If you are an insomniac, it's highly probably that caffeine is an integral part of your daily routine. An insomniac must stay on a schedule. So one of the most important parts of the system is to stick to the caffeine cut-off time. Allot of people think caffeine doesn't effect them because they don't feel anymore awake or they sleep after drinking it but if you are an insomniac, it is effecting you. It gives your brain messages and alters your chemistry, so just because you had caffeine 12 hours ago and it's not in your system anymore, doesn't mean that your chemistry isn't altered because of it. All of us caffeine addicts know this in our hearts to be true or we wouldn't keep drinking it. My caffeine of choice is organic coffee. My body deals with it best of all other forms of caffeine and I get the most benefit from it. It's natural and it is a necessary component to keep me alert when I need to be. There are also studies that show that the benefits of coffee are vast, to include the powerful antioxidants that keep you young to fighting cancer. Nevertheless, there negatives to coffee also. It can still tax your adrenals and there are some reports of coffee toxins but for now, the benefits for me, greatly outweigh the possible negatives. I would stress that getting organic is important, for those of us who drink it everyday. I was not able to drink coffee regularly before because it upset my stomach. But then I started using cream everyday, then half and half, then whole milk, then reduced fat milk and now I just use my almond milk everyday, since I cut milk out of my diet and it works just as well for protecting my stomach from the acidity of the coffee. This would not be enough for coffee that's cheaper or of less quality, so I always make sure to bring my own coffee to work and not leave it up to the free coffee in the work kitchen. That being said I do feel like coffee gets overloaded in my system and so I have to take breaks from coffee but this does not include caffeine. I've learned the hard way that as long as I'm working (going to a job and not working at home), the withdrawals tax my system beyond anything continuous caffeine intake can do. When I get off the sleep medicine for good, it will require that I'm not going to a job and possibly no more caffeine. My mind, surely as any addict, doesn't want to contemplate that and is working it's way around maintaining my drug of choice but time will reveal the reality of the necessity. That being said on my last day of "Break Vacation", I have cut my usual two-plus cups down to one cup. It is an important part of the Break process to lower my caffeine tolerance and destress my entire system. Now when I go back to work this week, having been off my medication for several days and lowering my caffeine intake, I may be able to get through my entire week without taking a day off from work. My medicine should work well again and I will require lower amounts of caffeine to start out my week, which is very good since due to tolerance both the medication and the caffeine dosage usually goes up as the days progress. So it wasn't the most pleasant experience having to spend my four-day "vacation" locked into this whole 'preparation for work' but it is necessary to be able to continue job security and my days this week should be a bit brighter. Sources
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4:45 a.m.
I take as many opportunities that I can to take a break from the medication. Taking a break from the medication is a necessary process because if I don't, it will stop working. I try to take a break at least once a week but I really need to at least twice a week, because if the medicine is not working, there's not point in taking it. When I take a break I don't fall asleep till around 5 a.m., or so, and then I wake up between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. more or less. So I average about 5 hours sleep on break nights, IF I'm lucky. Five hours of sleep might seem like plenty to some people but understand that everyone requires a different amount of sleep. Some people only require 5 hours of sleep and would do poorly with more, where some people actually require 10 hours in order to get the same effect. Also, the "quality" of sleep can be even more important than quantity, hence, the "power nap" and believe me, the quality of my sleep is quite poor. I normally wake up an average of 10 times a night. When I take my medication I am able to fall back asleep or not wake up fully but without it...I'm still up. Break Days (the day following not taking sleep medication) are actually worse than Break Nights. On Break Days there is no fun to be had, no socializing and nothing gets accomplished. I make sure NOT to make plans and I write myself a "to do" list that I know probably won't happen. Tonight is the first night of my 4 day weekend, with a holiday coming up on Monday. So...we'll see... I don't have anything planned so I might as well take as many break nights as I can, that will be 4 nights! What I want to get across is, this really sucks. It can be annoying when people are always asking how your weekend was and expect to hear something exciting or fun, while in your mind you flash back to barely being able to get out of the bed and drudging through things you have to do, even though it's the weekend, or because it's the weekend, like catching up on chores. So I will come back to work after having 4 days off and in my mind people think, "why is she so tired, she had a 4 day vacation?", while in reality, my days off are often more unpleasant than work days as I have to spend the time healing my body, gathering energy and recovering from the week, where my body can't really even do those things efficiently without sleep, so whatever. I have SEVERE Chronic Insomnia. I've had insomnia for the last 20 years, off and on, but it's only became chronic in the past 5 – 10, increasing all the while. Having chronic insomnia is like living in a nightmare sometimes. You're so tired that the waking world bleeds in with the sleeping world and life can become a bad dream.
