Jennifer Senior was once a sound sleeper until insomnia appeared like a spectre in her 20s. For The Atlantic, she confronts the conventional wisdom about the necessary conditions for sound sleep (cool room, good bed, napping is bad) as well as the stigma around chemical sleep aids in a bid to better understand her own sleeplessness as well as the connection between insomnia and depression.
I finally caved and saw my general practitioner, who prescribed Ambien, telling me to feel no shame if I needed it every now and then. But I did feel shame, lots of shame, and I’d always been phobic about drugs, including recreational ones. And now … a sedative? (Two words for you: Judy Garland.) It was only when I started enduring semiregular involuntary all-nighters—which I knew were all-nighters, because I got out of bed and sat upright through them, trying to read or watch TV—that I capitulated. I couldn’t continue to stumble brokenly through the world after nights of virtually no sleep.
More picks from The Atlantic
The Ones We Sent Away
“It is extraordinary what we hide from ourselves—and even more extraordinary that we once hid her, my mother’s sister, and so many like her from everyone.”
Inside America’s Death Chambers
“What years of witnessing executions taught me about sin, mercy, and the possibility of redemption.”
What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind
“Grief, conspiracy theories, and one family’s search for meaning in the two decades since 9/11.”
