A report from Pat -- June 2022
The last few years have been hell for my sleep life. After nearly 40 years of sleeping solidly, a divorce, political strife, fire evacuations, inflation, the pandemic, - the days of sleeping "soundly" were over. When my kids were young, I cherished naptime. Penny from UCLA's New Family Orientation had advised expecting parents to "sleep when the kids sleep". I did just that for a number of years when my daughter was young, but something changed when my son was born. I would just lay awake compiling lists, prioritizing tasks or worse, replaying some petty resentment. I would watch the kids sleep so serenely and think; "Damn, I wish I could sleep like that."
Winding down at the end of each day began requiring more and more time, sometimes I lay awake for an hour and a half before falling asleep. My work life can be hectic, this week for example, i'm working four 14 hour days in a row and getting to sleep quickly is everything. Unfortunately, many days I would only get four or five hours' sleep. I turned to a friend who has a history of insomnia for help. He cited a Harvard study and suggested cutting out coffee and tea six hours before laying down for bed to preserve quality REM sleep. That helped. But not much. Then came the new era of "sleeping light": the sound of the dishwasher switching cycles, squirrels on the roof, even the wind would wake me up. Then the nightmares began. These nightmares were like illuminated fears, stress from life that were worrying me in my waking hours, invading my already compromised sleep. The stress manifested in hellish nightmares, gruesome scenes that would startle me awake and leave me with a head full of analysis. Cumulatively, all of it began wearing me down. I have a small moving business and after a few consecutive nights like this I began looking forward to days of heavy labor. The more labor intensive the job, the better chance I had at a good night's sleep. At the end of some days, I would quarrel with my girlfriend about seemingly nothing, so agitated and demoralized. The lack of sleep was getting me down. My mental health went to hell.
Recently on a short trip to Portland, I was introduced to Ashwagandha. It claimed to offer deep "restorative" sleep. Restorative is kind of a word that companies throw around, it's an ambiguous word. Splashing water on your face could be "restorative". Lemon Verbena soap could be advertised as "restorative". I found this claim, that Ashwagandha aids deep restorative sleep to be true. The opposite of restorative is unhealthy, injurious and insalubrious. Merriam-Webster defines insalubrious as; bad for the well-being of the body. My deteriorated sleep life had become just that; bad for the well-being of the body. Taking a small amount of Ashwagandha before bed had a funny effect on my sleep, my nightmares went from anxiety bloodbaths to silly fuzzy sexy high five dreams, you know the kind of dreams that you wake up from and desperately try to fall asleep as quickly as you can to continue the dream? I started to wake up laughing in the middle of the night. Do you remember in little league when the game ends and the kids line up and high five and say "good game"? I had a dream that I was in that kind of "high five line" and I got to high five everybody that I loved and cared about and woke up smiling "did i just high five 50 people? I was so accustomed to sleeping poorly that these new anxiety free dreams were like a gift from god. I feel very fortunate to have found Portland Ashwagandha Farm and am grateful for the relief, if you're struggling with sleep do not hesitate, my sleep is once again peaceful and the nightmares are gone.
love ya Jeff