My Evolution of Presence

Sept 22 2021

So I have come a long way. I feel I must bridge the gap before I can move forward. I went to bed at about 11:30 pm last night and first stirred probably at 8:30 am and got out of bed at 9:00 am. This, for me, is incredible. I have been slowly improving and getting to what would be considered a normal sleep routine with very little difficulty. This must have begun sometime last fall. Probably around late November early December. We had been through the first 2 waves of the pandemic. Life was shook up, but I was thriving. I became determined to solve the sleep problem in my life. Or at least say I have tried everything within my power. I could no longer believe that I was a victim of something that I could not improve. I knew I had to quit drinking.

I used alcohol as a sedative for a very long time. I discounted its negative effects on my sleep by telling myself, "I didn't drink when this (Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome) all began in my teenage years. I did not drink every day in college and beyond." Which is true. I also had days where I would only have a single drink, and of course, this did not help me sleep, but such a small amount, I figured, would not have a negative impact if I could sleep with no interference.

I did not set any rules for myself. I never considered or called myself an alcoholic. I decided I was not going to be a slave to alcohol regardless of my reason for drinking. Which had become habitual, but was a ritual for sleep and not any other reason, I hoped. I did use cannabis to help for some time and melatonin. In my last post(Can writing be a sedative?), I talked about rhythm and melatonin. What I wrote stuck with me. I realized my past use of this hormone/supplement was not in this rhythmic way. The body's natural production of melatonin is not so much tied to when you experience low levels of light, but more so when you experience the day's first levels of light. To use this supplement to trick my brain that I had indeed gotten fresh sunlight on my face earlier in the day than I had, I need to guess as to what time of day my brain should/would produce melatonin had I gotten the light on my face at a time that would allow my to sleep at the time I desired.

My work these days was/is flexible and I thought any routine that can be kept is better than the chaos I had been living. So I set my goal for a bedtime around 3-4 am in order to wake up at 11 am-12 pm. I put down the beer and took 10mg of melatonin at 10 pm, had my phone disable blue light, and waited to see if I were sleepy enough to try sleeping at 4 am. I think I probably smoked some cannabis too. I definitely did. I can't recall exactly how it went, but I did sleep. A journal probably would have been good to keep. But I can tell you this experiment has gone better than I could have thought.

In the following months, I have drank alcohol. I notice how it affects my sleep. I tell myself, what I believe to be true, that any amount will hurt my sleep. I slowly pushed back the time I take melatonin incrementally, and have resorted to CBD oil instead of full-on cannabis. CBD oil is what took this to a new level. The cannabis left me with a bit of a hangover. Indica was the worst. Sativa was not so bad, but when I had a few days away from it, I noticed a huge difference. I must also mention that I have been spending my weekends in Tulip Town since April, and the physical labor, and being woke up with the sun (No black-out curtains yet), must have also played a part. Coming home tired on a Sunday night from exhaustion, helped me get to sleep and sleep better. A new mattress was bought in between now and my last post as well. The old mattress is in the trailer in Tulip Town and I can't understand how I slept on that for the past 15 years. Leesa is the, get mailed to your front door the next day brand, we bought and I love it, especially after a weekend on the old one.

Monday mornings had been tough and less productive as far as my work is concerned. The voice of insecurity and "not good enough" was louder and I found myself making the choice on Sunday nights to refrain from that last drink or puff of the weekend. It gets easier every day. I can't say it has been that difficult. Once you realize the lies you told yourself are in fact lies, you stop making the decisions that go against your own self-interests.

