CoffeeTime: “LEARNING THE HARD WAY”

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Sleep difficulties? Finally even gotten to the point of lying sleepless every night for hours on end?

So you decide to try natural supplements that are supposed to bring on sleepiness and restful nights of sleep. And you carefully begin with the recommended dosage on the back of the box or bottle, right?

But nothing changes in your sleep pattern – or should I say your lack of sleep pattern. So, you decide “The recommended dosage probably isn’t strong enough for someone like me, I’ll double it, as I really do have a bad sleep issue.”

But instead of improving, now your nights are actually worse. In response, you hesitantly increase the dosage again and maybe add another kind of sleep aid to the mix. The problem rocks on for a few more nights, and by now you are bleary-eyed, depressed, anxiety-ridden, grouchy, mentally fuzzy, and getting desperate from existing on two to three hours of sleep each night.

In keeping with your desperation level (and your stubborn streak) you defiantly keep upping the amount of the sleep aids, “until I finally reach success, dadgummit.” Defined as “Hallelujah, I got six hours of sleep last night!”

Instead, you’re now pulling all-nighters.

Finally, you make your brain pull itself out of that black hole where it is now living, and force it to begin thinking logically about this definite downslide in life. And you finally realize, “Hmmmm, I wonder…. could I be having a bad reaction to mixing all these natural sleep remedies, PLUS an OTC med that I added?” (Remember, you are very fuzzy-brained.)

You pull out your trusty cell phone to research the subject on medical websites.  Answer: Nope, mixing together those sleep supplements do not cause any negative reactions. Then you finally think to ask the question: “Can a person take too much of a sleep aid named “……..” and cause an adverse reaction of total sleeplessness?”  Bingo!!  The answer comes back a resounding “Of course, you idiot!” If my cell phone could laugh at me, it would have been rolling in the aisle. It would have been gasping for breath while it made fun of me for at least five minutes.

I found out the hard way that every kind of sleep-aid, whether it is a supplement, an over-the-counter, or by prescription, if you take it in too large a dose, IT CAUSES THE OPPOSITE EFFECT AND YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SLEEP MUCH AT ALL. For days and days. 

And, folks, you can only imagine what happens if you have over-self-prescribed a sleep aid for the issue of falling asleep, and another for staying asleep.  Each one of them can hype your brain and causes you to be able to count sheep for four hours straight and never miss a set of ears.

End of the story? I finally learned from a nutritionist that I needed to take my sleep-aid 2 to 3 hours earlier so it would have time to work.

Rough way to learn a truth.