sentence, hence its inclusion here. You may see it again sometime. You probably will.) Now that I am a man of a certain age, I am not finding insomnia to be the social boon it once was. Nights anymore offer far less excitement, and mornings are not so forgiving.

When I was younger, and not involved in one escapade or another, I tried reading to entice the lords of slumber. Someone suggested that this was an excellent method of falling asleep but, apparently, whoever told me this had no idea just how much into books I actually was. Once I started reading, it was hard, nigh on impossible, to simply put down the book and drift away in a cloud of literary-induced somnolence. Then, I discovered James Joyce and Ulysses. I first tried reading Ulysses in the early 1980's and, with apologies to Pete Buttigieg, I simply couldn't. Can't. Won't. Life is too short. I have tried too many times with this book, and the furthest I have ever gotten is Page 28. Ideally, this is the book to put me (most people, really) under, but I have always found it too exasperating to be a relaxant: it's exhausting but in a way that encourages torpor, not sleep. I know, I know, it's a classic, and sometimes, I fear that maybe I'm just not bright enough to get it. Except I do get it, I really do. Even without reading much of it, I get it. I simply don't like it.

When I came across Tylenol PM—why did I never know about this before 1980-something?--I was jubilant that it worked as well as it did, although, of course, if two don't do the trick, you really shouldn't take a third for another 6 hours or else risk damaging your liver. And in those days, the livers of myself and my party crew were already working serious OT so I wasn't going to push it.

3 a.m. At 3 a.m., I was in the guest bathroom cleaning out the medicine cabinet. No, not cleaning out the medicine cabinet, rearranging the medicine cabinet. Big difference. For some reason, we don't really throw away things in the medicine cabinets here. I can't think why. Anyhow, C has been unwell for several days and needs his rest. Last night he went to bed at a very reasonable 11:00 and I, being a supportive gent, thought I'd join him, hoping to fall asleep sometime before the cock crew. (Yes, I know it's “before the cock crows” but humor me.) So, within five minutes, C was snoring and I was watching the slow, deliberate rotation of the ceiling fan above the bed, an activity with which I have attained some level of expertise.

I have long enlisted the aid of Benadryl in my efforts to corner that elusive beast called sleep. Before that, it was Tylenol PM, an equally formidable foe of insomnia. Over time, however, both these (mostly) dependable allies gave up the ghost, necessitating prescribed methods of corralling the beast (I'll address these follies shortly but, suffice it to say, they were uniformly unsuccessful, at least in inducing sleep). Then, a few years ago, a miracle of sorts: I suddenly found myself able to get a full eight hours without benefit of anything other than—what? Well, I don't know what. It certainly wasn't any kind of pill or drink, certainly not meditation (which, for me, is wonderful in theory, less so in practice). It didn't really matter, though. What mattered was that I could sleep like a baby, for eight full hours and it was pure bliss! That pure bliss lasted for, oh, approximately three weeks, after which I discovered what many, if not most, men my age discover: there is a demarcation line in life and once you cross it, you will never sleep the entire night again. Because at night, you know, we pee. Men pee at night. Numerous times, more often than not. It's our lot in life. If you're really lucky, after the initial trip to pee-town, you'll get back to sleep for an hour or two, maybe even three, before your bladder kicks you out of bed again and restarts the vicious cycle. So, the good news is my insomnia temporarily abated, the bad news is it doesn't matter because I am a man of a certain age and we pee at night.

Which brings me back to last night. The fact is, I never really got to sleep in the first place. Apparently, my body was craving caffeine yesterday and I was more than happy to make the accommodation without bothering to consider any potential ramifications. By bedtime, everything was a-jitter, including my bladder. Finally, wide awake and without the possibility of drug-free slumber, I hoped not to disturb C as I dug through the catch-all drawer in the small dresser next to the bed. That half-empty bottle of Benadryl surely was hidden in there somewhere! But, even in the pitch darkness it quickly became apparent that my efforts would go unrewarded. Frustrated, and with a little too much force, I shut the drawer without realizing that my fingers were still inside. Unleashing an avalanche of curses, I hastened from the bedroom and charged into the guest bathroom at the other end of our condo, where the shits, fucks, hells and goddamns continued unabated, and with certain embellishments, over the next few minutes. As I suspected, there was blood, though fortunately, not a lot, which is how I found myself rearranging the medicine cabinet at 3 in the morning: I was looking for a band-aid. It was there, somewhere, in this multi-tiered jumble of purloined hotel soaps, lotions and shampoos, lozenges and throat sprays, the unexpected plethora of dental utensils, long-lost hair products, creams, gels, and oh, the horror, the horror. And this is the guest bathroom. But then, there, amongst the detritus of departed visitors—there, at last, was a band-aid. It was as I was reorganizing this mess that it occurred to me that I would have been better served had I gone to our own master bath which contained a multitude of band-aids of different sizes, types, shapes and colors. (Yes, we are a diverse household but, in the context of this narrative, that fact is neither here nor there.) Once, the last tiny bottle of hotel shampoo had been neatly placed next to its siblings, I suddenly realized that the half-empty bottle of Benadryl might yet be in the kitchen cabinet. It, after all, contains every pill, capsule and medicinal potion collected by both C and myself over the course of the last 14+ years. With a certain degree of trepidation I pulled open the double doors of that kitchen cabinet. 45 minutes later, that cabinet was reorganized and I was off to bed with a band-aid on my thumb and two Benadryls dissolving in my belly. C, for his part, slept through the entire ordeal. And I got to sleep just in time to hear the proverbial cock crow.

