Freshly awoken and feeling like death warmed over in a microwave.

And speaking of microwaves, ours is dying. It took me a while to figure this out. For a long time, I had this growing feeling in the back of my mind that I was somehow getting less popped corn per bag of my beloved microwave popcorn, but it didn’t cross the threshold into conscious thought until recently when I finished the popcorn from a bag and saw that there was this huge pile of unpopped kernels left.

And suddenly I realized that I had been being denied popcorn for a really long time. And by God, I was going to find out why!

Well maybe not. The reason why was obvious. But still. I was a lil pissed off.

This has led to a period where every time I pop a bag, I increase the time. For ages, putting the bag in the microwave for 4 minutes and 20 seconds was ideal. Popped almost all of the kernels. But right now, I am up to 6 minutes and there are still a lot of unpopped kernels. Who knows where this will end?

Feeling somewhat lazy. That;s probably because I am naked. Like I have said in this space before, I learned from my experience living with nudists that I need to get dressed in order to start my day. It’s the little ritual that tells my body and my mind that it is time to wake up, get focused, and get going.

Otherwise, I end up staying in the vague grey mode that I am in when I wake up all day. I never truly wake up. And because it’s such a undefined and structureless mood, over time it degrades into depression.

Kind of how a cloud of smoke disperses over time.

It’s hard for me to relate to now, but there was a time in my life where I would spend most of most days naked. My roomates will remember this time, for obvious reasons. I stayed in that vague grey state of not really being awake almost all the time because it was my defense against my anxiety.

It worked, kind of, because in the short term, it can be a very pleasant state. In it, I feel relaxed and cozy and safe. It’s like I never quite commit to being awake and thus can retreat into sleep whenever I like.

So it took me a while to realize that in the longer term, that led to feeling depressed. The mind and body inherently want to activate and get going. It’s part of the natural waking sequence. When I denied myself that, the pressure to do so built up in my mind, and without release, that translated into mental pain.

I think a lot of depression works like that.

It’s hard for me to relate to now, but in the bad old days before Trazadone, I would spend all day staying up for two hours then sleeping two hours, over and over again, all day long, ad infinitum.

At the beginning of my Skyrim addiction, I fell into that pattern again for a couple of days. I wasn’t taking any of my meds (unbelievable) and so I didn’t get my Trazadone sleep. And at first that didn’t matter, or at least, didn’t matter enough to overcome the power of my freshly acquired obsession.

But as time passed, I could feel that something vital was draining from my mind. It’s easy for me to see what was going on. When we don’t get enough REM sleep, the process of moving memories from our short term memory into long term storage doesn’t have enough time to complete, and so our short term memory fills up and starts displacing our working memory.

So that’s what was “draining away”: space in my working memory. And my mind’s subconscious processes use up a lot of my working memory even when I am fully awake, so any further strain on it can be catastrophic.

It’s like my mind is a web browser with a zillion tabs open, and my conscious mind is only one of them. The rest run in the background and slow everything down.

And ot think, I lived that way for my entire adult life until a few years ago when I finally got someone (namely my therapist) to prescribe me some sleeping pills.

I had asked for them from every GP I had before that, but they wouldn’t give them to me. Admittedly, I didn’t ask for them very assertively and so it was easy to brush me off and give me advice on proper sleep practices instead.

Maybe they thought I was looking for street drugs. I dunno.

Bu finally, I managed to spit it out to my therapist and he agreed that it was a big problem and it needed to be tackled.

First he started me off on zopiclone, but that didn’t have much effect. Then he switched me to another whose name escapes me at the moment, and that worked a little. Then he added the Trazadone and now I could finally stay asleep for a whopping five and a half hours when the drugs were working right.

Eventually I dropped that other drug because I accidentally took only the Trazadone one night and ended upgetting just as much good sleep but found it way easier ti wake up and stay awake the next day.

And it took me a while to learn to work WITH the Trazadone because, despite its reputation as strong stuff, I can shrug off its effects easily. So I have ot make sure that I do not do anything mentally stimulating after taking it or my mind will simply disregard its effects in order to keepo doing what I am doing.

So it’s still not the sleeping pill of my dreams, which would be one that was so strong that it knocks me out without asking for my mind’s permission. Something strong enough to overpower all the stuff going on in my mind and force me to slee.

That way, I could choose to sleep by taking the pill(s) and past that point, there would be nothing my babbling brain could do about it.

Instead, I have to sort of baby the process along, knowing that one wrong move and the drug’s effects will evaporate and I will be wide awake again.

So mostly, Trazadone helps me stay asleep.

But what I want is something that helps me GET to sleep.

And so far, nothing can do THAT.

I will talk to your nice people again tomorrow.