Throughout this journey, a thought has come up that I do not believe to be true, but have had a hint of it. What if the behaviors that led to my Type II Bi-Polar disorder diagnosis was just poor sleep. The swinging moods. Substance abuse. It's a chicken and the egg kind of question. It's a perfect cocktail. Now that I am sleeping on a schedule, and well, I do not believe that I am immune to the impulse control deficiencies that the Doctors diagnosis help explain. But another big part of this journey is meditation. I have been doing Zazen meditation on and off, at varying frequencies for over a year. I had no ritual to it, just when I felt I could or should. Not for any prescribed time, just until I thought I was done. 5-10 minutes, sometimes 20. I get it. I think. Which means I don't. But I do it. That's what it is. The combination of listening to a audio book on Daily Rituals and listening to a podcast where one of the participants recounted his year of strictly scheduled meditation, left a desire in me to have a routine. This was the icing on the cake. This is why I am writing this now and not waiting to see if it worked. I do not need to prove to myself that this isn't a long-term solution and that I will suffer again, by counting an arbitrary number of days before I can say, "I did it". Because I am doing it.

As I listened to this Audiobook about these great artists and their daily rituals that prepared them for their creation, I asked myself the wrong question, "What am I preparing for?" This is not a chicken and egg scenario. It isn't until you've prepared, that you might be able to see what it is that the preparation unlocks. I am not sure what it is exactly. I have played out several futures for myself, as I usually do, and I know how to say yes to the ones that come my way. But it is the expression of the routine that unlocks what it will create.

So my routine starts with the lights turning on and my sleep apnea, CPAP machine, turning off. If I am in a deep sleep at this point, it is almost like choking when the air stops pushing itself into your lungs. I then do childs pose on my soft memory foam Leesa mattress to stretch out my back, legs, and feet. Downstairs I go to make a strong shot of espresso and add hot water for an americano. Once the coffee is cool enough and I have finished it I can begin Zazen. NOTE: My phone charges in my office overnight. It is not in my room when I am sleeping and I do not indulge it until after my morning routine. I will check it at some point to ensure no emergencies happened while I was sleeping, but I avoid it until the routine is complete. Zazen for me is pretty simple. I have not been taught it. I have not studied it very much. I sit in the posture, which I believe was most impressed upon me reading the book "Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye" (which I have yet to finish). Keep your back straight, look at the ground or the wall about 6 feet in front of you and slightly down. There is nothing to accomplish, nowhere to get to. Just sit. I hold on to some thoughts I have found like, notice the 10,000 little things. Every strand of grass, every noise, every bit of the world around you, but from a non dualist way. A non-discriminatory point of view. Then I do some Alexander technique and I lie down in the Semi-Supine posture. This, I have had some formal training in, during Theatre school. I would love to find an instructor and have some sessions but I do not have a budget for such things today. I do the best I can, which in Alexander is really doing nothing, and letting your body and gravity do the work. I then do the Wim Hof Method Breathing exercise. My interest in this began a long time ago with the realization that my sedentary lifestyle could allow me to go months without taking 3 large deep breaths, and that that was probably not great for my body. The Wim Hof Method can be done by anybody. You're going to be breathing anyway, you might as well try breathing this way and see what it is all about. And also from Wim Hof, I have this week, been able to take cold showers. It is a hurdle. But once you get over that, it is exhilarating. Plus the physical benefits are exciting.

The past 2 days I have recorded this routine and have offered my thoughts afterward. When in meditation your mind is not necessarily blank. Thoughts come and go. They can comfort you. I have thoughts and they are not manipulated or planned, but they are results of this routine. So I share them. How I share this I am letting happen. Today I began writing. On Monday I took a walk and dictated my thoughts. Yesterday I reviewed the video of my routine.

I make no promises and have no expectations to meet. I am excited to go to bed because I know what my morning will be like and I am excited about the day when my routine is complete.

Transcribed are the words I spoke, on video, after completing the first of over  twelve hundred consecutive days of daily mindfulness that I continue to this day. 

