Friday, May 27, 2011

Sleepless Nights


It’s 4:30 am. Not a good thing, and can only mean that trouble is brewing. With the amount of medication I am on I should always sleep through the night, but the fact that I didn’t means my circadian rhythms are changing.

This could be due to stress, or I was simply awakened by a bad dream. If it had been a bad dream I would have remembered it. I always remember my nightmares. So, what does this all mean? It means I could be teetering on the edge of a major manic episode, depending how many sleepless nights I go through in a row.

Sleep is the single most important thing you can do for bipolar disorder, and it is extremely important that you stick to a regular sleep pattern no matter what. Once you go off your sleep pattern you are asking for trouble, and if you are doing it involuntarily you need to talk to your doctor. There is not a hell of a lot more that he can do for me to help me sleep as far as medication is concerned. I am maxed out on Ambien and Klonopin, and there are a slew of other drugs I take to keep me stabilized.

Perhaps this was just a single bad night, and I will sleep well tonight when I get home. The problem is that if I go to work overtired, my system will overreact and push me into hyper drive.  It’s a snowball effect, and can be incredibly dangerous if you don’t stay on top of it.

This is the last thing I need, but on the other hand, I have several books roiling around in my psyche that are itching to come out, so maybe a really good manic episode will give me the creative explosion I need to put one of them down on paper.

Love to all!

James M. Weil

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