Insomnia - it kills your dreams. Literallly.

Captain James T Kirk got it wrong you know.

He said that space was the final frontier, the place to “explore strange new worlds, seek out new life forms and new civilisations and to boldly go where no man has gone before” .

But it isn’t intergalactic space travel that you need to achieve all these goals, it is something far more humble – a solid night’s dream-laden sleep. No sci-fi writer in the world has yet managed to come up with story lines to match what your mind can produce when the imagination is set free during your sleeping hours.

You do indeed boldly go to places where you have never been and face scenarios you can never imagine.

It’s a mystical, magical world.

Sadly, however, for many people like me this dream world is often ruined by the appearance of a Klingon. And he’s called insomnia.

I have written about my occasional bursts of insomnia a couple of times in this blog/column over the years and it always produces letters or comments later because so many people suffer from this demoralising night time problem. A survey in America in 2002 said that as many as 58 per cent of adults in America experience symptoms of insomnia a few nights a week or more. That seems rather a high figure to me but anecdotally I know that a lot of people are just not getting as much sleep as they would like.

My insomnia – which I understand is called transient insomnia – is like a strange uncle who turns up unexpectedly at a do. He stays as long as he sees fit and then just goes. You don’t know why he decided to come but you suspect after he leaves that he will pop back again when you least expect it. He’s not your favourite uncle.

I’ve had a couple of bouts lately – the most recent on Tuesday night. I had no particular issues on my mind, no reasons to stop me going into dream land but not only did I not have 40 winks but I think I hardly had a single (tiddly) wink. People say that is impossible and you must sleep sometime but all I can say is that my digital clock and I became very well acquainted and if there were bursts of sleep, the clock must have stopped while I had them.

I tried all my usual methods to help me sleep – but to no avail. One I would heartily recommend to other sufferers which usually does the trick is to look at the time and if it is, say 11.15pm, then remember what you were doing at every quarter past the hour throughout the day. Normally I am asleep before I get to lunchtime. On Tuesday though even this fail-safe system, err, failed.

The problem with insomnia is that even as and when you get through the night you then carry it over to the following day. On Wednesday morning, as I write this, I still feel alert and ready for action (ish) but I won’t get home tonight until about 11pm because I’m chairing an election debate at St Martin’s Church. To anyone who was there can I, therefore, just say that if I did fall asleep, it was nothing to do with the politicians. Honest.

So to all those who are reading this who are fellow sufferers, you have my total sympathy. I just hope that tonight you can boldly go into your lovely dreamland and leave the Klingon well behind.

Insomnia: a cruel night-time mistress

This week I once again had a very unwelcome guest in my bed.

She (because I am convinced this ‘person’ is female for some unfathomable reason) is an occasional visitor and is one that always leaves her mark and makes the whole bedroom experience very distressing.

Her name is insomnia.

And she’s a pain.

This unwanted lady has been a visitor to my bedchamber for many years and tends to come unexpectedly and without warning and usually sticks around for a couple of weeks.

So, three times in the last week she has dominated my night-times and left me feeling completely shattered the morning after. And, frankly, I no longer know what to do about her.

Take Monday night.

I went to bed at my usual time, read a few pages of my favoured book (Robert Harris’s latest novel on the Roman empire) and then I closed my eyes at about midnight expecting to sail into the land of nod until I was woken by Radio Five Live at 6.45 the following morning.

But insomnia had other ideas.

For the next 3-4 hours (the last time I checked the dreaded alarm clock said 3.42), she left my mind in a total state of turmoil which meant that in the battle for night-time supremacy (which she had instigated) she was victorious

Although my mind wasn’t particularly active, when you are alone with your thoughts in the middle of the night you notice everything. The normal melodic humming of my heating system suddenly sounded as loud as if Motorhead were playing in my living room and the slightest sound of a distant car sounded like a Formula One race.

Everything was amplified, everything was exaggerated and everything combined to leave me more awake at 2.30am than I usually expect to be at 2.30pm.

So, like everyone who suffers from insomnia I tried all the usual ‘cures’. I got up, wandered around, read some more of Mr Harris, popped a DVD on at 2am (an old Seinfeld which was very funny but sadly didn’t leave me very sleepy), had a quick drink, changed my position in the bed dozens of times and even resorted to the totally pointless activity of counting sheep. The latter is the singular most ridiculous way of getting to sleep I can imagine but, hey, it works for others so I was busy counting them cotton-picking lambs at 3am.

But all to no avail.

Eventually I must have drifted off (and again I have no reason why – perhaps even Mrs Insomnia had got bored) and the day after I felt as if I had been out at an all-night party. Without any of the benefits of having been at an all-night party.

So if you have any ideas of how you can help me to defeat this bed hopping irritant, I would greatly welcome them here or at the usual address or at s.holliday@bathchron.co.uk. I have also set myself a new year target of trying to ‘Tweet’ more (you can find me at @samholliday) so pop in and say hi – but preferably not at about 2.30am. After all at that time I am usually watching Seinfeld and dreaming (or rather not dreaming) of sleep, glorious, sleep.

Night night.