What's the Best Part of Being an Insomniac?

Every now and then, I like to peep my traffic sources (Whaddup, Germany and Russia?! Thanks for reading!) and keyword searches that lead people to Ask An Insomniac (AAI). (Whatever--it's not a book, but I wanted to add the italics for DRAMATIZATION. Plus, I'm that not-tired tired that is sadly familiar to many of us. The proud, the few, the AWAKE ALL THE FUCKING TIME, DEAR SLEEP WAVES ALPHA THROUGH DELTA AND PHARMA, PLEASE HELP US .)

I came upon this today:

This is a sampling of some of the things that people search to get to this weird, weird blog. Big up all the real insomniacs who were too tired to spell or use proper punctuation (boxed in green). "Tounge," ". o," "insomniax," and "comborbities," I salute you. (Also hoping there isn't a Club Insomniax that I haven't been to yet.) Especially you, comborbities. Because--ask your doctor--but you may have comorbid insomnia and dyslexia. But this is a safe place, especially if you bring up Cuban sandwiches (!!!!!).

But this leads to today's question, "What's the best part of being an insomniac?"
I would like to assume that this is from a fellow insomniac, as I imagine him/her/ze crawling Grudge-style to the computer after days without sleep and hallucinating patterns the likes of which Tim Gunn is probably telling you suck, whilst secretly plotting to sell them to the sleeping masses (My longest stretch with NO sleep was 36 hours--the patterns are real, son. Well, in that they're not real, but they are).

OK, so perhaps I've already given you one idea for what the best part of being an insomniac is...if you work in fashion. Please send me freebies if I have inspired you, thanks.

So that's my assumption, worst-case scenario is that we're like in the danger hours during which shingles or encephalitis or IFIDONTFINDMYPILLOWINTHISROOMFULLOF...PILLOWS? occur. Equally bad is if it's someone who doesn't really have insomnia but is trying to coopt the struggle. That's right guys, there are insomnia hipsters out there, and they aim to diminish our experience.

People think it's cool to have insomnia. People think insomnia is not a real thing. Put these two widespread thoughts about insomnia out there, and you have a trendy, non-illness illness. :/

To the people who want to co-opt "productive insomnia" as an identity/struggle, your real struggle is not sounding full of shit to actual insomniacs while having to hope that a pack of insomniacs doesn't come for dat ass at 5:30am while you're "not sleeping productively" in your fucking den of lies.  

I've mentioned "productive insomnia" before and how anyone who tells you they have it is mid-manic episode (altho it could easily be drug-induced insomnia), but I've heard it again from people I know damn well have no trouble sleeping. No one has productive diabetes, no one has productive chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and no one has productive insomnia. 

(Who curses Sir Walter Raleigh aside from someone who hasn't slept?! Think about it)

This begs the question, "What illnesses have productive aspects?" Going back to diabetes, perhaps being in studies for medications that work or being in focus groups to better quality of life may be productive. Same goes for COPD. So, as we can see the "productive" aspects are merely byproducts of an illness with which one has to contend and to treat. Insomnia is also an illness. If I happen to draw something during an hour I can't sleep, it doesn't mean I'm being productive--it means I'm avoiding the effects of the illness. But chances are I have work the next day. So if you think that one hour of shitty drawing at 4 am is productive, just wait till the next 18 hours of my not doing shieeettt.

Wait till the very productive discussion that goes like this:

Coworker (in slow motion, from my perspective): "Gooooood mornnnnning, how are yoooouuuuu?"

Me: "Is. it. the. morning? I ju--"

Coworker (I'm catching on, her voice has picked up in speed): "Haha, you're so funny. It's only Tuesday, silly!"

Me: "Tuesday? Wait, were we here yesterday?"

