Note: This is for Hunter S. Thompson, who passed from this life twenty years ago this week, and remains a favorite writer. I do suffer from insomnia at times, but never this bad.
It’s 4:20 AM on what I think is Tuesday, but time has become an abstract concept, like modern art or Bitcoin. The shadow people are back, lurking in my peripheral vision as unpaid extras in a low-budget horror movie. The walls of my bedroom have taken up synchronized breathing exercises—great for their mindfulness, terrifying for mine. Meanwhile, a car alarm wails in the distance, a banshee auditioning for a doom-metal band. And then there’s the dogs. Mexico’s street dogs have apparently formed a midnight barking choir just around the corner, and their setlist is chaos.
This marks the seventy-second hour of my descent into the Dantean Inferno of chronic sleeplessness. Fun fact: about thirty percent of humans visit this hellscape at some point in their lives. Lucky me, I’ve got the VIP pass. Around hour fifty, something magical happens: your brain stages a coup. It convinces you that sleep is a capitalist lie, like 401(k)s or organic toothpaste. You start to believe you’ve never actually slept before—maybe sleep is just a myth whispered by smug well-rested people in white lab coats. Insomnia as they call it is just science’s polite term for your brain turning into an unhinged roommate who won’t stop rearranging your emotional furniture at three AM.
Here’s the thing they don’t tell you in those pristine medical journals: insomnia isn’t just not sleeping. Oh, no. It’s being trapped in a consciousness that refuses to shut up. It’s like having a radio in your head permanently stuck on the “All Anxiety, All the Time” station. You lie there, staring at the ceiling, wondering if ceiling fans have existential crises. Murray, my shadowy friend by the dresser, assures me they do. He’s really into Feng Shui, by the way.
Between 4 and 6 AM, reality starts glitching like a bad video game. You hear people say, “It’s darkest before the dawn,” but they don’t mention how soul-crushing that darkness feels when you’re three days deep into Insomnia: The Musical. The culprits behind this fiasco are many, and oh, how they love to conspire. Blue light, capitalism, anxiety, existential dread—it’s like they’re all playing poker in your hypothalamus, and you’re losing every hand.
The internet is full of so-called “solutions.” I’ve tried them all.
Melatonin. Sure, if you like dreams where Donald Trump offers you Melania, or a cabinet position at Mar-a-Lago. Never again.
CBT-I? A fancy acronym for “reprogram your thoughts about sleep”—as if my thoughts aren’t already an unruly daycare of chaos. If I could reprogram myself, I’d surely have a full head of hair and a house in the country.
Weighted blankets? Hugged by gravity itself, they said. More like being smothered by a needy ex.
Whale sounds? Listen, if whales are really having tea parties in space, I want an invite, not just the ambient noise.
And the sleep hygiene cultists—don’t even get me started. “Create a relaxing bedtime routine!” they chant. My current routine involves having philosophical debates with my coffee maker and fending off interior design advice from Murray. If that’s not relaxing, I don’t know what is.
By hour seventy, I reach a level of delirium that’s almost poetic. Reality folds in on itself like badly, it’s origami. I start to question everything— my life choices, career, and most importantly, whether mattresses are just capitalist propaganda. The sleep tracking apps don’t help. Watching my “sleep score” plummet in real-time is doomscrolling my own failure.
And yet, somehow, I’ve stumbled upon a few truths.
• The harder I chase sleep, the faster it runs, a greased-up pig at a county fair.
• Sleep apps? Anxiety in app form. Just delete them.
• Naming your shadow people helps. Murray and I are tight now, though he insists I redecorate.
So, here I am, staring at the first rays of sunlight, wondering if sleep is just death’s introverted cousin. For all my fellow insomniacs out there, stuck in this nocturnal purgatory: you’re not alone. We’re all in this sleepless society together, bonding over our shared delusions and midnight Amazon purchases.
One day, sleep will find us. It has to. Until then, let’s embrace the madness, consult our shadow friends, and keep asking the big questions. Like, seriously—do ceiling fans have feelings?
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Until we meet again, let your conscience be your guide.
John Coltrane’s meditations album at 4am could save our souls.
4:20? Really, Bret? That's always a good time to be awake.