Sept 21 2021

Ask yourself a question... Let me ask myself a question. Do you know what you know? I mean at this point, at this moment, you know what you know. It’s in there (pointing at my head), right? So what does ask myself a question mean? You’re deciding what you know? Let me decide what I know. I like to say “What I’ve come to understand.” What I know is what I’ve come to understand. I have an understanding. I have collected some knowledge. I am able to do things with it. But what if you already had all the answers. What if you stopped asking questions? What if you didn’t have to decide what you knew? What if you knew, what you knew… Was. I’ve been wrong about things. I’ve made predictions of what might come that didn’t come. But there is other things you just can’t be wrong about. Am I hungry. What are you really asking? Does my body require nutrition, sustenance. Will I die if I don’t eat within a certain time frame? Why bother asking the question? What if you had all the answers already? How would you behave differently? Not that you could predict the future, but that you could trust that what you see, and that what is happening is real. To have that confidence, to gain that trust in yourself, I think you need to also understand that what you imagine, and the stories you tell yourself, are not real. The Truth is there in every circumstance. Your circumstance has no influence on the Truth. There is no right and wrong. There are no questions to ask. You need not qualify what you have come to understand with anyone else, because you are qualified to see the world around you and say, “it is”. So how would you behave differently if you had all the answers, or if there were no more questions? Stop questioning? You are qualified to move through this world to make time any way you want. If it doesn’t feel good, if it brings conflict, I think you’re able to measure that and understand it. If you find Love, if you find Hope, if you find Joy, you don’t need to ask the question, follow that path.

It's not always easy  to look back and  read my own thoughts . The disjointed fragments of my healing mind show me now how far I have come. This is a look at my process , getting thoughts out of my head and onto the page. The product is not easy to read or understand. The product, what you can read below holds very little value for me now but the process was essential for me to get beyond the helplessness and hopelessness I felt in relation to my sleep disorder. I did not implement what is described below into my daily practice until several years after writing this. You can read more about my Struggle with Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome here

July 18 2020

Journaling is an often recommended activity to help people sort out all sorts of things. Many of my teachers and others in my life have implied that it is a good practice for the mind. My sleep is hindered by my mind. It is a physical condition. It is a disability in it's most extreme forms. The thoughts don't stop. What if getting my thoughts out of my head and into the world will prepare a mind for rest. If I were to look at it like Melatonin I could consider buying into the idea.

Melatonin was the magical cure I could not legally get when I was first diagnosed(Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome) and looking for alternatives to traditional treatment. Melatonin and serotonin are both produced in the mind at different times opposite each other. The time of day and amount of light around you dictates when the brain decides to switch. But it dictates a rhythm, not a switch. The melatonin production happens hours before you register lower levels of light. Based on a rhythm-based on your schedule. Your natural time of day when you start to get tired is dictated by when the sun went down or when you turned off your lights for the last week. I never knew that when I took melatonin. I took it an hour before I went to bed and did not get the benefit until later. So I should maybe try that again. If that works then I suppose the answer is yes! Writing led me to blah blah

I mention melatonin and what I learned, I misunderstood about it because I think that is how writing could be a sedative. That is not the right word. Writing could contribute to your rhythm if done at the right time of day to unload the mind of all it's creativity, without missing the things that should be cataloged. Do we often only catalog our best creative thoughts by actually acting on them? So writing them down could then be an act that you can go back to in order to flush it out further. Leaving your mind to rest and not have to hold on to the things you don't want to lose by constantly considering them. You then need the right amount of time after the unload, to sit, and enjoy living in the moment knowing that all your great ideas are written down. Now you can take the time to either rest or act on one of those written, or live out your day until you choose to go to bed and not have anything to consider at the end of the day. So I wrote it down now I don't have to try it. Ok. Is it. Yes, it is. Things are OK. OK is good. Better is better. If I act on it will it be better of me? This we may be able to measure. Not by better or worse. But we can record results and say this change in behaviour preceded these other changes in behaviour. So I will give it a shot. I will try and see if on more days than not I can write for a set period of time at a certain time with the intention of unloading my mind of considerations and continue to try and be in the moment and enjoying it to the point I am ready to sleep.

