What’s It Like To Use Sleeping Pills?
In an effort to better understand what it’s like to be an actual user of sleeping pills, we spoke with a woman who considers herself dependent on the meds. She kindly shared her experiences with us, but wished to remain anonymous.
My correspondent has been suffering from insomnia since high school. “It’s just completely debilitating, you know? I can’t function like that,” she says.
For the last three-and-a-half years, she has been using the anti-depressant-cum-sleeping-pill trazodone. A few days before our conversation, her doctor had upped her prescription and added Klonopin in response to a recent bout of sleeplessness. Even though she says she took the pill at a normal hour, she reported still feeling fuzzy during our chat, which was shortly before noon.
“I’m drinking coffee,” she said. “I’m still so groggy and out of it.”
She admitted that she had been able to sleep better since the prescription increase, but her daytime experiences anecdotally confirmed the warnings of diminished functioning.
“Which is better?” she asked. “Do I just suck it up on three hours of sleep and then go to work? Or do I take this trazodone and Klonopin and then know I’m going to be knocked out, but it’s going to be hell to get myself out of bed?”
According to the experts, the answer should be neither. “I can’t stress enough how important sleep habits are,” Bazil insisted. “Regular exercise, yoga, meditation, or other relaxation techniques can help your body deal with stress and help convince your brain that it’s okay to sleep. In the long run, that’s what helps.”
Whatever side you come down on, it is clear sleeping pills are still shrouded in a network of misunderstanding and mystery. The only way to move forward is to reexamine both our pill consumption and our relationship to sleep in order to better understand the roles and risks of each. Sleeping pills aren’t unanimously detrimental, but in our overly medicated culture, it wouldn’t be a terrible idea to get a better grasp on the substances we put in our bodies.