And no, I don’t mean this guy :

Hey, big fan, glad to meet you, let me shake your…. uh… maybe not.

I mean the mythological fellow who is supposed to go around dispensing sleep. I have been having trouble sleeping today and it is making me grumpy and irritable. And this, despite my new sleep medication, which is fairly potent stuff.

The problem is not sleepiness. That I have down, thanks to Quetiapine. It takes a while to kick in, but that is something you can just plan around. And yup, it puts me to sleep, and does so slowly but firmly, which is what I wanted. And it seems to be better quality sleep than I was getting before too, without as much mental disturbance making for fitful and disturbed sleep.

So far so good. But somehow, I am still not quite sleeping right. I have felt sleepy all day and keep trying to correct that with more sleep, but I seem to fall asleep very, very slowly, and therefore I do not get that much of the really good deep sleep before my goddamned bladder wakes me and I have to get up and empty it, thus resetting my whole sleep cycle.

And usually, by then, it is close enough to a meal time that it is easier to just stay awake until after I eat, and when I eat, I of course drink water, and so you can see how this whole cycle perpetuates.

I realize that my long ingrained habit of slow constant hydration is a big part of the equation here. All the sleep hygiene guides say not to drink anything within a couple of hours of going to sleep, and I try to adhere to that. In that, the fact that the pill can take up to an hour and a half to kick in actually helps in that. Take the pill during my midnight snack, then just do not drink anything before it kicks in. And make sure to empty my bladder right before I lay down to sleep.

But nevertheless, my kidneys seem to just keep cranking out urine regardless, and I end up having to get up to pee anyhow. No wonder I have a history of two to three hour naps. That is as long as my damned bladder will give me before it is pee trip time again!

That leads to stage 2 of problem, which is that I do not seem able to wake up just a little in order to make my little trips. I wake up all the way to full alertness, exactly as though I was getting up to face the day, and that makes getting back to sleep that much more difficult.

So again, no wonder about the two to three hour nap thing. It is almost like I am keeping to a six hour clock, two hours asleep, four ours awake, and every waking is a whole new day.

This, needless to say, is painfully fucked up.

I understand that other people do not have this problem. They can get up to take a leak and retain their necessary sleepiness, so when all is done, they can just go right back to sleep and it is nary a blip in their sleep cycle.

And that sounds great. I want to learn how to do this myself. I sometimes wonder if my parents’ oh so “progressive” move of taking away bed time and letting me sleep when I felt like it when I was still pretty young actually did me a disservice by interrupting the process of learning to sleep eight hours like a normal person.

Anyhow, it would be great to learn to wake up only a little, just enough to get the job done, and then go right back to sleep. But the problem is, by the time I am awake enough to remember that this is what I am trying to do, it is already too late.

Damned overmuscular meta-consciousness. Why do I have to be so awake to be aware?

Oh, speaking of awareness, I finally figured out something that had been bugging me. When I first got the Quetiapine, the pharmacist who handed them to me was smiling really big and sort of fake and said something about when I take this “… relaxant. ”

And I went away wondering the heck her deal was. Why did she say “relaxant” in the same way a small town church lady would refer to someone’s unwanted pregnancy as their “little problem”? And Quetiapine is not a relaxant. I mean, seriously lady, wad dee fug?

Well today, the penny finally dropped. She was handing me a powerful antipsychotic! She naturally assumed that I was probably a psycho, and not just any psycho, but a six foot tall bearded sort of scary homeless looking one. She was probably just a tad nervous and wanted to make sure I stayed nice and happy. She was giving me the same response anyone might if they just realized they might be three feet from a dangerous loonie. It totally makes sense now.

And now that I realize this, I find it very funny. I will totally be watching for how the pharmacy staff treats me now that they think I might be a dangerous lunatic, and not just a run of the mill depressed big fat diabetic dude.

Of course you know and I know that I am as harmless as a bag of marshmallows, and I am not a psychotic, I am just using an antipyschotic as an off-list sleep aid.

But the only official, on-list use for Quetiapine is as an atypical and its off-list uses are too many to mention, so as far as they know, I am potentially the sort of fellow who hears voices and who will sooner or later do what they tell him to do.

Hilarious. A little insulting, I suppose, but mostly just hilarious.

Seeya next time, folks.