Coworker: "No, you called me and asked me to tell the boss to tell her you were gonna be out. Something about the couch was talking to you and you couldn't 'handle it right now' and also you think you should use 2B pencils on Oscar Wilde, but maybe markers could give you the flexibility in color that you were looking for; you read me a hypothetical to-do list for city council members and asked me if there was anything I should add; you told me that Jimmy Fallon should stop frowning at all his guests and read me your letter to NBC; and you asked if I'd be interested in a coup d'etat."

Me: "Thanks. Do you want something from Starbucks?"

That's how productive my insomnia gets, people. It's all fun and games until you have to explain the coup situation to human resources.

One of my brands of insomnia means that I cannot get to sleep. Think "I'm So Tired" by The Beatles. Or "How Soon Is Now" (if I'm listening to it while I'm tired...I am human and I need to be REM'd...just like everybody else sleeps...)

Every insomniac is different, so any positives you can find are just that--positives. Let me know what some of yours are! Sometimes there's pleasure in knowing I'm the only person awake, but if I have to do a cost-benefit ratio, it never looks so good on the benefit side.

"See, I've already waited too long...and my hope is gone...." (=some nights. Once it hits 4 am, I know that night is a wrap)

Do You Ask All These Questions Yourself?

OK, full disclosure, it is before 7am and I have been up for hours. I have not had Ambien in a couple days because I've been trying to get my tolerance down, but that also means that Benadryl is basically the only other option left in the cards for me. FYI if I have not already mentioned this, the active ingredient in Benadryl is the same active ingredient in like Unisom and all that other OTC shit they try to tell you will help you sleep. It's called diphenhydramine. I just saved you tens of dollars just now.

Also, why did Blogspot tell me that Benadryl is not a word but that Ambien is? Is it psychic or some shit? Because I was just about to say how Benadryl is not the truth. Like if p>q, then Benadryl is false and we reject the null hypothesis and by transitive property of made-this-whole-tautology-up, Benadryl is nonsignificant and stupid. (Guys, I hope you know I'm being ironic here. I actually is good at math and know both logic and statistics, which I hope was evident by the use of the word "tautology." Like honestly, when's the last time you heard that? I'm gonna try to integrate [oh shit, another math word!] "tautology" in my vocabulary more frequently. Except that I'm rarely logical unless...nope, I'm just rarely logical. Actually, that's all a lie. I USED to be good at math...you know I went to the Stuyvesantz and shit, so I had to know something. And BTW I never cheated there, because I know that's what you're thinking after all these cheating scandals...For the tests I knew I was going to fail, I just walked in with failure on my face and left with failure on my Scantrons. Which is what real students should do (fail? Again, the logic thing is lacking at the moment [read: always].) Anyway, the point is that I peaked at 13 in terms of basically all intelligence and it's been downhill since then. But don't tell my colleagues because people consider me one of the few people who can actually legit read scientific studies and understand confidence intervals and shit like that, so if they saw this, it could hurt my reputation.

OK, I may be lying again, but I think this could also be difference of opinion as follows...So chemistry kind of eluded me because I couldn't really decipher the accents of the teachers who taught it and I wasn't about to go HAM on linguistic nuances and shit because that would be rude, but I literally never understood what my teachers were saying. Anyway, I had this deal with my lab partner where he was the Master of Ceremonies for the Bunsen Burner and I would do the lab reports because I was afraid of fire. I always had this feeling of imminent burn victim in Chem lab. Is that cheating?

I still fear flames not excluding the Waka Flocka sort. People come to my house sometimes and they're like "is pasta burning?" And I have to tell them yes, because I have devised a system of lighting candles that involves me taking a strand of Barilla spaghetti (when I can afford Barilla...otherwise I have to settle for Ronzoni...which is not as good but has a hilarious name to make up for it...oh shit, I'm being culturally insensitive. I'll apologize for that later, but back to fire) and lighting it at the end (I JUST got over my fear of lighters like 4 years ago) so that I can light candles. Recap: sometimes my house smells like burnt pasta because I use long strands of spaghetti with a low risk of burning myself because spaghetti is long so that I can light candles.

