Dr. Levine's Magic Get-to-sleep - Formula
Levine, Arthur
Dr. Levine’s Magic Get-to-sleep - Formula by Arthur Levine I am a chronic insomniac. After trying all the traditional remedies, I turned to drugs for a few years. And in my long, frantic quest...
...The drug of choice...
...One by one, they come before me, seeking advice on how to sleep without drugs...
...I felt as if a new era were beginning in my life...
...A calcium deficiency often shows itself by insomnia, another form of an inability to relax,” she wrote...
...THEY’RE POISON...
...A real schmuck...
...It would take time, my teachers assured me, but all the wonderful results were bound to come...
...Nervous and exhausted, I casually barged into his office one day, wishing to speak to him as one consumer champion to another...
...But shortly before I left New York City, I discovered a new drug that seemed to be just what I needed...
...After a rough nlght, I called up the lab’s director, Dr...
...You can exercise, take hot baths, do TM...
...I’d like you to close your eyes, and as you close your eyes, you become more and more relaxed...
...I still have it today...
...No, you’ll have to come up here to be checked out...
...After I could put it off no longer, I’d announce, with cheerless bravado, “Well, I guess it’s time to go to bed...
...When I finally discovered something that worked, it was an approach that hadn’t been reported in the press or tested by clinical researchers, and I found it without help from anyone at all...
...I was worried that if it had worked for me, then it probably was unsafe...
...COME PICK UP YOUR CHLORAL HYDRATE...
...After a half hour I would be awake to hear the tag line, “You are now in a deep sleep, and all these suggestions are now implanted deeply, firmly, and permanently in the deepest reaches of your subconscious...
...I was using drugs for a few years, and I found it very effective...
...Approaching the prescription counter was an act of humble contrition...
...By the fifth day all depression was gone, he looked like a new person, and he walked vigorously for three miles without tiring...
...And in my long, frantic quest for a good night’s sleep, I’ve learned the hard way what doctors, the drug industry, and health reformers have been doing to ease one of man’s most ancient burdens...
...The fate of the public citizen’s movement hung in the balance...
...I entered his home practically on my hands and knees, stumbling my way towards his study...
...Governed by some primitive instinct, I invariably stumble onto sleep articles in magazines I haven’t even glanced at in years: Ladies Home Journal, Popular Mechanics, The New Republic...
...A pale-faced, unshaven Sidney Wolfe, too shaky to testify before congressional committees, notes sadly, “Drugs are the last thing in the world you should take...
...But at least I could function, and if certain things began changing in my life, a new quiet, less joking, no music, I chalked it up to the beatific inner peace of Transcendental Meditation...
...For the next few days, I stopped taking Triavil and tried to hypnotize myself to sleep...
...I called the doctor and looked forward to my appointment later in the week...
...I was going through adolescence, a stage of life many of our readers may recall, and, by college, I was dutifully consulting psychiatrists for depression and anxiety...
...If I had been the kind of person who awoke each morning to set sail for another day of lobster fishing, I doubt whether I’d have been haunting allnight drug stores in search of a bottle of Sominex...
...My attempts to join the fraternity were frequently thwarted...
...Does it disrupt sleeping patterns...
...Was there anything else...
...Yes,” he said...
...Adelle Davis...
...Introduced in 1970 by Hoffman-La Roche Company, the Swiss-based firm that made Valium and Librium the leading minor tranquilizers, the drug has since become the top-selling hypnotic, and the 21st most-prescribed drug.Tracks Down Amino Acid But the concern of the drug industry is best reflected in its response to the research into L-tryptophane...
...Around the same time I made my pilgrimage to the sleep expert, I took up the practice of Transcendental Meditation...
...Over the years, I had, at one time or another, taken Thorazine, Valium, Sominex, Nytol, Sleep-Eze, Nyquil, Dalmane, chloral hydrate, Librium, Quaalude, Darvon, Triavil, Seconal, Bufferin, and aspirin...
...One book contained a list of remedies for insomniacs, and I tried every one of them, often in succession...
...Can I help you...
...How was I to know that he had built his professional career by, among other things, denouncing the medical community for irrational overprescribing...
...Hauri said in his Swiss accent...
...It takes time,” he said...
...Well, what am 1 supposed to do...
...And take a nice hot bath before you go to sleep...
...I would begin plotting my strategy for the evening several hours before actually daring to lie down in my bed...
