Insomniac

Melatonin is fucked-up shit, man.

I’m a major insomniac. Even as I write this now my brain is mentally sweating out, minute by minute, how much less sleep I will receive because I am sitting here writing this post instead of sleeping. I have MAJOR sleep issues and I can’t take sleeping medications…as determined by my blackout experiences with them. Anyone who’s ever been blacked-out drunk knows blacking out isn’t like other states of unconsciousness, because you’re still doing stuff. Blacking out just means you’ve intoxicated yourself to the point where your brain has shut off its memory functions in self-defense, its desperate attempt to keep you from poisoning it further than you are. For those of you who swear drinking to excess is okay, it isn’t. Alcohol is poison. End of story. There’s a reason it’s called intoxicated, people. Anyway…sleeping pills have the same effect on me as alcohol, with scarier events happening (I nearly burned down my apartment, drank an entire bottle of wine on my own in one evening, and gave myself a deep gash in the leg…none of which I remember, at all) and no hangover, so I’ve been working with more homeopathic./herbal/natural sleep aids for awhile now trying to figure out something that works for me. I have trouble getting to sleep, see…once I’m there, I’m okay thru the night, but until I get there, I toss and turn and can be up half the night trying to turn my brain off or at least quiet it enough so that it doesn’t keep me awake. Gaia Herbs “Sound Sleep” formula was a good find for me, but it’s expensive (even at 20% off, my discount for being a loyal employee of Wild Oats Markets, Inc. for 6+ years) and not as effective at getting me to sleep as I’d like. Wine works beautifully except for the hangover, potential liver destruction, and issues with substance abuse running deep on both sides of my family. What to do for the chronic insomniac?

Enter Origins, a division of Estee Lauder Cosmetics, International. I originally took this part-time job to earn some extra cash, enjoy a deep discount on products I already loved, and for great writing material (retail is always good for this). I did not expect my first blog on my experiences with Origins to be on a product, however. Anyway, I took this job part-time in October to earn some extra money. It fits well with my day job, both being centered in wellness-based companies, and I really fully appreciate how well they complement each other. When I am discussing a product at Origins and my customer wants to know what it does, I can usually refer to a supplement or experience I’ve gained from working for Oats for so long. When I’m at the office, I will often recommend an Origins product for a skincare concern or offer to bring samples of something that I know will work well for them. The possibilities are endless and my work ethic and sales skills (unbeknownst to moi, I assure you!) have garnered me a comfy position as a well-loved part-timer at Origins. Which is great, because with 45% off, I can actually afford the skincare I love.

Well, we carry a supplement called “Nite-trition” that you take before bedtime to help you sleep and to “help restore skin’s vitality overnight”. A proprietary blend of peppermint, lavender, chamomile, ginseng and melatonin, it seems like more of a sleep aid than a skin restorative (that’s what Night-A-Mins are for, dear) to me, but what do I know? So I got some that a customer returned (post-Christmas, we are now well into return season…ugh) and took it home and took it last night with my glass of red wine (don’t even start; one glass is good for you…anymore than that is NOT) and my Gaia Sound Sleep and went to bed about an hour later. My brain was slowing a bit sooner and more efficiently than normal, and I thought maybe I’d finally found the perfect curative for my insomnia.

So when I woke up hearing my alarms going off in the distance, I was quite confused. Where the hell was I? How did I get there? Why were my alarms so far away? It was like waking up in an episode of the Twilight Zone, seriously. Freaked me out big time.

I finally sorted out that I was on my couch, curled up on one fo the couch pillows, with my couch blanket (fortunately, a warm fleece) tucked around me. I’d taken off the cotton socks I wore to bed and had laid them neatly beside me. I got up, went into my bedroom, and turned the alarms off and the lights on. From there, waking was impossible, I simply could NOT get enough sleep. I finally dragged ass out of bed around 7:15 and got into the shower. Ugh. As best as I can reason, I got up to go to the bathroom and went back to bed on my couch for some bizarre reason that made sense to my herbally-addled brain much better in the middle of the night than it does now.

So, the moral of the story is…don’t mix supplements, they can fuck with you big time. Just because they’re herbal doesn’t mean they’re safe. I am taking the Nite-trition by itself tonight and am already feeling a bit more tired than I normally would without it, so my hope is that this works as well as I think it could. And now I need to get to bed, because my brain is telling me that it’s 11:12pm, I am getting up at 5:30 to run, and that gives me less than 6.5 hours of sleep.

Best wishes for peaceful sleeping and thanks for reading…