Anxiety, Insomnia, and OCD: My Current Methods of Dealing

First, I guess let's start with the insomnia, since that often triggers my anxiety. While I slept like an angel as a baby (or so I'm told), things didn't stay that way for long. According to my mother, I would crawl to the stairs in an effort to go to bed at around 6:00 in the evening, and I wouldn't wake up until 7:00 the next morning. While this was a blessing for my parents (my younger brother had a lot of medical issues that he has, thankfully, grown out of), I often wonder if it's at all possible that has something to do with my current insomnia.

I remember it was hard to fall asleep when I was in first grade. I felt like I was just lying there, staring up at the ceiling, for hours on end. My first inclination that it was a problem was when I caught my dad being the Tooth Fairy. He snuck into my room, fully intending to replace my tooth with a silver dollar, when I sat up and said, "Why are you in my room?" He said that he just wanted to check on me, and bent down to give me a hug and a kiss on the forehead. I felt under my pillow the second he left, and sure enough, my tooth was gone - a silver dollar lay in its place.

This continued on for some time - I would lay in bed for hours just staring at the walls, or at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling. This was always after my parents would tell me to stop reading and go to bed for the third or fourth time. I just couldn't sleep.

Things continued this way until my freshman year of high school. When my mom realized that I was just dozing off as my alarm was waking me up, she took me to the doctor. I was prescribed Ambien and banned from consuming caffeine. In the last ten years, I can count the amount of times I've knowingly had caffeine on my ten fingers. Over those ten years, I've been prescribed a total of five or six different sleep aids. All (except my current pills) either created hallucinations or just plain stopped working. I've also tried the usual methods: counting sheep, chamomile tea, no TV/computer for an hour before bed - none of them have worked.

While yoga and exercise do help, it's not enough. I don't want to rely on medication my whole life to help me sleep. But until I can find a surefire fix, medication it is.

Up next: OCD