...Christian Gillin...
...Why not...
...First of all, drink warm milk before you go to bed...
...Yet all these drugs pose grave dangers, and with barbituates, there are thousands of accidental and deliberate overdoses each year...
...I became increasingly depressed, groggy, and unhealthy, but I never made the connection between the drug I was taking-safe enough for babies-and my deteriorated condition...
...He leaned forward with grave deliberation, as if passing along some ancient wisdom too powerful to be spoken aloud...
...And here we shift from the comic absurdity of my own struggle to a heavier matter-the economics of the U. S. prescription drug industry...
...First, the traditional night-time snack of Special K and milk...
...The Dalmane, of course, was only a temporary measure, until I could visit a sleep clinic or solve my problem through other, never clarified, means...
...Sleeping pills are abhorrent to me,” says a blearyeyed Morton Mintz, falling behind his deadlines...
...A few statistics tell the story: an estimated 30 million Americans suffer from chronic insomnia, $184-million worth of prescription and non-prescription sleeping pills are sold at retail outlets, 40 million such prescriptions are filled a year, and there’s an incalculable toll in drug abuse and psychological distress...
...These are questions that should be raised, but too often aren’t...
...Then the preparations began in earnest, suspense mounting throughout the house...
...Although nominally cleared by the FDA, it is simply a compilation of paid advertising purchased by the major brand-name companies...
...the article begins...
...For whatever combination of reasons, his tirade made a strong impression on me...
...The day after the story appeared in the Post, Dr...
...I barely slept at all, but I felt my mood lifting, and I realized how much the drugs had dulled me...
...The withdrawal from barbituate addiction is more hazardous than that for heroin...
...An HEW task force on prescription drugs found that an overwhelming majority of new drugs are actually slight variations of already existing chemicals, developed for the sole purpose of obtaining a patent...
...Discovers Health Food Then, one day, I picked up a copy of Adelle Davis’ book, Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit...
...the drug of choice...
...I called up the senior researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sleep laboratory, Dr...
...I begged...
...I quickly recited my difficulties and then waited for his response...
...One she described was in Dartmouth...
...Can you give me the citations...
...Actually, it was the four-tihes-daily dosage of Triavil that was permitting me to sleep, as well as dulling my senses, blurring my vision, and causing me to sweat profusely...
...Doctor,” I pleaded, “I can’t sleep at all...
...For two days there was no noticeable improvement except that he slept well for the first time since stopping drugs...
...So I became a vital asset to the manufacturers of OTC sleeping drugs, pills which have since been found by an FDA advisory panel to be ineffective, and, in some cases, dangerous...
...The ones who should be asking these questions are themselves too distanced from drug-takers to bother with the more important question of how people can learn to live without mood-altering drugs...
...A friend mentioned an unorthodox psychologist he knew, and I arranged to see him that afternoon...
...That’s too bad,” he said, looking up from his hard-hitting reports...
...As the dawn rose and I was still lying in bed counting my breaths, I would get up and take Dalmane...
...It was all psychosomatic, we agreed...
...With painted eyebrows and ill-fitting toupee that hardly disguised his 71 years, the psychologist stormed around telling me of his long string of cures...
...Hello...
...Guards and salesclerks nodded at me with recognition, the old regular back for another score...
...In fact, although Mintz, reporter for The Washington Post, has played an invaluable role as watchdog of the FDA and drug industries, neither he nor the other critics seem willing to broaden their scrutiny to include an emphasis on non-drug alternatives...
...I came upon it indirectly through a magazine article...
...In a letter, Alfred Zobel wouldn’t tell me whether they were interested in the amino acid, but he did say, “Our researchers come across far more leads than their limited manpower permits them to follow...
...The article reported that researchers had discovered a natural, safe amino acid that provided insomniacs with more restful sleep than drugs now being prescribed...
...I started taking muscle relaxants and, before bed, a handful of aspirin...
...Before sending me copies of his papers, he gave me a few leads on tracking down supplies of the amino acid...
...Good night, son,” my parents said, as I marched off to battle...
...It was a bad choice...
...A slight variation-a door ajar, too much light-and I was doomed to lie awake for hours...
...No matter how enormous or diverse a magazine stand may be, I always manage to spot the one periodical featuring its inside exclusive on insomnia...
...It worked, but my supply was soon exhausted...
...The hours passed into days as I remained sleepless, trying my best to follow the guidelines of this thinly disguised torture...