Also, fuck a physics. None of that shit made sense ever. I almost didn't get like the special diploma "smart people" are sposed to get from my HS because I failed the Physics Regents by 2 points. TWO POINTS. Who the fuck else would that happen to? But then some physics geniuses were like "this test was flawed" and my diploma was saved. Except for the part where they spelled my name wrong. There were mad Korean kids in my HS so they put "Park" on my diploma and I thought it was so funny that I kept it. The DMV did not agree. Anyway, thank you physics geniuses...even tho we can never be friends, I am grateful for your wisdom of a pseudoscience.

Oh shit, there was a question at the beginning because AAI is "Ask An Insomniac" and that means it is based in questions. But the whole thing about not sleeping is that then I have thoughts that keep running and basically my bad. I'm actually a decent writer, but this blog is like my run-on sentence playground. I had a limited childhood, so please just let me have this. Thanks. So yeah, I do in fact ask a lot of these questions myself. But I also ask a lot of questions. That's why I have Dostoevsky and shit in my bookcase. I'm very proud of my book collection. Which is to say there is no Jane Austen in it.

This post is getting unnecessarily long, so thank you for reading it and obviously enjoying it. xoxo unless you have TB. Sorry, some of that shit is transmitted via spores and I am Irish so based on all history, I am OD susceptible to the consumption (yes, that is what they called it. They call alcoholism "the drink," since you were wondering). And also that shit doesn't go away; it's like pulmonary herpes. And I am lacking in the health insurance dept at the moment so like don't give me the consumption.

Why Can't You Just Eat a Lot of Turkey to Go to Sleep Tho?

I'm not tryna get some backwards-ass serotonin syndrome off some sleep attempt via turkey. Everyone knows that shit turns to serotonin with the quickness. And serotonin is not as friendly with the body as it would like you to believe....you take a benadryl by accident with an SSRI (JUST SAYING, FOLKS, HYPOTHETICALLY) and you might be assed out with the ill serotonin syndrome. One time that shit had serotonin syndrome hit me hardbody...I can't even explain this.

(FYI the active ingredient in this is benadryl aka diphenhydramine.)

Like take hypnagogia, which is literally the midpoint of consciousness and unconsciousness (let's not get into the sub vs unconsciouness debate right now, please)...so you think you're dreaming...but dreams manifest in physical actions...that one time I took cough syrup when I was on an SSRI--I'm not ready for pharmacy legislation conversation right now, altho I will say a pharmacist did not consult me on that shit. Tell me how I was convinced that I was a fish smoking a cigarette. I woke up like "ssswwooooo," "swooooo," inhaling fake smoke mad loudly on my couch because I was having another crazy hypnagogic hallucination. Like that type of shit is LITERALLY the basis for Fight Club. But you know, no one wants it simplified down to the comborbities of insomnia and SSRI-benadryl interactions (ie, serotonin syndrome). It wouldn't sell.

But yet HEAVEN FORBID I have OD congestion, B, and I would like to so kindly, Sir CVS Man, cop some pseudoephedrine. THEN SHIT GETS REAL OUTTA NOWHERE. "Miss, can I have your ID [where you look like the midpoint between Courtney Love and Charlize Theron in Monster], please? I need to take your information down [so I know you're not building a meth lab in your apt]."

(This is a really accurate picture of what my State ID looks like.)

...In New York City?! With my penthouse-status (read: lie) one-bedroom apt (read: truth tho) I somewhere am housing a meth lab because Congress can't get their shit together and keep adding pork into bills and not into my Cuban sangwiches at 3 am? BULLSHIT. I don't have the time for congestion or for a start-up drug cartel. 

(Please note the most important element of the Cuban sandwich, the pickle.)

