Friday 4 March 2011

To sleep perchance to dream

I write to you from the tail-end of a 747, somewhere over the north Atlantic. We've bid goodbye to California shores for a couple of weeks, although we did get the seats right at the back of the plane so we were technically the very last people to leave (and the first to be served G&Ts).

Although, in a shock development, I have been completely abstemious and have not enjoyed ANY of British Airways' hospitality. This is an attempt to dodge jetlag, which haunted me throughout our last trip to the motherland. If you think Britain is cold and dark usually, you should see it at 3am.

So I was in Target today seeking out Melatonin, which my sister (a nurse constantly asked to switch between night and day shifts) told me worked well. It's a natural hormone that your body makes to regulate sleep (how do you make a hormone?), and in the UK you have to get it on prescription. In the US it's on the shelf in the vitamin aisle.

"Does it work?" I asked the pharmacist, whose permission I'd naively believed I needed. "Well, it's psychological as well," she stated unconvingly. Still, it was cheap for a bottle of 80 pills.

I popped one as we started taxiing and here I am seven-and-a-half hours later! I was woken by the odd turbulent bump, and each time thought "hmmm, that worked well" before falling fast asleep again. Placebo or not, it's been a pleasant flight.

Now I'm standing at the back of the plane and the hostesses have just appeared from their special hidey-hole (which looks very posh inside) so I'm going to see if I can fit in an episode of Fawlty Towers on the entertainment system before breakfast. I think I'll take another miracle pill before bed tonight and then hopefully my sleep deprivation will be ended. Better living through chemistry, even the homeopathic kind.

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