Below you will find 3 journal entries from 3 separate days which were written while I was actively trying to do the healing work related to my diagnosis of Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder. I felt like a victim to this disorder. I felt as if I was being held back by it and not living up to my full potential. I had begun believing that I was not a victim and that there was something that I could do to overcome. Re-reading this 5 years later I consider ADHD playing a much larger role in what describe. 🤔  Quitting drinking alcohol eventually played a huge role in finally aligning my circadian rhythm. My morning practice, waking up at the same time everyday, was what eventually proviede long term healing from Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. 

July 3 2020

Just after 4am. I decided to stay awake as long as I need to to fall asleep naturally. Usually I would have a nightcap. Or two. I have never been able to get to sleep with ease. My father used to say, "Just close your eyes and keep them closed and you will fall asleep". Which I assume has to be true for everyone unless you have that disease where you don't sleep until you die. Fatal Familial Insomnia. I had to look it up. I figured it would have a name that wasn't so on the nose. But when I close my eyes with the intention of sleeping my mind doesn't get the message. When I was 18 in my first year at college, unable to fall asleep early enough to wake up early enough for class, I went to the student nurse and got referred to a sleep clinic. I went and they wired me up, put me to bed and I lied there awake with wires all over my body and head, knowing that they are watching me on camera and recording every sound. I did fall asleep eventually. They woke me up at 6am and sent me on my way. 800+ pages of data was collected and I was diagnosed with Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome/Disorder. The diagnosis is nice to be able to blame, but I have never found any therapy or drug that will make me sleep on a schedule. Sometimes I can maintain a 9-5 life for a week. Maybe 2. but then the days get longer and later and waking up gets harder. I have tried listening to my body and sleeping when I am just tired. You cannot schedule that life. I have tried 6, 28 hour days instead of 7, 24 hour ones. That you can plan for but it is a whole different type of difficult, and, as soon as you mess up that schedule it is hard to get back. I have tried pills, drinks, smokes and self hypnosis. I have tied my hands to the bedpost so I couldn't reach the alarm clock snooze button. But I can also untie my hands in my sleep aparently. I do not like to be at the mercy of anything. I feel like there must be something that I can do to change my brain to produce melatonin when the sun goes down. If I could make this one thing about me different. Normal. I don't know what I could become. It feels like a huge blind spot where I hide all the things about myself I'd rather not highlight. There has got to be something I am not facing that once faced will trigger my brain and allow me to sleep. Or maybe one day I realize the gift I have called a curse. I feel tired. I cannot sleep.

July 7 2020 - 6, 28 hour days

168 hours in a week. 7 sunrises and 7 sunsets. I never see them all. I have always had a hard time falling asleep. I have never had much energy in the morning. I found as a child I was just hitting my stride right when it was time to go to bed. As the youngest of 5 children, the world didn't stop when I went to bed, and neither did my mind. I had a rotating and evolving routine of activities to do in bed. Making noises, playing with silly putty, or just trying to dream awake, to carry that dream to sleep.

In high school, my father was focused on catching me when late for school and, I felt at the time, thrilled to punish me for it. A snowstorm caused a 'no bus day' as we call it in Ontario, and he asked me why I wasn't at school, "It's a no bus day" I replied. "Were you up and ready to go to school on time?" he asked. I wasn't, and I felt it wasn't relevant but that led to an argument which resulted in me leaving the house and crashing on friends couches for a bit until he asked me to come back. I did briefly and then moved out for good.

My first year of college changed nothing about my sleep routine and it was a rare occasion that I made the first class of the day. I would go to bed relative to the time I needed to wake up. 8 am class, try to get to bed by 1 am at the latest. This resulted in several hours of lying there watching the clock discard minutes and hours of my intended sleep till the impending alarm. I never heard it. I would wake up most days to look at the clock, hours passed my intended arousal, and the alarm turned off. Snoozing or just turning off the alarm was an unconscious act. In an act of desperation, I tied my hands to my headboard and put the alarm across the room so I would have to untie myself to turn off the alarm and then would certainly be awake. It worked only one night until I found I could untie myself in my sleep.

