Sleeping Beauty…

For years I bragged of how little sleep I could get away with on a daily basis. 3 to 4 hours tops and my engines would be fully charged, I’d claim. Sleep is for cowards, I would dare. And as if that were not enough, I actually prescribed sleep depravation exercises within professional development programs and schemes which were administered in my erstwhile company. Such was the madness. Until recently…

Having retired (hmmm…. more like a forced sabbatical) temporarily from active professional life since March this year, I went through a phase of sleepless nights. The minimal diet of 3 to 4 hours of sleep wore down further, in light of drastically reduced physical and mental metabolism. My nightly hibernation was punctuated, disturbed and random. I tried different pillows, different dinners, even different countries. Nothing seemed to work. The mind was at its lowest point of degeneration, consumed with aimlessness, conducting futile postmortems on a spent past, every single night. Far from the rooster’s welcoming of dawn, a ritual I prided myself to match since the age of seven, for the first time in my life, without any tangible reason, I was shuffling out of bed at odd hours like noon and even past.

What was worse was that my flat-mates (mum, dad, housekeeper) had elected to not react to this aberration at all, in an attempt to afford me ‘space’ to cope with change. Every time I degenerated to a new routine, I looked for judging eyes to challenge. And each time, I was silently disappointed, taking refuge in my sleepless frustration.

To be fair, it wasn’t all bad in this zombie-like existence. I did develop a tolerance for mind-numbing B grade television. Memorized dialogues from almost all episodes of the much massaged, over-telecast Friends. Observed the nightly construction mayhem of getting the Sea Link readied before monsoons this year. Spoke to the Mumbai Police control room (100 still works, though only if you speak Marathi) several times, past midnight, to come and shut down the unloading and loading of debris right below my window. And watched the cops actually swing into action within 20 minutes of my complaint. In short, I developed new hobbies.

Until one day, I decided it was enough. Actually, it was the weighing scale that tipped to a point. There I was, slaving at the gym five days as week, improved food habits and a dramatically reduced intake of alcohol. Yet the scale refused to reward me. What was I missing?

As I labored over this personal dilemma, I was aimlessly sorting out a chest of drawers where I habitually toss in travel stuff (change, medicines, chargers, batteries, 100 ml bottles, airline wash bags etc) when I came across a half used strip of my trusted jet-lag beating drug – Restyl. To the uninitiated, this is a sleeping pill (gasp, gasp, gasp), which contains Alprazolam (God bless whoever discovered this drug) which shouldn’t be sold without a prescription, but thankfully, in India, anything goes. I was first introduced to it medically by the emergency room at Breach Candy Hospital, on one of my numerous stress-induced gastric attack visits. Half of a 0.25 mg pink tablet of Restyl tamed me almost instantly, as I recall. The next time was inflight from Mumbai to London in 2004, where I watched two friends, simultaneously pop different strengths of the pills, just after take off, to ensure uninterrupted 7 hours of inflight sleep, till we landed into London at the break of dawn. Needless to say, the both of them looked fresh as daisies. I looked a mess. Lesson learnt. Restyl became my travel companion and has been ever since.

It was a night this September, when I confronted my sleeplessness and succumbed to the seduction of Restyl. It is important here to mention that my dosage of this wonder-drug has graduated to 0.5mg (the other blue pill). Almost instantly, I fell asleep. For the first time, in my bed, in my room, on my pillows. For the first time in almost two decades. For the first time for eight straight hours.

The next morning was a revelation. As I uncurled and stretched, my muscles yielded to a new sensation of feeling fresh as versus stressed. My mind was blank, in a good way, with no residue of idle thoughts, or television characters. And my eyes thanked the rest of me for the rest. The burst of oxygen after the extended shut down made everything seem of digital clarity as versus the blur I would usually slump into. Halleluiah!

What was this new sensation? Why hadn’t I discovered it before? I smiled through my day and pondered over this dramatic turn of events. And waited for sundown. This time, I serenaded Restyl at 11 pm. At 7 am the next day, I woke up with renewed vigor. A repeat performance. Yippee.

A week later, and the routine had set in. I was beating the newspaper and fresh bread delivery guys. Drawing the living room blinds was magical. And making my own cup of tea enveloped with privacy was so satisfying. Best of all, I was once again greeting the sun, but for the first time, with a rested smile.

The good news doesn’t stop here. The weighing scale still struggles to budge. But I am wearing a new face of freshness which I am told (not just by my flat mates, but friends and family too) suits me. The skin on my face seems smoother. I seem to have less bad hair days. I frown a lot less, smile a lot more.

It’s been almost 60 days now, that I’ve stuck to the regime of sleep. Am in the process of weaning off Restyl (I save it for weekend treats) and am proud to report that my sleep output (or is it intake?) has improved to a consistent 7 hours daily.

So why did I feel compelled to share this experience? To all those Type A or wannabe Type A rat-race Bud Fox and Gordon Gekko divas and dudes – take it from someone who’s been there and done that – sleeping may kill opportunity. But not sleeping will definitely kill you.

My next conquest? Afternoon naps….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

MA