Out of and Insomnia

Random thoughts were popping in and out of my head tonight...even hackneyed phrases seemed glorious to me - my mind was whirring, I was stringing words together that I'd all too long missed doing for what seemed like an indeterminable epoch. What exactly was going on here?

I was lying in bed just a few moments ago, unable to get to sleep...my usual state of being during my "pre-Ambien" age - an era I had nearly forgotten all about, but dreadfully missed: But there I lie - "creating", "cataloguing", "shelving" and "playing" with words and thoughts that I really don't do anymore. Certainly, one can get creative in the daytime, but I really don't believe it's the same as when you are trying to drift off to unconsciousness. There's a higher level which is achieved when you do that without external stimuli vs the daytime state.

Dreams are needed and I have mentioned this before in my blog I'm sure, and I've complained about it to my friends online...I don't dream when I take Ambien. Oh, sure, you can assume I just don't remember as Ambien is a hypnotic drug. But I know when I dream, I get up with a whole other outlook than I do with my Ambien life...or should I really say "half-life"? It does make me feel I'm missing something - and I think I've found that missing link or puzzle piece.

Here is my theory: We go through the day gathering up bits of information and disinformation...certainly our brains have the capability and capacity to keep all this information, what with all those snake-like convolutions in there giving that little space we call "the inside of our head" the best usage of surface area to store, retrieve, and transmit neuronic data. The brain is a wondrous thing...but artifically turning it off at night, the way Ambien seems to do...well, isn't, if you ask me. Something is very amiss, especially over time, when this doesn't routinely happen...and I say it doesn't occur when I take Ambien...at least not to the extent it should.

I was reading a bit of a study the other day online about how they possibly figure insomnia is the cause of depression and not necessarily the other way around, which was typically the accepted theory most people buy into. Now, I can write volumes and volumes about not sleeping as I have been without it for as long as I can remember...since three years of age. Of course, to take advantage of it all...I'd probably write these volumes at night...but I digress. I likely could have been the proverbial poster-child for insomnia, the proverbial poster-teen and now the poster-adult for it...I'm sure if I live long enough, I will be way post my prime...but still remain a prime example of what not getting a good night's sleep can do to someone.

All this automatic shutting off of my brain by outside means might seem like a terrific idea, especially given my history of never sleeping...but I know something inside my head isn't doing what it's supposed to do...and that, in itself, is making me depressed. I wake up groggy...I wake up feeling "not like me"...my brain doesn't "get started" for what seems like hours...I also have difficulty clearly remembering things from previous days/nights...and I just feel "abnormal" in my thought processes. My brain doesn't seem to make those rapid-fire synapse connections...it just feels like it's on permanent vacation...and it certainly doesn't seem to feel refreshed and "up and at 'em". My creativity level takes a while to jump-start and when it does, it seems like it's rehashing the same few items, not delving deep down in my unconsciousness to retrieve those tidbits that haven't been out of the "drawer" for quite some time.

Tonight I noticed it doing that again...I know this seems probably very silly to most people, but I was thinking of bad opening sentences for novels...aka 'The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest'...a very prestigious contest I managed to walk away as the winner of back in 2003...pre-Ambien age, in case you were wondering. But while I was lying there, I ruminated through all sorts of sentences that leisurely flowed into my head like so many cows coming home. I actually had lain there and thought about which ending for the word "Esperanto" would be funniest. Yes, for a Bulwer-Lytton entry...but these ideas have to manifest themselves somewhere and usually it's somewhere deep inside your head, those two hemispheres like some twisty plot line making a connection not only between themselves, but with the reader...even if the reader was just myself.

I liked what I thought tonight lying there just thinking anything that rose to the "lake surface" of that tiny great expanse that is my brain. It gave me hope again...hope that the hazy grey veil in which Ambien seems to encase my creativity with like some medical shroud can still be lifted...and that the grey matter inside my head can still rise to that surface (even if only for a Loch Ness Monster-like instant) and indeed prevail.