Yes, folks, the reason you have to give up your ID to get the good decongestant (not phenylephrine...NOT phenylephrine...that shit is more useless than decaf coffee) is because of the Patriot Act, everyone's favorite bill. They added it so muhfuhs in Utah might could maybe not end up on the season finale of Intervention but the ones with like the sad knockout-type stories at the end... "Clayton Larry went to rehab for 4.3 hours. He relapsed shortly after") Like even if I did, Kickstarter is gonna get shut down with the quickness once the legislative bodies decide to read something...so no cartel for me...which is good, because I'm generally too tired to start one anyway!

But yeah, fall back on Turkey, let's talk about how the tryptophan in Turkey is negligible (yep, totally wrote "negligent" before I edited this...But at the end of the day, is turkey really looking out for you anyway?) compared to other foods.

Eg, via the world's most reliable reference, Wikipedia:
Tryptophan g/100g of Food

egg, white, dried		1.00
spirulina, dried		0.93
cod, atlantic, dried		0.70
soybeans, raw		0.59
cheese, Parmesan		0.56
sesame seed		0.37
cheese, cheddar		0.32
sunflower seed		0.30
pork, chop		0.25
turkey		0.24

What I'm tryna say is...Turkey ain't shit! Look at that up against the heavy hitters soybeans, parmesan cheese...did you see them in the gymnastics portion of the gymnastics? YOU SURE DID! Did you see how much those tired Russian chicks were falling like flies off the things they were born to do? Two of them didn't even know what a balance beam was...cuz they were fallin asleep after eating some eggs! FOOD CHARTS, FRIENDS....FOOD CHARTS.

Also, a reminder that eating turkey before you sleep will fuck with your neurotransmitters AND make you gain weight. Fuck you and ya whole tryptophan life.

What's In Your Freezer?

Vegetables and Vodka, which will also likely be the title of the memoirs I'll never get around to publishing.

The vodka is on rotation, but I'm pretty much a Green Giant loyalist. Yeah, it's the most expensive one, but I don't go to spas or do expensive girl shit, so this is where I splurge. Also, sometimes, I'll be on my Popeye and (mmmm POPEYES IS ALSO DELICIOUS, SIDE NOTE) eat a box of spinach and try to go to sleep, so that's like a whole meal.

No, my diet makes no sense. But I got free radicals to kill and broccoli has like OD antioxidants. I'm on the OG effective wrinkle prevention. And I don't know chemistry but I do know that people who only eat organic shit or mad expensive produce from Half Foods (read: Whole Foods) are full of shit. Ie, like how do you really know that shit is organic? And also, can you define organic for me? HOW ARE ALL VEGETABLES NOT ORGANIC ALREADY?! Like advertising that vegetables are organic as if it's something special leads me to believe that you have like changed the genetic makeup of said vegetables to create like super mutant vegetables. And like there's a Professor X of vegetables and the whole town marginalizes these mutant vegetables and so then of course there is the dark side of vegetables like a Magneto Cauliflower or something and they try to destroy the original mutant vegetables because they really just hate themselves like internalized speciesism. But for vegetables. I was gonna play around with the idea of autobot vegetables, but maybe that will be for another post.

So back to how I was judging people for eating only "organic." Unless you are picking these veggies yourself, you don't know where they came from. Like stray cats. You don't know where they went or what diseases they picked up along the way. Like they could be in Petco marketed as the "organic" shit of cat breeds but actually be stray cats. Right, so let's assume that these are stray vegetables. Like stray cats, they need to be saved and nurtured also. So why not in my freezer? (Vegetables--not cats. I'm not a sociopath. There are no cats in my freezer. I'm just an insomniac with a string of bad analogies and also string beans.)

I haven't warmed up to Brussels sprouts, but admittedly they've made no effort to look more appetizing to me, so that's on them. They could easily have a safe home in my freezer, but instead they look like the chicken nuggets of vegetables. Like someone took all the gizzards of vegetables past and assembled them into a green sphere of mystery. Also, they taste bad.

Oh, and ice. There is also some ice in my freezer. Ice and chlorofluorocarbons, which are like the free radicals of the ozone layer. Sorry, ozone.