You might ask why I couldn't ask a roommate to help me awake. I did other things in my sleep as well including a good right hook. After nearly knocking out my roommate, that courtesy was not an easy ask any longer.

Eventually, I went to the medical clinic at school and got referred to a sleep clinic. They wired me up and I barely slept but two months later 800 pages of data concluded it must be Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome/Disorder. I was thrilled to have a diagnosis and a prescription, and would now carry on like the normals, going to bed with a pill, as I like, and waking up rested and ready to take on the world with no limits.

Amitriptyline was first. "Take one see how it works if you need two then take two." It did not help. It is an antidepressant. Trazodone was second. The caveat was, 1 in 10,000 people will receive(so generous) an erection that can only be lowered by surgery. Sleep tight. After a phone call to Telehealth Ontario at 3 am asking, "How long do I wait before I go to the Hospital?" I went to my specialist and asked for a drug, designed for sleep, that will knock me out. Starnoc was the Canadian brand name for Zaleplon, a sedative-hypnotic. I was familiar with sleeping pills. My mother is and was addicted to them after rotating night/day shifts as a nurse at a nursing home. She would take her pill, then have a coffee(?) and 30 minutes later she was like a drunk sailor telling you all sorts of stories that could never be true. At the age of 10 I could ask for the keys to the car and she would only ask that I fill up the gas tank before I come back. So when I got "My" sleeping pill I was ready to get on with life. It had been months since I did the sleep study, waited for the results, and then was disappointed with 2 drugs that never produced the results I wanted. Starnoc was the fix. I read all the documentation I could. It said it could create amnesia. I expected this as Mom never remembered anything 15 minutes after her pill. It had a half-life of one hour and a 30 min onset. It should not be mixed with grapefruit juice. I knew everything about this and could not wait for bedtime.

The first night, as the Doctor prescribed, I took 1 pill to see how effective it was. If I needed I could take two the following night. I took the pill and went to watch a half-hour of tv as the effects would wash over me and, just like Mom, would start to slur and stumble off to bed. 1 show later, 30 min had passed and I felt nothing. So, knowing what I knew, I was now 30 min out from the halflife at which point the height of its affect would start to decline. I knew I would, regularly, need 2 as the Doctor suggested I may, but I did not want to wait even one more night to finally have a good night's sleep. So I did some math. If I were to take a second pill at t+30min It would be onset as the first was at its half-life and I wouldn't get a true 2 pill dose. If I were to take 2 more then it might be dangerous. What I needed was a more effective way to get the medicine into my bloodstream so that the halflife of both pills would be equal. If it took 30 minutes for the gel cap to dissolve and my body to absorb this "Doctor prescribed" medicine, then if I took it out of the gel cap I would be getting closer to matching my times. But just ingesting the powder still might take to long for it to enter my bloodstream, and as a recreational drug user at the time, I knew you could get drugs into your blood fast through the capillaries in my nose. So this all easily sounds like a horrible idea. Especially due to the impetus of the arrangement that was, adding 2 to the 1 I already took could be potentially dangerous. My Mother took Imovane(Zopiclone). It makes you sleepy. It is a different drug than I had taken. Starnoc doesn't necessarily make you sleepy. It will take the suggestion of sleep and then make you sleep. It is a hypnotic drug that causes amnesia. It makes suggestions, realities that you don't remember. The following morning I woke up with nearly 20 empty gel caps next to my bed and a few pages of writing in a black sharpie addressed to me signed, Pill Peter. In a beautifully calligraphic signature, I had never seen before.

Pill Peter shared none of my insecurities. Pill Peter was ideal. Pill Peter did not feel intoxicated yet was full of hope and joy and a plan to continue existing. I was horrified. I was also instantly addicted to Starnoc. This same thing happened night after night. Every time telling myself I'm not going to do this again, I will take 2 pills, orally, and go to sleep and every morning I awoke to new letters and broken pills. I was alone in this, my friends did not know and I was helpless to control myself because, with it I might kill myself ,but without it I might never sleep like a normal person and never see my full potential.

