Opinion: I stopped trying to sleep — and found a different self in the night

From washingtonpost.com

Annabel Abbs-Streets is a writer based in London and Sussex. Her latest book is “Sleepless: Unleashing the Subversive Power of the Night Self.”

I’m closing my bedroom curtains when something catches my eye. I open the window and crane upward. A crescent moon hangs like a slice of ice among a diaspora of stars. I should try again to sleep. But the stars are too bright, too beautiful, flickering too wildly.

Suddenly, I long to be outside, and I do something I have never done. I shunt a mattress out of the window to a narrow ledge of metal roof and make myself a bed — sheet, pillow, duvet. I crawl into it, unsure whether the roof will hold or the English rain will hold off. I lie back and look up.

My world shifts on its axis.

Nights spent outside are just some of the many nocturnal journeys I’ve since taken. But they were the first to transform my relationship with sleeplessness. Of all the gifts of my insomnia — and there were many — the night sky was one of the most poignant and profound.

It showed me that all those wide-awake hours didn’t have to be ruminative and anxious, that my sleepless self was not an enemy to be battled, sedated and despaired of. Instead, she could be my ally, a friendly teacher with wisdom to impart and experiences to share.

                                              An English village church by full moon. (Annabel Abbs)

My penchant for open air nights might be unusual; my inability to sleep is not. In 2020, nearly 1 in 5 adults in the United States had trouble falling or staying asleep most nights. Up to half of U.S. adults experience insomnia from time to time. At the last count, 8 percent were taking prescription sleep medication and 11 percent were regularly forking out for sleep aids.

But while huge amounts of time and money have been spent exploring the sleeping and the sleep-deprived brain, virtually nothing has been invested in understanding the brain in its awake-at-night state.

My sleep began to fragment in my early 30s. Pregnant with my first child and working in a demanding corporate job, I pushed on, assuming the wakefulness would eventually pass. It didn’t. After five years of night-feeds, sick toddlers and early morning conference calls, I quit the corporate job. Surely I would sleep now?

I didn’t. For another two decades I tried pills, oils, bedding, endless “sleep hygiene routines” and the rest of what the $101 billion sleep industry has to offer. Eventually, wearily, I whiled away my nights listening to audiobooks and podcasts. Meanwhile, I panicked about imminent death, impending obesity, heart disease and dementia, and the criminal tendencies that, according to some experts, I’d accrue.

Three years ago, I snapped. A series of family deaths within a six-week period left me awake for hours every night. Audiobooks no longer soothed me.

As it happened, I was already researching women of the pre-sleeping-pill past. Many had welcomed the wee hours as a space for solitude, reflection and study. I called these women my “night spinners.”

Their accounts prompted me to dig around in the corners of my own insomniac brain. Instead of seeking distraction from my churning thoughts, I tried to describe and name them. I sensed a subtly different sort of mind, less inclined to judge, more receptive, imaginative and fearful, with the ears of an elephant and the nostrils of a bloodhound. I called her my Night Self.

When light drains from the sky, our bodies respond. Hormones rise and fall, dead skin cells are shed, we metabolize alcohol more slowly, our appetite shrinks, our blood pressure drops, our temperature falls, and much more besides. Come the evening hour, the darkness, wrote Virginia Woolf, “we are no longer quite ourselves.”

As my own night journeys went on, and as my knowledge grew of the sleepless habits of past women, a handful of illuminating studies fell into my inbox. These hinted that insomnia and darkness were infinitely more nuanced than headlines suggested. Most serendipitous was a pioneering study on the “Mind after Midnight.” A group of American sleep researchers found evidence that chimed with my own experiences and historical gleanings. The brain, it appears, resets for nocturne. Some regions go into partial hibernation, others bloom.

No one yet understands how or why, but at night many of us think, feel, behave in ways we might not during daylight. I, for one, am a little more reckless, with a yen for wistfulness and whimsy. This is how I found myself outside on that fateful starry night.

I continued to head out when weather permitted. And — released from the anxious grip of the sleep industry and my own fears — I went further. I followed in the footsteps of the legions of women who once snatched time from the night to write, paint, pray, photograph or simply to observe moths, bats, glowworms.

I discovered dozens of living women, too, who have made peace with their restive nights — who walk cities and forests alone, who swim on full moons or who make art, courtesy of their creative night brains.

A view along London’s River Thames is made visible by reflecting lights, which makes rivers ideal night-walking locations. (Annabel Abbs)

Which is to say, I discovered women who flower in darkness, who thrive on all that we’ve been taught to fear and avoid. I was grateful to the researchers diligently shedding light on the therapeutic nature of darkness. But when my sleep eventually returned, it was my night spinners that I thanked. It has been my privilege to join them.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/01/sleep-insomnia-brain-night-self/