What do YOU do with your insomnia?

[Paige Turner]

I just finished a three-hour bike ride all OVER Vancouver; Marpole, Point Grey, West End, Downtown, False Creek, Strathcona, Ridgeway, Sunrise, and ended up at WORK and it's 4:00 a.m. Hard to believe this "big city" closes down at night. Apart from the West End and Downtown, I probably saw thirty cars the whole time. Now I'm sleep-deprived and I have a scrabble grudge match at the pub tonight! I'm incoherent! Quick, give me some scrabble words I can use! Do you hear that buzzing noise?

Fellow insomniacs out there? Anybody? Hello? Where IS that buzzing coming from?

[GrownUp]

I work 36 hours straight when I'm at work occasionally, but I suppose that isn't insomnia. Revising, back in my college days, close to exam time, I'd be up for longer. At 72 hours you start seeing spiders coming out of the wall.

Ah, here is an insomnia one. Just when I handed in my PhD thesis, I'd been up for some absurd length of time. I went home, showered, tried to sleep. But I was too blinky and jumpy.

So I went to the cinema. It was the middle of the day, the v. big theatre was nearly empty, I sat in the middle. The screen was huge, really huge. A rarely enormous sort of a screen. I watched Lord of the Rings, the first one. It was like being swallowed up.

[polymath]

I love scrabble, Paige Turner. Usually play at least twice a week. My high score is 532, not too shabby, not championship standard, though.
Cool scrabble words? Off the top of my head:
Qi
Xi
Xu
Zo
Za
Ka
Qat
Souq
Zebu
Azo
Should give you an advantage
What do I do to soak up insomnia? Reading is always a good one. Also I might write a sonnet or somesuch. Or watch the shopping channels to make me turn off the telly and go to bed.

[Nokia]

Yeah, I usually read in bed, that way I can just flick the light off when I get tired enough and go to sleep. Sometimes I'll watch TV though.

Grown up, sounds like a great experience!

[GOLLUM]

I lock it up and throw away the key....

[hermi-nomi]

I couldn't hope to explain the buzzing noise for you Paige, (maybe its in anticipation of your grudge match.) I do know that when I'm awake all hours, if I get up to go the bathroom, then jump straight back into bed I will have a thumping in my ears that just goes on, and on and on... Advice: don't move around before you go to bed. Polymath has given you the best scrabble words; my sister always uses the little ones to take advantage of the remaining space and the 'triple the value of the word/letter' squares that wouldn't otherwise be reached. I tend to find that trying to create amazing, clever ten letter words is plain foolish (my youngest sister always does this, which is why she always loses. )
I really do wish I could lock isomnia away, or better yet banish it to some
god-forsaken place where people need more time to get things done ... oh? it
has already been banished? Where to? No, really, I tend to read alot.

On an aside, perhaps you could answer me this; why the hell is it that when I'm trying to gain some precious hours of sleep between my neighbours having a bath at 12:45AM to the birds singing at 4AM, why is it I have an urge to keep going to the bathroom? It's driving me insane...

[Locksmith]

I remember a bit of David Baddeil stand-up from a few years ago about suffering from insomnia. It went something along the lines that insomnia is an odd affliction because when you tell non-insomnia suffers that you suffer from insomnia they almost always say "Oh really, I just turn off the light and fall straight asleep." Whereas, if you tell people that you've got a broken leg, they don't say "Oh really, mine's fine. Look, I can hop around on it and everything." It went on along these lines for some time...

So...

"Oh really, I drop off just like that... Sleep the sleep of the just, etc." (No, honestly, I do, it annoys Mrs Locksmith big time).

[Marky Lazer]

What do YOU do with your insomnia?

Enjoying it
I can't see how people do all the things they want to do with only 16 hrs in a day.

[Paige Turner]

Originally Posted by polymath

I love scrabble, Paige Turner. Usually play at least twice a week. My high score is 532, not too shabby, not championship standard, though.

That's a nice score, though, as you say, not the scrabble-psycho level. We're just friends meeting to play in the pub, so that'll tell you all you need to know. We used to work together and played daily at lunch; now we're scattered to the winds, but we meet up a couple times a year to play for bragging rights.

Don't remember my highest score, (maybe 460 or so) but my best single word was stretching "leavings" across two triple-word-scores for 185 points. Without using a blank, even. You'd be amazed how few people are impressed by that. Same planet, different worlds.

[polymath]

Whoah that is very impressive for a one-worder...my brother got 140 for a one worder and I thought that was fairly slick. I've not had anything like that.

[chrispenycate]

You missed "zax", an acceptable alternate spelling for "sax", a tilers hammer with a spike on the back and a claw on one side, not a musical instrument.

Unfortunately, though I don't need much sleep, I never have much difficulty "dropping off". I once crawled into a bass bin and slept through the warm up band at a rock concert. Thus, not much help for the primary problem.

[littlemissattitude]

Well, last night I washed dishes and cleaned up the kitchen and then played games on the computer.

Reading is always good, but often when I have insomnia these days it's because I'm worried about something so that when I try to read I find myself either reading the same paragraph over and over again. Either that, or I discover that I have read (or, anyway turned) ten or twenty pages with no memory whatsoever of what words they might have contained.

Actually, I don't have insomnia nearly as badly as I did when I was a teenager. It sometimes seems like I hardly ever slept for several years during that time. Once I quit the caffeine, I found sleeping much easier. I think my current problems (the past couple of nights) have mostly to do with the switch to daylight savings time, which always screws up my internal clock for a week or two.

[sanityassassin]

I surf the web when I have insomnia and I found this site one night when I couldn't sleep so I suppose insomnia has its plus points

[GrownUp]

Originally Posted by hermi-nomi

On an aside, perhaps you could answer me this; why the hell is it that when I'm trying to gain some precious hours of sleep between my neighbours having a bath at 12:45AM to the birds singing at 4AM, why is it I have an urge to keep going to the bathroom? It's driving me insane...

Have you had your blood sugar tested? Could be a little high.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Originally Posted by Locksmith

It went something along the lines that insomnia is an odd affliction because when you tell non-insomnia suffers that you suffer from insomnia they almost always say "Oh really, I just turn off the light and fall straight asleep." Whereas, if you tell people that you've got a broken leg, they don't say "Oh really, mine's fine. Look, I can hop around on it and everything."

It's like writers block. If you tell people you have that, they reel off a list of their own infallible methods for getting the words to come.

I've struggled with insomnia on-and-off for most of my life. However, the current problem is not falling asleep, it's waking up in the middle of the night with the sense that something is very, very wrong with me. Impossible to get back to sleep after that.