Sleeping through the night, without pills

I had taken something to sleep for most of a decade. It started during a hard year at work and never stopped. Even with the pills I woke at three most nights and lay there until it was light.

I had tried everything my doctor suggested: sleep hygiene, cutting out wine, a sleep clinic. I was tired of being tired.

Questions no one had asked

The physician in Hong Kong spent an hour with me on the first day. She asked when exactly I woke, whether I felt hot or cold at night, what I ate in the evening, and whether it was my mind or my body that felt restless. No one had asked me those questions before.

She read my pulse for a long time and told me, through the translator, that my body was running hot and dry. I did not fully understand it, but I liked that she had a theory and a plan.

The formula

The first formula was a dark, bitter tea I drank twice a day, made fresh by the clinic. Every three or four days I went back, she read my pulse again, and changed the recipe. It changed three times in two weeks.

By the end of the first week I was falling asleep more easily. By the second, I slept six hours straight. I had not done that since my forties.

“I sleep through the night now, without pills.”

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A slower kind of trip

I went on my own, which made me nervous. My companion met me at the airport and was there whenever I needed her, but she also left me alone when I wanted it. I took the Star Ferry most afternoons, walked in the botanical gardens, and ate a great deal of congee.

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Coming off the pills

I came home with a month of herbs in packets labelled in English, and a video appointment with my physician every two weeks. With my own doctor’s agreement, I tapered off the sleeping pills over six weeks. I have not needed them since.

I still wake sometimes. Everyone does. But now I go back to sleep.