When I talk about insomnia, it would be remiss of me not to talk about the prescription drugs that came about after my over-the-counter standbys ran out of steam. My GP at the time, a no-nonsense  woman who disliked prescribing narcotics, gave me Ambien to start out with. The first (and only) time I took it was the night before I was to fly to Oklahoma, with a scheduled layover in Dallas. I drifted off without much problem (and before C went to bed) but soon got up to join the party. Who are all those people having so much fun in the living room? I asked C. Of course, no one else was in the house but it certainly seemed like someone was having a good time. Lots of someone's, to be precise. Later, I got up again to groove to the soulful sounds of our Dining Room Table and the Four Chairs. That is, literally, the last thing I remember about that particular night. In fact, my next moment of cognizance came as I sat awaiting my order at a Chili's restaurant in the Dallas/Ft. Worth International Airport at lunchtime the next day. Somehow, I'd managed to shower, chat with C while he drove me to the airport, go through security, board a plane and fly 1100 miles without ever knowing it. Think about that for a moment, will you?

My subsequent prescription was for another non-narcotic that didn't make me so much sleepy as zombified, and hungover the next morning, and I quickly realized that this was not the ticket, either.

Then came the (alleged) good stuff, the narcotic which was actually an anti-depressant because, by this time, let's face it, I was not only worn out but in a serious funk, as well. This stuff would almost certainly do the trick, the good doctor assured me. Well....

There was a downside, naturally, and only for me would the side effects of an anti-depressant include a scintillating combo package of extreme irritability and INSOMNIA!! What. The. Ever. Loving. Fuck? The upside, if you can call it that, is that it generated really superb erections that were wont to pop up, spontaneously and unprovoked, at any given time and place. As it happens, this is not the bonus one might expect it to be. Obviously, on the surface it sounds perfect: after all, who wouldn't want to be nudged awake for a little poke-in-the-whiskers by a scowling, angry insomniac with a seething hard-on? Well, certainly not C, that's for sure. Which presented the conundrum of what to do when you're wired and pissed at the world but, at the same time, jacked for action. What to do, what to do? For starters, toss those goddamn pills in the back of the kitchen pharmaceutical cabinet!

So, there was no rest for the weary (or the wicked, depending on your preference of phrase).

There was, however, Zoloft (side effects: insomnia with the exact opposite of the aforementioned priapism).

And then, there was Wellbutrin. Wellbutrin, after all this, seemed promising, and I soon found that if I took Wellbutrin with a couple of Benadryl then I could finally achieve bedtime Nirvana. The Wellbutrin worked until it didn't—in other words, about a year.

There was, I knew, a small amount of Hydromet in the dreadful kitchen pharmaceutical cabinet, left over from a previous bout of bronchitis two or three years earlier. Maybe that would help for a couple of nights? Well, yes and no. What Hydromet does, and does very well, is it fucks you up. It sprawls you out on the bed and allows every muscle in your body to turn completely to cotton candy, and you can lay there while the exquisite drowsiness forces your eyelids shut and slides your brain into a soft, Christmas slush melting into warm oblivion, and then you can lay there awhile longer, waiting for sleep until the goddamn cows come home. Because Hydromet will fuck you up but it will not make you sleep. At least, that has been my experience. (Incidentally, pot has never worked for me as a sleep aid, either, despite enthusiastic reviews from numerous friends).

Luckily, it wasn't too long after these curious incidents of the pills in the nighttime that those miraculous three weeks of blessed sleep kicked in. And I loved every single second of it: the sheer decadence of undisturbed sleep.

As already noted, sleep now is interrupted by (sometimes frequent) excursions to the loo. Or maybe it's the opposite, and the loo is interrupted by brief excursions into sleep. Some nights it sure seems that way. Whichever the situation, I am grateful for what I've got. And as long as my bladder keeps waking me up for the pee breaks and I don't sleep through it, I'm good.