Sleep Story

Insomnia runs in my family, afflicting both sides of it with equal intensity. That’s nearly four centuries of Mexican tossing and Italian turning, with fits of German cursing and crying in between. A long heritage of discomfort, and, according to family gossip, one that has only been interrupted by the rotting medicines that tempt anyone who’s had to put up with an extended period of lost sleep – drugs, alcohol, compulsive anger, and every possible combination of the three. With the advent of psychotherapy, and the discovery that trauma is an actual illness and not a defect of character, many of us have learned to deal with insomnia in less destructive ways.

In 2010, my father was prescribed a small dose of the sleep aid Zolpidem, brand name Ambien, by his psychiatrist - a neat, gentle little drug that has chemical kinship with tranquilizers like Valium and Xanax, but without their addictive and narcotic qualities. To my dad, who had long suffered from sleepless nights and long days spent dragging himself through his work as an electrician, this was the answer to all of his prayers. After his inaugural dose, he smiled and drifted off into what I’m sure was the finest sleep he’d had in decades. I’m also sure this is all he remembers of that first night, and he’s better off for it. Zolpidem has a blackout effect on the mind, like a drinking binge without the hangover. My mother and I recall it in deeper, less relaxing ways. For her, it brought on the uncomfortable squeeze of an abused past, and, for me, it brought forth the very shadow of death. It was an alien shape seen in my peripheral vision that night. We all have to see that shape at least once in our lives. Knowing I’ll have to see it twice frightens me.

Watching my dad’s face slacken at the dinner table after taking his first dose was distressing. It bore the stamp of deep intoxication, and it was immediate, without any intervening period of jollity or talkativeness. No time to acclimate to it. Only a high-school junior at the time, I was unfamiliar with the actual sensation of being drunk, but I would later come to know it well as a solitary confinement for the soul.

In certain quantities, liquor utterly disables your ability to step outside yourself. For the constructive drinker, often an artist, leaving this ability behind is useful and focusing, like a monk retreating into his cell to pray. Booze simply becomes a chemical means of getting to that same, isolated room. For the drunk however, who often harbors a deep hatred for what he sees in the mirror, this blind isolation is an addictive, absolute deliverance, and an absolute terror for those around him. There are few things in this world as wonderful as being drunk, and even fewer as awful as seeing someone else drunk. (This is why I’ve always thought of the designated-driver concept as something nice in theory and unimaginable in practice. Drunk people are only bearable when you’re also drunk, and being sober among drinkers has the same world-shattering effect as catching a glimpse of yourself having sex. “Is this what it really looks like when I do this?”) Blissfully sliding about inside his cell without mirrors, or even the faint reflectivity of a window, it becomes nearly impossible for anyone to make the drunk see that he is trapped, or that there is a world outside. My mother watched helplessly from outside like this for most of her childhood as my grandfather, Andrew, committed himself to this living death, dumping frightening amounts of alcohol into himself and raging as if there were no one else in the room. My dad’s face that night, so relaxed it might have melted right off of his skull, brought these times closer to her than she’d felt in years.