Overcast and some ground fog this early Tuesday on California’s north coast — a long night and an exhausting morning.

The last five years or so, I’ve suffered episodic bouts of insomnia and the cruel, sleepless affliction has inflicted itself again. I can easily go to sleep, but after about four hours I’m wide awake and forced to wade through a ton of thoughts on everything. The science of it is currently new — Assistant professor of neurology Dr. Rachel Salas: “There is a theory out there, it’s called hyperarousal, and essentially in basic terms we believe the light switch is always on. And it’s not just nighttime, so insomnia disorder has now become a 24/7 disorder.”
Thinking too much shit all day long follows me right into bed.

(Illustration: Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Old Man in Sorrow (On the Threshold of Eternity)‘ found here).

Dr. Salas also offers this: “Humans are naturally critical and negative especially at bed time, you’re always thinking of all the things you haven’t done, and how you don’t have enough money, how you are getting older, and all these other things so you kind of ruminate on negative things, well those can feed insomnia, they can feed nightmares, so I encourage happy thoughts.”
Must remember not to ruminate after dark.
But how to collect happy thoughts?
Salas has some advice — blow soap bubbles right before bed time:

“It does three things.
So one it’s having them do this heavy relaxing breathing, which essentially is yoga breathing, but two, if they have insomnia, you know those bubbles are blowing out…I try to get them to apply imagery that they are blowing out their stress, and when the brain sees the bubble go off and disappear or pop, I think it has as relaxing effect.
You visually see something kind of released out of you.”

I don’t know about the bubbles. How about a bong hit instead?
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