Gone in 60 seconds!

Ok, so the title of this entry is a bit cliche--but only for those of us old enough to remember when the cliche was current!¹ For those who are not old enough, the following explanation.

This was the title of a suspense movie about car theft. The title intends to indicate how easy it was in that era (early 70's) to steal a car: it took only one minute for these thieves to make off with your car. I never saw the movie myself, but it was advertised heavily enough and I was at a sufficiently impressionable age that its title and theme got (unfortunately) burned into my psyche.

Well, in this entry, I'm using the cliche to refer to something quite unrelated to car thievery. Nonetheless the concept that title sought to encapsulate struck me as appropriate to what I'm blogging about today--insomnia . . . again.

You see, night before last was a zolpidem (aka Ambien) night. I'd decided prior to that night that I'd had enough restless nights in a row that I had to do something to get a decent night's sleep.

To expand a bit on something I relegated to a footnote in my blood pressure chart, I'd had a high blood pressure reading subsequent to one of the difficult nights I had this week and decided "ok, it's time to get a good night's sleep." So I took the zolpidem the other night with the expected results: slept solidly from about 11 PM to 4 AM (very rare occurrence). Got up for a bladder run and had a sensation as though all the intestinal distress that had been going on during those five hours was suddenly hitting me at that moment. But I nonetheless had no trouble getting back to sleep, finally arising only at a little before 8 AM.

What a refreshing feeling after so many fitful nights. I felt pretty good the whole day. And even going in to last night I felt fine, though I did have a bit of intestinal discomfort prior to retiring for the night.

But last night turned out to be another one of those pretty much sleepless nights. My body kept trying to fall asleep, but I kept jolting awake somehow. That went on from about 1 AM to 4 AM, during which time I probably dozed off and woke up at least a dozen times. By 4 AM I couldn't get even doze off anymore, but just lay there tossing and turning.² So I got up.

I tried to rest again after breakfast but for me, as for probably most other people, it's difficult to sleep when it's daylight. So I got in maybe 2.5 hours of slightly less fitful sleep after breakfast. And here I am again, well on my way to another episode of sleep deficit.

Now is it clear why I've chosen the title I have for this entry? Yesterday I was on the road to feeling fine sleep-wise: today I'm on my way back to where I was before I took the zolpidem.³ Sleep adequacy . . . gone in (a little bit more than) 60 seconds.
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¹ Ok, call me a complete pop-culture neanderthal. I don't care. I discovered after writing this entry that a remake of this early 70's movie was done in 2000. So what?
² This is actually the pattern for most nights when I do not take zolpidem.
³ In case your'e wondering why I don't take the zolpidem more regularly, take a look here.