I try to avoid telling people about my problem because first of all, I don't think they will understand and second, they ALWAYS give you lame unwanted advice. I hear the same things over and over, “Have you tried chamomile, lavender, a warm bath, milk, marijuana...” People please, shut the fuck up! You don't tell someone with cancer how to treat themselves, seriously. I've tried EVERYTHING natural possible and I avoided taking medication for many many years till it was evident that I had to choose between working at a job or to stay off the medication and not be able to work, and since I had a child (who is now an “adult”) of whom I had responsibilities for, I chose the former. I'm 45 years old and I've been at my current job for 5 years. It is the longest I've held down a job and now that my insomnia is so bad, I finally see why I never did well with all those morning shifts and bankers hours. At other jobs I took naps during my break, everyday or I couldn't make it through to the end. But my current job only gives us a 20 minute break and people with insomnia really shouldn't take naps. So I try to avoid taking naps whenever possible. While napping is unadvised for insomniacs I was desperate not to take medication so it was my best option, at the time. Although, it was quite embarrassing when people would see you sleeping and ask you if you were OK. I managed to work at my current job for a couple years without treatment and was able to do it due to the later shift. I never had a job with later hours before, so second shift turned out to be a blessing. After a couple years I was “managing” by drinking daily energy drinks, sometimes two or three a day, which of course only made the problem worse but I didn't have a choice if I wanted to work. People saw how terrible I looked and felt so bad for me that they shared their prescription medications with me till I was able to see a doctor myself. On the weekends I would withdraw from the energy drinks and it was pure hell. It felt like I was coming off hard drugs and that's what I looked like. I knew the energy drinks were killing me and draining my adrenals and likewise made me super bitchy and my moods were uncontrollable. I needed to get off the energy drinks because my body was too burnt out to continue, so I finally gave in to over-the-counter medication. I took the over the counter medication for two years and fortunately my job gave opportunities to take unpaid days off for particular circumstances, so I was able to keep my job despite being unable to work everyday. There came a point when I felt like the over the counter medication was doing unforeseen harm, though they all do in their own way. I don't think any of them are meant to be taken for years. They always say something like, “Take for seven days and then if sleeplessness persists or worsens consult your doctor because it could be a sign of a serious illness.” My doctor has yet to find any source of my insomnia. I decided that the over the counter medication was no longer good for me and was killing me slowly so I “evolved” to prescription medication. I've taken prescription medication now for several years. The problem with taking medication for most things, is that it's just a bandaid. It doesn't really fix a long-term chronic problem. It only treats the symptoms. For insomnia, medicine doesn't work indefinitely. My body has built a tolerance to every type of medication that I've taken, rendering it ineffective. So in order to keep the medication working, I have to take regular breaks but that's not always possible. Yet when I don't, that's when things start spiraling out of control. The medicine will stop working. I'll be forced to max out my caffeine intake. Of course this only makes it worse but I have to get through my day. Then I have to use every ounce of reserved energy just to make it through my day but where is this energy coming from? It's not healthy energy that you get from sleep, food or exercise, all those are depleted by this point. So it starts taking the energy from my organs, like my heart and I can feel the strain. After two days of this, my immune system is shot and I really can't do much more than lay in bed. My goal from the minute I began taking medication has been to be medication free. That's been my goal and that is my goal but for now I still have to go to work. I feel that it's a cycle where I'm not really living in any way. When I don't sleep, I'm in a living nightmare and when I take the medicine I feel that it spiritually blocks me from living a clear and joyous life. I call it living the Half-Life. It is my hope that I can get back to the land of the living. |
AuthorJust a sleeping beauty trying to wake up by getting some sleep. -GG Archives
November 2018
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