Adieu to sleeping pills

The last days, weeks in fact, I have been living on tranquillisers to put me to sleep. That familiar feeling of a racing heart coupled with a racing mind had come back to haunt me. This time around I knew the exact reason for my trepidation, but lack of time and perhaps will power too made me go for the all too easy solution: sleeping pills.
The first and second night were fine, but then even one pill couldn’t get me to sleep. I hadn’t expected to build up resistance so quickly, and I increased the dose to two pills per night. It left me in a lethargic state, and as a zombie I trawled my mails and sat through long meetings. Until last night that is…

I was up for my usual salsa night, but my salsa dance was not up to par. If you can’t drive for 24 hours whilst taking these tablets imagine doing triple spins! The whole room was moving all around me, and my limbs felt numb. At a couple of times I completely lost my feeling in my right leg which collapsed under me. Apart from feeling angry for my lack of performance, I was humiliated beyond belief. Here is one of the founders of OnlineSalsa and she can’t even dance the freakin’ dance.

There and then I decided I had enough. When I came home I was going to flush all the pills down the toilet and never take that shit again. I vowed to myself to get a better grip of my work – life balance. No more late night skype chats or calls, no more work after 11 pm. Go to the gym in the evening rather than only in the morning. Get at least 7 hours of sleep. And most important of all, if I’m stressed and can’t sleep, allow myself a sleep-in instead of feeding the anxiety of sleeping too little.

All well and done. When I came home, I flushed the pills down the toilet. Without regrets I saw them sink to the bottom of the toilet bowl. Relief…no more get-out-of-jail card. From now on it was going to be all down to me…