This post's title is "6, 28 hour days." I did not intend to get into this, this far. Though the lie I was telling myself was, "I might never sleep like a normal person and never see my full potential." After lying to pharmacists about losing pills and lying to the Doctor to get more prescriptions sooner, and lying to my friends by omission, I told my roommate what was happening, I gave him the box of pills and told him to administer 2 dissolved in water to me every night and I went and lied on the floor of my room and started to weep and shake and roll in pain. A psychological doom that would never cease. He left me alone in the apartment during the summer months so we took the pills to another friend and I would walk to his house, 20 min away, he would administer my drugs, check that I swallowed them, looking under my tongue, and send me walking home to bed. If I could regurgitate the pill before I got out to the street of his building the gel cap would be intact and I could have one snort of it to remember how wonderful it felt to be someone else. Obviously, this did not last and stopped using these pills and I had to go back to trying to fit myself into a world of time, that doesn't measure up with my body.

That was in 2001. A lot has happened since then. My rising star as a local Radio personality was snuffed out due to me sleeping through a shift where I was supposed to set up a remote broadcast. The talent was there, with the client wondering where the equipment was to go to air and unable to reach me as I was fast asleep next to the alarm clock blaring. This was the first job I lost to this. My identity was so tied to that Job and my future which was once set, by me, was now hopelessly lost and spinning out of control. Later in life, after being diagnosed as having Type II Bi-Polar disorder, and loading up on meds, I began to inquire about sedatives (non-addictive) that I might take and I rode that train for some years. Still never being able to match the times of day the world dictated I should be available, I found work later in the day and worked jobs that I would never attach my identity to and continued to suffer. No one in my life fully understood my petty little curse.

After years of sedation and medication, I decided to go off of all Doctor prescribed medication and find out who I was again, and manage my sleep the only way I knew worked best, Alcohol. Now again you must think, this all easily sounds like a horrible idea. It was, but it was functionally the best solution. I like beer. It is socially acceptable. I don't tend to get hangovers and I can predictably dose myself with expected results. And I still struggle with this today. And it facilitated huge changes in my life. Getting off the medications for my Bi-Polar diagnosis helped me to see myself again and My wife got to meet me for the first time. I made big life decisions and was able to begin a life of self employment and freelance work that I could schedule myself. I started following curiosities and learning new things and fleshing out ideas into realities. I started intermittent fasting and was losing weight, much of it gained while taking Lithium. And every day when I knew I was in for the night I would drink until I knew when I got in bed I would not be lying there waiting for sleep to come to me. While all the other aspects of my life were becoming free of attachment and I was excited about the future even not knowing what was to come, and having given up the idea I had any control over it, I was still a slave to another addictive substance all in an effort to get a good night's sleep.

So it is 3:06 am. I went to bed at 7:30 pm did not set an alarm and awoke at 11:30 pm after having been awake for 25.5 hours, and I had a few beers. This is not a story with an end. I am in this right now. It was within a year ago that I first experimented with 6, 28 hour days. The first, hardest, and the scariest part was to stop drinking. My relationship with alcohol and beer is not good. But I am not physically dependant. I don't have physical withdrawal symptoms. I don't like drinking to excess in public. I regret it almost always. I was worried after years of sedating myself that I could possibly get physically ill by discontinuing my use instantly. I did not. Not drinking is not hard for me in the least. I don't drink because I'm sad, because I am happy. I don't drink for confidence, because I am confident. I don't drink to be creative, because I am creative. I don't drink because I like the feeling, because regret is the worst I think I can feel. I'm a no regrets kind of guy unless it is drunken rude unchecked behaviour. There are no real lessons here. I drink to sedate myself for the sole purpose to not lie in bed one more night waiting for sleep to come. It is not hard for me not to drink. So I stopped with the knowledge I don't know when I will sleep next. That's not entirely true. I had a plan.

