Night Fright!

Do you ever wake in the middle of the night with an inexplicable feeling of uneasiness or anxiety, even downright anguish, a sort of 'existential angst', and, try as you might, you cannot get off to sleep again? Do black thoughts flood into your head and torment you in the blackness of night, in one form or another, effectively banishing further sleep? If this "nocturnal numbness" never happens to you, you're one of the fortunate few, of which alas I am not, in which case you need not read on. But if you're a fellow sufferer, then perhaps the following is more or less familiar to you.

Where am I?

The other night I awoke just after three in the morning in a somewhat confused and anxious state and, try as I might, I could not get back to sleep. It seems I had been having a rather heavy dreamlike experience, not exactly a nightmare, but one that I'd rather have done without and which must have instilled a certain uneasiness and disquiet in my subconscious that looks to have been the reason for my waking up all of a sudden in a state of some anxiety. I had a strange sense of being ethereal, disconnected from the world and out of touch with everyone, as though unable to retrieve my past and re-connect with people and events that had been part of my life.

So there I was, awake, nervous and apprehensive, with a deep sense of abandonment and aloneness (rather than loneliness) that precluded sleep but which demanded stimulation, both visual and auditory if I was to get over it. So what would most people do in such a situation? Turn to drink? Gulp down a few pills? Try and get themselves sexually aroused?Well, I did none of those: I just turned the telly on to good old BBC 24-hour news and sat back to absorb some of the world's goings-on to take me out of myself. And it was the usual merry mixture of civil unrest, terrorist attacks, state-sponsored massacres, natural disasters, gruesome murders, all-consuming arsons, high-level fraud, political scandal, economic chaos, drug wars, widespread deceit and deception and the like. Have I missed anything out? You can fill in the gaps for me. All in all it made a great way for me to forget my own sleep-induced desolation and despair.

Yes, all this misery and mayhem in the world managed to take my mind off my own less tangible fears and envelop me in a general feeling of revulsion at the state of the world which is never free of upheaval and unrest. Half way through my viewing or revulsion, if you prefer, I got up, went down to the kitchen, found some strawberries in the fridge and washed them down with pure orange-juice whilst listening to something silly on the radio. Back upstairs I siphoned the python, as they say (well some of us still do), and so with belly assuaged and bladder emptied, I got back down to calming the mind and the spirit, an enterprise not so easily achieved. It was back to the world news and a further serving of calamities and conflicts, followed by a review of the day's major international sports events. That's where I drew the line and turned the tv set off.

Where am I?

Having set the television screen on a red mood light that allowed me to faintly perceive my surroundings once the main light was off, I settled back down to re-enter the world of sleep. It was now more than an hour later, around 4.30 am, and being summer, it was already beginning to lighten outside and the dawn chorus had struck up: an ideal backdrop for me to drift off. I hate the dead silence and darkness of the night, and the faint glimmer of light and chirping of the birds were a welcome sight and sounds. 

Within a few short minutes I was in the arms of Morpheus, transported back to the land of Nod. With my night fright dispelled and my spirit calmed, I slept soundly, though I knew that it was not an isolated occurrence and was bound to recur soon enough. Fortunately, I had devised an effective means of combating it (thank God for BBC 24-hr news!) and having the remedy made me less frightened of the malady.