Sleep Game Changer: "The Head Trip"

I've written before about how little research has been done on sleep and chronic insomnia. While in Anchorage I found a real winner (as the review below claims, "an instant classic") at the Title Wave used book store, Jeff Warren's The Head Trip Adventures on the Wheel of Conciousness.

I'm only part way into it, but already, I highly recommend this book for anyone with sleep issues, as well as Gayle Greene's Insomniac.

From Amazon, "A world at once familiar and unimaginably strange exists all around us–and within us. It is the world of consciousness, a protean mental landscape that each of us knows intimately in bits and pieces yet understands in its totality scarcely at all. Tied to the body and the brain, consciousness is nonetheless beyond our ability to measure or quantify. Despite the attempts of scientists and mystics, poets and dreamers, crackpots and geniuses, to map its contours and explain its secret workings, the mind remains mysterious. And the more we learn about it, the more mysterious it becomes.

But that is not to say that we know nothing about consciousness. In fact, as gonzo science journalist Jeff Warren demonstrates in this A provocative, often hilarious, and always fascinating synthesis of cutting-edge research and personal experience, just how much we do know is little short of astonishing. And when Warren fits the pieces together, the implications of that knowledge are, well, mind-blowing.

Warren begins with the insight that consciousness is not a simple on-off proposition, with rigid demarcations separating waking awareness from the murky depths of sleep, but rather a round-the-clock continuum regulated by natural biorhythms. He then sets out to explore, and to experience for himself, the seemingly miraculous, all-but-untapped potential of the human mind.

From the full-immersion virtual realities of lucid dreaming to the esoteric disciplines of Eastern meditative practices that have reached outposts of consciousness far beyond the grasp of Western science, from techniques of hypnosis and neurofeedback to such exotic states of awareness as the Watch and the Pure Conscious Event, Warren takes us on an incredible journey through our own heads–a journey conducted with the adventurous spirit and intellectual curiosity of a Darwin coupled with the sensibility of a stand-up comedian.

Part user’s manual and part travel guide, The Head Trip is an instant classic, a brilliant summation of consciousness studies that is also a practical guide to enhancing creativity, mental health, and the experience of what it means to be human. Many books claim that they will change you. This one gives you the tools to change yourself.

Insomniac: Gayle Greene

In the Winter of 2010, in my desperation to end my recent chronic insomnia, no doubt amplified by OCD "act now" compulsions, I frantically had my CPAP/OSA gear checked out to make sure it was still calibrated correctly. I felt like I just couldn't get enough air to breathe and sleep. Since I was comfortable wearing the CPAP mask after using it successfully for eight years, I was stumped, other than suspecting that the air pressure might need an adjustment. However I was assured by the sleep specialists that the machine was set correctly. I was by this time taking citalopram, a SSRI, for depression/anxiety/OCD, and unfortunately this med can contribute to insomnia as a side-effect, but I actually had suffered the insomnia before I started taking it. SSRIs can also take up to eight weeks before their theraputic effect is experienced.

I was prescribed the hypnotics Lunesta and Ambien to help, but they proved to be of limited use. I would only sleep, fitfully, for two to six hours, only to stumble out of bed after eight hours, already drained. I then tried the antidepressant trazodone (a serotonin modulator), that is often used "off-label" for insomnia, but it seemed to make my nose slam shut, which was no good for the CPAP machine. I couldn't focus enough to go to work, or do much of anything at all, and I suspect the Ambien then deepened my depression. In any case, I was suffering many very dark thoughts, and finally had to be admitted to Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. Every night, I would try out a new "drug cocktail," and it took at least ten days to find the right mix. I would never have survived, if I hadn't been fortunate enough to have been admitted to the hospital. I was blessed that I had very supportive friends to reach out to. I had reached a crisis state of pure hopelessness. The winning cocktail turned out to be a combination of doxepine (a tricyclic antidepressant), lorazepam (a benzodiazepine), and olanzapine (an atypical anti-psychotic). Don't try this mix at home -- these are heavy-duty meds, but they were neccessary. I'm happy to say I've since weaned off the lorazepam and olanzapine, but not before socking on extra weight. That was the lesser of two evils.

Naturally, before my meltdown I read obsessively about insomnia, in the hopes of ending it as soon as possible. Gayle Greene's memoir/history/overview, Insomniac, was the best of the bunch. She is doing much to raise awareness about this terrible disorder.

Insomniac by Gayle Greene

"I can't work, I can't think, I can't connect with anyone anymore. . . . I mope through a day's work and haven't had a promotion in years. . . . It's like I'm being sucked dry, eaten away, swallowed up, coming unglued. . . . These are voices of a few of the tens of millions who suffer from chronic insomnia. In this revelatory book, Gayle Greene offers a uniquely comprehensive account of this devastating and little-understood condition. She has traveled the world in a quest for answers, interviewing neurologists, sleep researchers, doctors, psychotherapists, and insomniacs of all sorts. What comes of her extraordinary journey is an up-to-date account of what is known about insomnia, providing the information every insomniac needs to know to make intelligent choices among medications and therapies. Insomniac is at once a field guide through the hidden terrain inhabited by insomniacs and a book of consolations for anyone who has struggled with this affliction that has long been trivialized and neglected."

Editorial review from Publishers Weekly

"No one can describe a journey better than someone who's made the trip, and insomniac Greene's exploration of the disorder is both fascinating and disturbing. Many people, including doctors and insomniacs themselves, believe that sleeplessness is the patient's fault: too much caffeine and stress, irregular bedtimes, lack of exercise. In fact, no one knows what causes it, but the effects of insomnia are clear: as Greene, a professor of literature and women's studies at Scripps College, shows, sleep deprivation kills creativity, reduces levels of the hormones needed to repair cells and is directly linked to weight gain and memory loss, high blood pressure and diabetes. Insomniacs are usually referred to mental health practitioners or the growing number of sleep labs offering behavior modification or drugs (which, for Greene, have always buil[t] tolerance, and rapidly, necessitating ever-larger doses). This is a somewhat cranky book, Greene admits, and rightly so. You can't live with this problem as long as I have, you can't be blown off and written off as many times as I have, and not get cross. Supplementing her own experience with that of other chronic insomniacs and a look at the science of sleep, Greene offers an enjoyable and informative account that will provoke even readers who get their full eight hours a night."