insomnia

Women can go mad with insomnia.The sleep-deprived roam houses that have lost their familiarity. With tea mugs in hand, we wander rooms, looking on shelves for something we will recognize: a book title, a photograph, the teak-carved bird -- a souvenir from what place? A memory almost rises when our eyes rest on a painting's grey sweep of cloud, or the curve of a wooden leg in a corner. Fingertips faintly recall the raised pattern on a chair cushion, but we wonder how these things have come to be here, in this stranger's home.Lost women drift in places where time has collapsed. We look into our thoughts and hearts for what has been forgotten, for what has gone missing. What did we once care about? Whom did we love? We are emptied. We are remote. Like night lilies, we open in the dark, breathe in the shadowy world. Our soliloquies are heard by no one.

I didn't sleep all night, thinking. I thought about you, about those puppy eyes you give me, when you fake your sadness to make me smile-- and that upper lip of yours that brings life to all of my senses. I thought about your laughter when you get tickled, and that soft mellow place near your arm pit that I wish could be knit into a pillow for me to hug all night long. I thought about your stomach, your soft and sensitive stomach, scared like a baby kitten under the pouring rain. And I remembered the feeling of protection that comes washing over me when I get a glimpse of it, the feeling of covering it with the layers of my very own skin. I remembered your head when it rests on my heart, a rock sheltering itself on the verdure of infinity. I remembered your silky black hair, and how I never imagined that hair curls so thin could twirl, in the way they do, the rigid core of my existence.

Foolishness sleeps soundly, while knowledge turns with each thinking hour, longing for the dawn of answers.

The traditional techniques used in getting sleep aren__ much effective any longer and our sleep techniques need to evolve as rapidly as our life style has, in order to cope with it.

Tonight is going to be a big night, like any other night, because certain 10 million Americans will not be able to sleep well tonight.

Our current bittersweet relationship with our sleep hasn__ had a long history.

Let__ imagine a running washing machine. Let__ imagine the dirty clothes in the machine and how the liquid detergent is getting the dirt out of clothes and draining it to the waste outlet. Now imagine brain surrounded by a large pool of cleaning fluid called CSF (cerebrospinal fluid). Imagine CSF pulling the wastes from inside the brain and draining it into the blood, which routes it to the waste outlets. CSF clears waste many times faster in sleeping brain than in the waking brain.

If the world leaders can afford a 7 hours sleep, most of us probably can too.

Our faster than ever evolution has resulted in our undermining certain incredibly important aspects of humanity__ike our sleep.

You are the biggest enemy of your own sleep.

An intensely gripping narrative...expertly crafted and totally addictive...a must read!

Like Sylvia Plath, Natalie Jeanne Champagne invites you so close to the pain and agony of her life of mental illness and addiction, which leaves you gasping from shock and laughing moments later: this is both the beauty and unique nature of her storytelling. With brilliance and courage, the author's brave and candid chronicle travels where no other memoir about mental illness and addiction has gone before. The Third Sunrise is an incredible triumph and Natalie Jeanne Champagne is without a doubt the most important new voice in this genre.

In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past__ensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories.

The industrial and technological revolutions have made our lives simpler, in terms of what is physically required of us on a daily basis, but they have also made it possible for us to do a whole lot less than we ought to be doing, and we suffer for it.We have become flabby and overweight; our joints and muscles have become stiff from lack of use. We suffer from all sorts of problems related to our lack of physical exercise; it affects us on all levels, causing high blood pressure, increased cholesterol, anxiety, depression, insomnia and the list goes on and on.We know, too, how much better we feel for a bit of exercise. Those __eel-good_ hormones lift our spirits, boost self-esteem and improve our overall sense of well-being. It__ a sort of built-in reward system. There__ a reason for that. It__ because we are meant to be active.

The monsters were neverunder my bed.Because the monsterswere inside my head.I fear no monsters,for no monsters I see.Because all this timethe monster has been me.

You stay up until 3am - the time when the fine lines start to get blurry. You found yourself standing on the edge. You think you__e not supposed to be there so you jumped and crossed the line. You__e come to a place where the voices are much louder_where the words are much clearer. It__ a place where the harmless things hurt you. It is where you wonder why the sea-like decisions you__e made and the copper-like smiles has led you to loathe yourself. You wonder why your skin suddenly craves the feeling of metal. You laugh. Because it__ 3am- the time when salts and metals come together_ the time when tears and blood embrace.

Survivors who don__ stand up for themselves often develop physical and emotional illnesses. Many become depressed because they feel so hopeless and helpless about being able to change their lives. They turn their anger inward and become prone to headaches, muscle tension, nervous conditions and insomnia.

When the black thing was at its worst, when the illicit cocktails and the ten-mile runs stopped working, I would feel numb as if dead to the world. I moved unconsciously, with heavy limbs, like a zombie from a horror film. I felt a pain so fierce and persistent deep inside me, I was tempted to take the chopping knife in the kitchen and cut the black thing out I would lie on my bed staring at the ceiling thinking about that knife and using all my limited powers of self-control to stop myself from going downstairs to get it.