If you wish to take something similarly underwhelming, you can get 5-HTP at health food shops here in the UK.
The melatonin itself – chewable and mildly peppermint flavoured – has not rocked my sleep world noticeably. The mysteries of international regulation mean you can buy a truckload of it in the US in your local Whole Foods (along with a $28 watermelon or some “deliciously dippable kale shapes”), but here it is prescription only, so I am forced to procure it from a friend in the US who sends it to me in exchange for Marigold bouillon powder, which, puzzlingly, is unavailable in US Whole Foods branches. The hormone melatonin is produced by the pineal gland in the brain to prepare the body for sleep. a miracle cure? Photograph: /th-foto/Alamy Melatonin It took all my strength to drag it into a cupboard, so it won’t be coming out again any time soon. I acquired a 14kg one secondhand, but was sad to discover (not) sleeping under it feels like being implacably crushed to death by boiling lava. I love the idea of a weighted blanket, a sort of heavy fabric hug, albeit one with scarcely researched relaxation and sleep benefits. Can I trust my lungs, which are just eerie flesh crumpets, to send me to sleep? Wouldn’t it be horribly easy just to stop breathing? You can imagine how relaxing yoga classes are for me. For me, however, any attempt to focus on breathing leaves me unable to breathe normally at all. This one is simple: breathe in for four seconds, hold your breath for seven seconds, then breathe out for eight. Plenty of research suggests breathing exercises are effective for relaxation. As it is, while my This Works: Deep Sleep Pillow Spray with its “superblend of lavender, camomile and vetivert” is pleasant, I am sorry to say This Does Not Work: On Me. Conceivably, if the stuff were 99% Calvados and I soaked my pillow with it then sucked it, it might work. In my experience, a pillow spray is the weakest insomnia Hail Mary out there.
I also heard great things about Elemis’s pretentiously named Quiet Mind Temple Balm but was disappointed: it just smells and feels like expensive tiger balm to me. These potions smell delightful, but the use of the word “beauty” is hilariously wrongheaded: I look like a sentient bowl of porridge because I never sleep. This is how I, an otherwise rational person, have ended up using a Balance Me Beauty Sleep Hyaluronic Mist and a Balance Me Beauty Sleep CBD Concentrate rollerball nightly: each “worked” once (yes, time for me to retake correlation/causation 101), so I can never stop, despite them not appearing to have made any appreciable difference to my sleep since. The insomniac is essentially a primitive, credulous creature one whose cognitive functions are probably operating at about 3% of optimum capacity. So I turn mostly to DIY insomnia remedies – and as someone who has given them all a whirl, here is my wholly subjective opinion on what to try and what not to waste your many waking hours on. In desperate times, I use the Valium I was prescribed for migraines – effective, but not a long-term solution. My region isn’t covered by the NHS CBT-based app, Sleepio either, of which I hear good things. I have never consulted a doctor about insomnia: I don’t know why, other than it doesn’t seem the kind of thing a harassed GP would be able to do much about.
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