My life:
A waking nightmare: Charlie Brooker on living with insomnia
"I'm an adult. I have abilities. I can read (quite quickly), write (passably), draw (cartoons) and take someone's head off with a sniper rifle from over a kilometre away (in video games). I can ride bikes, solve Sudokus, and whistle. In short,
I am Superman. Or I would be, if there wasn't one niggling skill that eludes me. I can't get to sleep.
In theory, falling asleep is easy. You lie down, close your eyes and enter shutdown mode. Simple. Simpler than using a pencil. Unless, like me, you have a brain that finds it hard to shut up. During the day, you can distract it with books and websites and conversations and so on. But at night, in a dark, quiet room, there is no escape. While your body tries to drift away, your brain fidgets restlessly in your skull, huffing like a backseat child , kicking its shoes into your back every four seconds and asking stupid questions. It fiddles with dark thoughts, breaking off now and then to hum a theme tune. And it incessantly moans about the length of the journey.
And after an hour of this, your body starts joining in. Suddenly, nothing feels right. It's too hot. Or too cold. There's a cramp in your neck. So you shift about, trying to find an optimum position of comfort. But there is none. Lie on your side and your arm is in the way. Lie on your back and your head wants to roll left or right.
As for lying on your stomach - only a psychopath would try that. You can't breathe, for God's sake.
Before long, two hours have gone by, so you start worrying about how late it is. Congratulations. Now you're doomed. Straining to lose consciousness, aching to sleep, doomed. You worry about tomorrow. The more important tomorrow is, the worse it gets. All those things to do, and you're going to feel as if you've been beaten up.
Someone once told me that if you want to know how you're going to feel in a decade's time, you should stay awake all night and go into work. It simulates 10 years of ageing apparently. I've done it many times, and it's always grim. There's a bad taste in your mouth and a despairing ache behind your eyes. You feel clammy and anxious. Your clothes stick to you. You look and feel like Pete Doherty wheezing over the finish line of an 888-mile fun run. Sometimes, a weird hysteria takes hold of you, and the strangest things become amusing. I once laughed out loud at an LED sign on the London Underground that said "NEXT TRAIN APPROACHING". For some reason my sleep-deprived mind found it hilarious. It's temporary insanity.
Clearly, this is a situation to be avoided at all costs. So you lie in bed, straining to sleep, alternating between despair and fury, until you reach your cut-off point. Mine is 7am. By 6am, I've generally given up, and I'm on the sofa staring mournfully at GMTV, resigned to staying awake, but then 7am rolls round and I can't fight exhaustion any longer. And then I'm a frozen corpse. I stay dead to the world through alarms and phone calls, and on one occasion, a fire drill. Some time around 11am, I wake in a frothing panic, late for everything, condemned to play catch-up for the rest of the day.
All of which gives me more to worry about later. At night. When I'm trying to sleep. The cycle continues. The bastard thing."
"I'm an adult. I have abilities. I can read (quite quickly), write (passably), draw (cartoons) and take someone's head off with a sniper rifle from over a kilometre away (in video games). I can ride bikes, solve Sudokus, and whistle. In short,
I am Superman. Or I would be, if there wasn't one niggling skill that eludes me. I can't get to sleep.
In theory, falling asleep is easy. You lie down, close your eyes and enter shutdown mode. Simple. Simpler than using a pencil. Unless, like me, you have a brain that finds it hard to shut up. During the day, you can distract it with books and websites and conversations and so on. But at night, in a dark, quiet room, there is no escape. While your body tries to drift away, your brain fidgets restlessly in your skull, huffing like a backseat child , kicking its shoes into your back every four seconds and asking stupid questions. It fiddles with dark thoughts, breaking off now and then to hum a theme tune. And it incessantly moans about the length of the journey.
And after an hour of this, your body starts joining in. Suddenly, nothing feels right. It's too hot. Or too cold. There's a cramp in your neck. So you shift about, trying to find an optimum position of comfort. But there is none. Lie on your side and your arm is in the way. Lie on your back and your head wants to roll left or right.
As for lying on your stomach - only a psychopath would try that. You can't breathe, for God's sake.
Before long, two hours have gone by, so you start worrying about how late it is. Congratulations. Now you're doomed. Straining to lose consciousness, aching to sleep, doomed. You worry about tomorrow. The more important tomorrow is, the worse it gets. All those things to do, and you're going to feel as if you've been beaten up.
Someone once told me that if you want to know how you're going to feel in a decade's time, you should stay awake all night and go into work. It simulates 10 years of ageing apparently. I've done it many times, and it's always grim. There's a bad taste in your mouth and a despairing ache behind your eyes. You feel clammy and anxious. Your clothes stick to you. You look and feel like Pete Doherty wheezing over the finish line of an 888-mile fun run. Sometimes, a weird hysteria takes hold of you, and the strangest things become amusing. I once laughed out loud at an LED sign on the London Underground that said "NEXT TRAIN APPROACHING". For some reason my sleep-deprived mind found it hilarious. It's temporary insanity.
Clearly, this is a situation to be avoided at all costs. So you lie in bed, straining to sleep, alternating between despair and fury, until you reach your cut-off point. Mine is 7am. By 6am, I've generally given up, and I'm on the sofa staring mournfully at GMTV, resigned to staying awake, but then 7am rolls round and I can't fight exhaustion any longer. And then I'm a frozen corpse. I stay dead to the world through alarms and phone calls, and on one occasion, a fire drill. Some time around 11am, I wake in a frothing panic, late for everything, condemned to play catch-up for the rest of the day.
All of which gives me more to worry about later. At night. When I'm trying to sleep. The cycle continues. The bastard thing."