6, 28 hour days. 168 hours sliced up for me. We both live through the week. The week is 168 hours for you and 168 hours for me, we are the same. Except I sleep 6 times to your 7. My first trial lasted 2 weeks. I managed it ok. The days were not full of absolute energy until sloth took me. It is foggy. It is hard on the body. But when I go to sleep, I sleep. And When I wake up, I am awake. The struggle is less but introduces others. I don't remember why I stopped but I did, and after taking a new job assignment that requires some daytime hours I convinced myself I was ok sedating for sleep for now and experimenting with cannabis as an alternative. I found I could limit my drinking somewhat and maintain hours close to waking up at noon and going to bed near 4 am. It fit with work and was manageable for a bit. But then I started sleeping later and later and finding it harder and harder to sleep at the same time slowly shifting later and later. If I were to "really" drink then I'd be ok, but 2 or 3( which I somehow believe to be an acceptable number) beers were not doing it. So I decided I was going to try and tackle this one again with 6, 28 hour days.

July 17 2020 - Friday Morning

6am Friday morning or my Thursday night. I've been drinking myself to sleep since the last failed attempt at the - this is where I stop and ask myself if I want to really be this real on a blog anyone can see. - 6, 28 hour day week.

I hesitate because writing about this makes me face a weakness. A hard to break habit. Something I am not just a user of but a producer of. The best beer you will ever taste is the one you made yourself. I don't want to stop brewing beer. I don't want to try to give up alcohol. But I have to be able to, to find a better way to deal with my sleeping disorder. That distinction is important to me alone. I don't know the answer. There is one drug I haven't tried that promotes a different approach. It is the drug that the movie Limitless with Bradley Cooper is based on. It doesn't work by putting you to sleep at the right time(the approach of traditional sleep therapies), it works by waking you up at the right time. In Canada it is only prescribed for two conditions, Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder and Sleep Apnea. I have both those conditions diagnosed in two separate sleep studies. I also know that this drug could potentially ruin me. I do not believe I am more powerful or equipped to engage with something designed in a lab. The opportunity for abuse and side effects is rampant. But my curiosity does want to try. This would require a proper relationship with a practicing Doctor. I do not have a doctor looking over my physical health. I can go to the hospitol and get care and treatments for anything whenever needed. This does not come up for me regularly. I did get a family Dr. and met her once and within a year she moved her practice and I am now left without a dr that I don't believe I need. I'm only coming to this realization now but, I don't think I need a family Dr. I think I need to be able to request exams. I think I need to have access to labs. I think a group mind, world wide, will provide as much insight as 1 persons years of experience. The family dr. didn't do much but delegate to the pharmacist, or the specialist or the therapist. The one time he did a procedure on me to remove a wart he spilled liquid nitorgen on my leg and left a scar the size of a silver dollar on my thigh. So Defund the Police. First and foremost. That is easy. Then Rebuild health care. Use todays resources to build a framework around a profession the barber used to do. I don't mean to be preachy. I have never once worried that I might need healthcare and it would cost me a dollar. And I have used the healthcare system a great deal. But I don't believe gate keepers need to be paid like doctors and doctors don't need to be gatekeepers. I don't want to publish this. This is all opinions that I really haven't considered or thought about. I was just doing the "write no matter what" thing. It starts personal and then I get into healthcare for whatever reason. I haven't read back but I do not know why it turned to this. hitting publish is an excercise in what? Humility.(this was a long pause) I can't sleep. That's it. This is a "I can't sleep" journal. The sun is up and the birds are chirping. I have plans the next few days that I am now going to have to work a sleep schedule around. I will have to try and nap my way through an entire weekend with plans we have. I do not nap well. 6:30am now, I cannot see a good plan for the next 48 hours. I suppose I will report what happens.