For years I had accepted that sleep, just like the Rubik’s cube and a receding hairline, was one of those things that I personally was not equipped to beat. No matter how much I tried to disarm my mind with an assortment of pills, elaborate mind games and expensive sleep teas, nothing seemed to work. In fact, many of these “solutions” only made my insomnia worse. On the rare occasion that I did catch myself drifting off, a bout of relief and excitement would quickly overtake me, leaving me wide awake and more exasperated than ever. The more pressure I put on myself, the more impossible sleep became.
One night I was in bed trying to replicate a strategy used by the SAS to instantaneously fall asleep by relaxing my body, starting with my facial muscles, and breathing slowly and deeply, when I finally decided I’d had enough. Clearly, trying to sleep was just not something I was cut out for. I had read all the books, done all the research and, still, nothing ever improved. If my brain refused to accept any sort of attempt to shut it down, then why waste so many hours of my day even trying?
The problem, of course, was what to do instead while lying in bed. I concluded that the perfect solution to the zombified state I was left in – not quite awake, not quite asleep – was a true crime podcast. I wanted an endless monologue for my brain to mindlessly absorb.
Before this I’d never really understood the obsession with podcasts, mostly because they seemed like something you dabbled in while doing something incredibly mundane. But before I knew it I was learning everything there was to know about the rise in cults on college campuses in the 2010s.
It was only the next morning that I realised I had become so engrossed in my American horror story that I had fallen asleep without even noticing. After trying everything, it seemed the one thing I had not done was not try at all, and somehow it had worked.
Every night now I find a new grisly distraction, and every night I find myself drifting off. For too many of us, falling asleep has become like studying for an exam, getting a job or perfecting a talent, when really it is the polar opposite; the less effort you put into it and the less time you spend thinking about it, the quicker you end up nodding off.
Most people dealing with insomnia try to conjure up the relaxed, calm and Zen-like state that allows a person to fall asleep. They certainly don’t think of chainsaw-wielding serial killers and stories of home break-ins gone horribly wrong. But macabre as it may be, true crime seems to do the job far better for me than counting sheep ever will. Rather than furiously focusing on slowing down, perhaps the really relaxing thing to do is to just stop caring so much.
