Insomnia
 

I have noticed a lot of people here have anxiety/depression/insomnia issues. I know I do. I had really bad insomnia last night as I was not drinking. Alcohol has always been a cure for that, for me. I finally fell asleep but woke up from a horrible nighmare at 3:30 a.m. and could not go back to sleep. I was having extreme physical pain in this dream. Alcohol has always provided a relief from my sleep issues because I just pass out. When I wake up from a dream like that I just cannot go back to sleep. I am afraid to. Anyway, sorry to be so weird, but I read this poem on FB today and I just loved it so much.


“I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter

your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.”
— Variation On the Word Sleep; Margaret Atwood

Thank you Etta for the beautiful poem. I have not had a drink for 24 years and yet I still obsess about insomnia. In my drinking days I used alcohol to get to sleep and it only made things much worse, waking me up at 2:00 a.m. or so. Now I sleep but I sometimes have alcoholic dreams and at times my dreams, even the nonalcoholic ones, are filled with anxiety. I once had a psychiatrist tell me that when even a "normal" person dreams he comes as close as he will ever come to a mentally unstable state. I gather he was referring to the fact that, when dreaming, we are really not in control and are thus vulnerable to our anxieties. All this is worse, I recall, in the early stages of recovery. So all I can say is hang in there. It may never really go away but it does get better. And the good part about a bad dream is that you can wake up and say to yourself, "It was only a dream". That is not so if you are an alcoholic and if you are drinking. Then you are conscious, living a nightmare, and you never "wake up", or at least it never stops unless you happen to get into recovery.Your reality is a nightmare and you attempt to escape from it by sleeping, only to enter another nightmare and then, waking, you realize that the nightmare never stops.

W.

Thank you so much. My only sleep problem is I can't at night.

sleep. I just know there's a connection between alcoholism and insomnia. maybe it's body chemistry, I don't know. One thing I do know for sure, without a doubt, no question, is alcohol is NOT the answer.

I'm coming up on 5 years sobriety December 1. I've never been a good sleeper, even as a baby. maybe some day science will figure it out. But I don't drink alcohol, ever.

Love from Lenina