...As long as my drug use was haphazard, I told myself, I wouldn’t become an addict...
...Research on the amino acid has been published in a number of prestigious journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association...
...Try to relax, don’t work so hard,” he said...
...There’s no visible damage, the causes and solutions are Arthur Levine is a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly...
...Each share of stock is priced at roughly $55,000, and its cash position is so secure that banks and industries borrow from it...
...So there I was, telling one of the country’s leading experts on insomnia about a nutritional approach that was over two decades old...
...now half of Morningside Heights could know my drug habits...
...Thus, the public’s indifference...
...It became increasingly difficult to fall asleep, and I learned how to forage through the wilds of the family’s medicine chest, taking aspirin and cold remedies with increasing abandon...
...I only slept four hours, but I was exhilarated...
...Go to bathroom again...
...No...
...I’m going to give you a prescription for Dalmane...
...My favorite, appropriately enough, was labelled “Relief from Insomnia...
...Yes, I told myself, that was the appropriate word...
...Chloral hydrate is best known as the “Mickey Finn” slipped into drinks in ’30s gangster movies...
...I nodded gratefully...
...As the count-down continued, I ran through some stretching exercises and carefully ticked off my mental inventory...
...Holding aloft that piece of paper, scribbled with words of salvation, he said, “Going without sleep can be very debilitating...
...The articles tend to be quite similar...
...In my guise as a reporter, I coolly refrained from begging for the product until near the end of our conversation...
...While the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (PMA) announces in its public service ads, “If a new medicine can help, we’re working on it,” in fact the reality of research is far different...
...he still calls calcium tablets ‘lullaby pills’ and tells me he continues to recommend them for patients annoyed by wakefullness...
...In the meantime, however, I had a life to live, and discussions of early toilet-training were remarkably ineffective in helping me get to sleep at night...
...Hardly a week passes without some magazine or newspaper featuring a story entitled, “How to Get a Good Night’s Sleep” or “How to Cure Insomnia...
...One factor, admittedly, is that insomniacs don’t present an image of noble suffering...
...Somehow this hostility to drugs produces an indifference to drug alternatives equally as pronounced in these reformers as it is in the drug compaines and government research centers...
...I learned of the calming properties of magnesium, of the importance of B-vitamins...
...For a brief instant, I saw Dorothy Kilgallen’s whole life pass before me...
...Althea Wagman of the Maryland Psychiatric Institute, told reporters that the amino acid would be commercially available in around a year...
...It’s driving me crazy...
...Yet Hartmann’s FDA research permit doesn’t have any corporate sponsorship, which is extremely rare for new drug studies...
...But what else can be expected when those who can sleep and those who can’t live in two absolutely different worlds...
...But he doesn’t use pills for sleeping...
...At home that night, I tried 1,000 mgs...
...Please give...
...The article did not elaborate...
...I first turned to drugs at the tender age of 15...
...That could be me, I thought...
...TM, I thought had done its work...
...If the companies used me as a model, they would likely be plunged into bankruptcy in less than a year...
...Wolfe sleeps well at night...
...Is it addictive...
...Yet those alternatives are hardly explored by the research community, nor are they included in the agenda of reforms demanded by critics of the drug industry...
...We alien beings are part of a secret, desperate underground that comprises a lucrative source of profit for gums, doctors, drug companies, health food stores, hospitals, and, most of all, publishers...
...There are legal barriers to a layman obtaining ovemeas shipments, and, eventually, I found a company in New York willing to supply it, but only in expensive kilogram lots of powder...
...But use powdered milk so you can double the concentration...
...But the smiling, healthy country folk who assure us in nightly TV commercials that even they have trouble getting to sleep bear no resemblance whatsoever to real-life insomniacs...
...Eventually I might, or might not, fall asleep...
...Yes, and his name was Sidney Wolfe, director of the Nader-affiliated Health Research Group...
...I would start the evening with yoga postures, breathing exercises, then on to numbers, dull books, sheep, progressive relaxation, selfhypnosis...
...The only problem was that I was listening along to the tape as if it were a radio show, waiting for the relaxed hero on the tape to fall asleep...
...of calcium and half as much magnesium, the same amounts Davis had used for her drug addicts...
...Yet even after years of publicity, barbituates account for nearly 40 per cent of all prescribed sleeping pills...
...The letter became my passport into the land of pharmacopoeia, carried with me at all times...
