Ways I Get Patients Off Of Sleeping Pills

Sleep is a complex function.  it is not just biological, but also psychological and social. Your “daily residue;” everything that happened at work or whatever that day, combines with past traumas (which may have been dragged around since childhood) to create what may be disturbing dreams.

General medical conditions can have a negative impact on sleep.  Pain ruins sleep.  What is going on around you when you are asleep affects sleep. I have actually made the following interventions with patients that were able to totally end the patient’s dependence on sleeping pills.

1. Told someone to take the desk they use to pay bills, and their checkbook, and everything relevant to financial status and put it in another room other than the bedroom.

2. Convinced someone to cover their windows completely with aluminum foil to keep out the light from a neon all night sign across the street.

3. Convinced a patient who prided himself on his knowledge of current events to stop watching (and falling asleep with) the 11 o’clock news, but to watch and listen to a prepared (and repetitive) series of videos, music, etc.

4. I convinced a patient of British origin, who had always felt sleepy when reading the Manchester Guardian (which he considered, rightly or wrongly, to be the dullest newspaper on the globe) to read himself to sleep every night by reading the Manchester Guardian.

5. I have led people in improving their lives by ceasing to sleep with people they have guilty or angry feelings about and move toward conjugal bliss by sleeping with someone they love AND are married to.

(Nota Bene: I do not represent any organized religion.)