A short but not exclusive list of the things I learned during several periods of insomnia recently: how a US grand jury works, the plot of Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, that Amazon sells full-on incense burners like the kind priests use at funerals, and that the bugs swimming around in the basin of stagnant water in my garden look scarily like mosquito larvae.
Other items that passed through my mind while the world slept related to small stresses. The school books I need to buy, the house insurance I must renew and the cat microchip I need to reregister to my name since the neighbours who used to own said creature emigrated without saying goodbye.
And then there will have been the usual misshapen questions that just refuse to be filed away at 4.24am. Why am I awake again at this exact time? How hard will tomorrow be because of my chronic exhaustion? Why can’t I stop thinking in full sentences when I should be breathing deeply as part of the latest relaxation technique I’m meant to have mastered? Before I know it, 6am will have come and gone and another night of sleep will have been lost forever. I can tell you, it’s no craic.
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Those of you who have experienced insomnia, where you find it hard to get to sleep or stay asleep when you want to, may well be nodding your head. Those who are lucky enough to have escaped the torture should be fully aware that the rest of us hate you with a viciousness so pure that it could power a civilization if only we had the energy to do something about it.
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Insomnia is said to affect about 15 per cent of the population, a proportion that might not sound too massive until you suffer from it and then wonder how global society actually manages to function on this basis. Ongoing fatigue can be a horrible thing to bear: aside from eating into stamina, it can dampen mood, tolerance, appetite, creativity and most of the other happy elements of everyday life. And a little bit of insight into the US grand jury system will not be enough to compensate for this (even if I do now know that there are also petit juries. Or should that be petits juries? This is exactly the kind of question that detains me at 5.15am of a sleepless morning).
Another thrilling fact is that the condition is more likely to hit older people and women, which is particularly excellent news when, like me, you’re a woman who’s edging ever-closer to the half-century mark.
Perhaps it’s better if I don’t get into the reeds of my thoughts on the influence of the moon on my sleep habits, aside from saying I have a few. And obviously changing the lunar cycle is beyond my control, while other remedies for my sleeplessness could, in theory, offer more hope.
A friend swears by acupuncture but it just did not gel with me, to the point where I was not sleeping before appointments because I really didn’t want to attend. And this was no reflection on my very nice and very professional acupuncturist in case they’re reading. I’ve also tried all the pulse point oils, all the aromatherapy sprays, all the herbal teas, all the mineral supplements and all the warm baths in all the world. No impact.
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Reluctant to go down the drugs route, I’ve recently been road-testing brown noise, which has its own interesting back story, the facts of which, you’ve guessed it, I learned one night at about 4.56am. Its name comes from Scottish scientist Robert Brown, he of Brownian Motion, or the random movement of small particles suspended in fluids. Brown noise is meant to mimic this somehow – forgive me for not quite retaining the sciency details. I can confirm however that it’s quite pleasant, reminding me most of the sensation of lying with your head down on the seat of a moving car on a nighttime drive home, the way children used to be allowed to do in the carefree days before seatbelt laws. But nice as it is, it does not help me to sleep.
I sometimes think it could be useful to treat the night like a kind of split sleep shift broken up by exercise and fresh air. I could sleep say from 11pm until 4am and then 5am until 7am, with a bracing outdoor walk in between. Alas, safety concerns around solo expeditions in the dark as a woman would probably cause me greater upset than not sleeping.
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Instead, and I know I shouldn’t, I often end up taking refuge in my phone, checking on the latest batch of grinning “US Army Doctors” named Chris and Nate who want to be my friend on Instagram and gaining all the very important knowledge outlined above.
Sometimes, just slightly too awake at 4.59am, I like to punish myself by imagining the superpowers I could display if I slept properly – what a wonder it would be to feel alert in the morning, or indeed the afternoon, or at any time of the day.
If you are one of the chosen ones who know the answer to this, perhaps it’s best if you don’t get in touch.