...Occasionally, one of the pharmacists would glance at us with contempt, then laugh to himself...
...After months of using Dalmane, I got depressed enough to seek counseling...
...Apply Ben-Gay...
...I imagined myself standing in line inside a faith healer’s revival tent, as the preacher pressed his hand on my brow and shouted, “LAWD...
...No, it’s very safe and mild, and it doesn’t disrupt normal sleeping patterns...
...The reason, of course, is money...
...After I began using it, I checked it out for safety in reference books, somehow believing that if it didn’t suppress Rapid-Eye-Movement (REM) sleep or lead to fatal overdoses, taking it nightly was a perfectly sensible thing to do...
...Dalmane was a new drug, recently developed, and here I was, a lucky recipient of advanced technology...
...Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world,” Vladimir Nabokov once said, “with the heaviest dues and crudest rituals...
...After hunting through a Consumers Union publication, much in the manner of a prospective buyer of TV sets or stereos, I picked out triavil as the drug for me, convinced my general physician to prescribe it, within a short while I was able to sleep with out using Dalmane...
...It was then that I began in earnest my search for ways to sleep without drugs...
...With it, I became an expert at doctor-shopping, using it to obtain my tide-over prescription until I found a doctor willing to write unlimited refills...
...Sidney Wolfe, director of the Health Research Group, can glibly say, “Drugs are the last thing in the world you should take...
...The tape continued for half a half hour, as I lay there, listening to how drowsy I was becoming, the voice telling me that my body was becoming limp and heavy, my breathing deep and automatic...
...I appreciated the thoughtfulness behind the public announcement...
...I read the citations to him over the phone...
...Ernest Hartmann, director of Boston State Hospital’s sleep lab, he told me, “There hasn’t been any commercial interest in it...
...It was, I guessed, his idea of ironic under sta teme n t . “Yes,” I answered, “I’m a chronic insomniac...
...Later, the psychologist sent me yet another self-hypnosis tape with which I could train myself to sleep “anytime and anywhere, without the use of drugs...
...And, after a few miserable weeks, they turn in desperation to Dr...
...I forked over my money as quick as I could, learned my mantra, and started meditating...
...The key to its success is anxiety, depression, and insomnia...
...The pharmaceutical industry had domestic sales of $7 billion in 1974-75, and spent $950 million for research...
...As the months wore on, I made my weekly pilgrimage to my psychiatrist to discuss my ill health and depression...
...Hauri had said, “Usually-in about 75 to 80 per cent of our cases-one of these recommendations will work well, and we’ll get a cure: the person will be able to sleep much better...
...Then I turned to Valium, helpfully prescribed by the shrinks...
...Worse, the reformers seem to share a simple Puritan disdain for those who feel compelled to take drugs...
...I began to wonder about the insanity of a system that forced me to go to such lengths to get to sleep without drugs, while I could walk down to the nearest corner and buy enough sleeping pills to kill myself...
...John Pekkanen, author of the investigative book The American Connection, admits to using Valium occasionally for hypertension, although he attacks it sharply in his book...
...The summer after I graduated, my will crumbled under the pressure of working for Ralph Nader’s Congress Project...
...It was only when I wanted to give up drugs that I found out how wrong I was...
...When the classier publications make their annual bow to the insomnia market-Psychology Today weighed in with its entry in Decembermention is made of TM, yoga, biofeedback, behavior modification, and progressive relaxation exercises...
...That the drug might be a factor was never considered...
...Where’d you get that from...
...I never attended a morning class after my freshman year, and I never held a job with punctual hours...
...Before I left the city for another job, I obtained from the sleep doctor a short letter I could show to other physicians...
...Raise window slightly...
...The hypnotist placed me in.a trance and assured me how I would sleep peacefully that night, without drugs...
...I approach these articles with the same intense, furtive passion I once devoted to pornography...
...At other times, I just stayed awake...
...I know because I’ve read them all, usually more than once...
...Later, when I felt myself becoming groggy during the day, or I watched my roommate’s girl-friend hauled off to the hospital after trying to kill herself with the drug, I continued to use it, undeterred...
...It was safe and natural, and I had made a beginning...
...Drink warm milk and take a nice hot bath before you go to bed,” I say helpfully...
...As an implacable foe of the drug industry and the FDA, Wolfe is not the easiest person to bamboozle into writing a prescription...
...Turn off hall lights...
