Sleep or lack thereof

Long before I knew what type of mental health issues I was struggling with; I knew I was fighting insomnia. I knew something was not right with my mental state as I had lost my ability to effectively sleep. The initial symptoms of poor sleep for me were based in a sinus problem, I was losing my ability to breathe through my nose. I would wake up every night gasping for air because my sinus were blocked. I started with a deviated septum, or a damaged nasal structure. Not consulting a doctor, I started to use over the counter nasal sprays to clear my sinus congestion. Because I used these products consistently for 8-12 weeks, I additionally developed nasal polyps in my sinuses which worsened my condition. I struggled with this condition for close to one year. The process of going to a doctor, going through their treatment and failing, getting a referral to a specialist (Ear, Nose, Throat), talking to my insurance company to understand my coverage, getting a second opinion on surgery recommendation, scheduling the surgery, etc. 

During that year I continued to try and develop methods to improve my poor sleeping. I had purchased many natural sleep supplements which had the ability to help me fall asleep but would only keep me down for a couple of hours. Then I would start the lonely journey of lying awake most of the night.  You know something is wrong when you are the only living thing awake in the middle of the night. It is a very lonely feeling, also one that quickly isolates you with most people because they have a hard time relating.

I continued my experiment of trying to find things to help me sleep. I increased the amount of wine that I was drinking, which like the sleep supplements, would help me pass out – only to awake a couple of hours later. I also research how marijuana could help me sleep. There are specific strains, CBD, that have been proven to help one sleep. Initially I had good success with marijuana helping me sleep, but I was building a tolerance to it pretty quickly, which caused me to increase my dosage to ridiculous and unsustainable amounts. Then I started to feel that my normal state of mind was no longer balanced, there was a certain instability to my mind. My homemade cocktails to help me sleep were also creating new problems and instability of my mental health.

Before this problem peaked, I had reached out to a therapist to help me. Initially I was cautious about reveling the severity of my problem and how I was trying to solve it. There was a negative reaction from the professionals that I was working with about the use of marijuana, almost in the form of shaming. Even though what I was doing was legal, it was not embraced. This made it hard for me to share the depth of problem and my homemade remedies to resolve it. More months went by and my sleeping problem worsened along with my new mental health issues of anxiety, depression and PTSD. I waited as long as I possibly could before accepting help for my condition. This delay also caused the cure hard to determine by masking the true symptoms of my ailment which was a stroke. After one year of failure to improve my breathing and sleeping habits, I was on the brink of breakdown, I asked for more help, and checked myself into a clinic. I now was dividing my curing process into resolving my breathing issues and trying to understand what was going on with my mental health. I eventually solved both problems and will talk more about the mental health battle in future articles.