...Unless you help, Art Levine will not get to sleep tonight...
...Actually, like all sleeping pills, according to the authoritative Medical Letter, it can lead to physical dependence and withdrawal symptoms.Meets Professional Conscience My first use of the drug was illegal...
...While the tanned and handsome celebrities paraded across the talk shows in praise of TM, I watched in frustration as the promise of this simple, easy technique eluded me...
...Then, a scalding shower to loosen my back, followed by aspirin...
...But I’m having trouble doing my work,” I continued...
...They did not sound impressive: “Nature’s Own Tranquilizer, p. 170,” or “Personal Rewards of Good Nutrition, p. 234...
...I was through with antiquated drugs like chloral hydrate forever...
...Then I’d turn off the tape recorder and get up to fetch my sleeping pill...
...Their- booklet featured dramatic bar charts that proved the wonderful effects of meditation, a modernized version of the Charles Atlas “Before” and “After” ads...
...I got to know the corner drug store with precise familiarity, and I moved through the aisles as if they were a second home, which they were...
...Why aren’t the drug companies trying to follow up on Hartmann’s preliminary research...
...The patent is a 17-year prutection period that allows a company to market the drug without competition and hopefully establish it as the permanent leader in a certain therapeutic category...
...The summer was a nightmare of overwork and sleepless nights, and it wasn’t until I was safely ensconced in graduate school at Columbia that I found a doctor willing to prescribe chloral hydrate...
...YOU‘RE KILLING YOURSELF...
...Why doesn’t NIH devote more attention to alternative therapies...
...Having trouble getting to sleep at night...
...He finally came in, balding, pale, looking, I noticed with disappointment, a bit tired himself...
...I can vouch for the ineffectiveness of these products, although they might be helpful for an occasional sleepless night...
...Hauri did provide me with the names of other sleep experts, including one based in New York City...
...Later, I learned it was physically addictive, but, by then, I had already moved on to chloral hydrate...
...I tried those techniques, with little success...
...In that form, it was totally useless to me...
...I was riveted to the page...
...It read, “This is to certify that Mr...
...In fact, two of the most commonly used OTC ingredients, scopolamine and bromides, have been found to be quite toxic, and the FCA study panel urged that they be banned...
...With his thick Jewish accent, he suddenly began shouting at me, “You’re a complete mess...
...In October 1973 Maggie Scarf wrote a comprehensive article on sleep clinics for The New York Times Magazine...
...My conversion came rather suddenly...
...I tried a behavior modification technique, leaping out of bed every 15 minutes until I was supposed to feel ready to sleep...
...From behind my enormous oak desk, I look down at my patients with concern...
...My professional conscience wouldn’t allow it...
...HELP THIS BOY GET TO SLEEP TONIGHT...
...A year was much too long to wait...
...It was, my editor said, something Morton Mintz would be sure to do...
...This amino acid was brought to public attention last fall, in a front-page article in The Washington Post headlined, “DOCTORS CITE CHEMICAL AS AID TO SLEEP...
...No...
...The trade journals carried no news of the research announcement, and the PMA’s public affair director told me I was the only reporter interested in checking into the drug companies’ reactions...
...So the public affairs director was hardly eager to tell me about its interest in L-tryptophane, nor did he allow me to interview the company’s research director...
...His face reddening with anger, he screamed, “STOP USING DRUGS...
...But the doctor isn’t willing to take the time to examine the underlying causes, and It’s much simpler to hand out sleeping pills...
...The slightest challenge the next day-from tests to excursionswould leave me totally sleepless, and I moved through high school and college in a state of perpetual fatigue...
...This was a man with comprehensive, up-to-date knowledge about the latest scientific breakthroughs...
...During the day I swallowed my Triavil, .and, at night, roaring drunk, I took Dalmane and chloral hydrate to get to sleep...
...The seductive titles, barely visible to other, less-obsessed mortals, fairly leap out at me with their promise of contented slumber...
...So on that Sunday morning when I read in the Post that L-tryptophane would be commercially available in a year, I was bound to be disappointed...
...I pause for a moment...
...Levine was examined by me because of insomnia, and I prescribed Dalmane, 30 mgs., as a temporary expedient until he could obtain more definitive therapy...
...So at two a.m., the country’s leading amateur sleep researcher was standing in his blue bathrobe in his kitchen, mixing the powder into applesauce...
...I took to haunting bookstores, buying up books on insomnia...
...Levine’s Magic Sleep Clinic, conveniently located in a Washington suburb near the FDA and NIH buildings...
...Each night, I would go to bed without pills and lie there waiting for the magic transformation to take hold...
...Encounters Sleer, ExDert For the next year, I went to the same drug store every few weeks to pick up my prescription...
...Not that I didn’t try...
...Long after, I learned that the PDR actually consists of nothing but the package inserts devised by drug manufacturers...
...After all, he wasn’t the one with chronic insomnia...
...Before you could say “orthopedic specialist,’’ I was enmeshed in a world of x-rays, heat treatments, back braces, diagnoses, and, of course, drugs...
...The next day I awoke, depressed and miserable...
...But I had not given up yet...
...Shaking all over, I managed to tell my friends that I needed help badly...
...I called back the next day, disappointed...
...It involved counting backwards, and it didn’t work, either...
...I needed the stuff now because calcium, while the best thing I’d found yet, still wasn’t always effective...
...Dreams of Revenge Into this system comes L-tryptophane, a harmless substance which can’t be patented, so it’s useless to profit-oriented companies...
...Should he need Dalmane again, it will be appropriate to prescribe a small quantity to tide him over...
...He continued, “Get plenty of exercise and take a nice hot bath before bed...
...For me, the appeal of these drugs was that they could be gotten without a prescription...
...It never worked...
...At the same time, I was gradually crafting a night-time ritual of bizarre intricacy, as formal as a High Mass...
...I was back to drugs, but I wanted out...
...Those of us with the problem had to scramble around searching for an alternative to drugs...
...It is...
...What impressed me most of all about this group was its impressive pile of scientific literature...
...Surely, the researchers had tested this approach, and for some reason, reporters just hadn’t picked up on it...
...As I waited for him to answer, a quote from the article about a special “list of recommendations” stuck in my mind...
...No...
...After a while, I would start to notice that I was thirsty, or the window was open too wide, or my back hurt...
...I was turning into an Over-The-Counter (OTC) junkie...
...My roommate, along with his chloral hydrate, was long gone, and I needed something to sleep...
...I don’t believe in taking drugs,” says Morton Mintz...
...Excited by my discovery, I turned to the professional scientists to learn what work they had done on this method...
...Watching TV or doing homework, the fear of insomnia was the steady counterpoint to my evening activities, a muted tom-tom beating out a message of failure...
...As my depression and insomnia continued, I decided that what I needed was an antidepressant...
...The sleep problems, admittedly, weren’t isolated aberrations in an otherwise perfect life...
...Turn on radio...
...Although it made me too drowsy for daytime use, it seemed fine for the nights, until it, too, began to pale, and I needed ever-increasing amounts to get the same effect...
...I sunk my head in shame, and asked, “What can I do...
...There will be no Brian’s Song for insomnia, no Lou Gehrig Story, no episodes of Marcus Welby...
...This is a tape made especially for Art, to help him go to sleep at night, to go into a deep, relaxed sleep,” the tape began in a soothing, peaceful voice...
...But one anecdote clinched it for me...
...Then I smile...
...Without these ailments, the company would be in serious trouble...
...After nearly two years of twicedaily meditation I was still waiting...
...Twenty years ago I discussed this subject with a physician who himself suffered from insomnia...
...I stood before it, head bowed, prescription in hand, as the mighty pharmacists strode back and forth trading inside jokes...
...I was ushered into one room to await his entrance...
...In May, out of a job, I went to Baltimore to celebrate the bacchanal horse-race known as Preakness...
...How about Valium...
...He gets his supply from Britain, where it is marketed as an anti-depressant...
...One can hardly imagine the Advertising Council launching a series of public appeals for the American Insomnia Foundation: “A bed is a terrible thing to waste...
...Moreover, in their reluctance to raise the issue of non-drug therapies, these respected critics are abandoning the field to the medical community and pharmaceutical industry, which are already too committed to traditionaland usually drug-solutions...
...Although clouded in secrecy, 1970 sales were revealed to be almost $1.2 billion, with 40 per cent of it coming from its American subsidiary...
...There is a feeling among critics,” admits Pekkanen, “that people who take drugs are weak...
...It’s like you come from Mars...
...A prominent psychiatrist says that too many worries might be behind your problem...
...I asked...
...I zip through the article in around 30 seconds flat, but I am always disappointed...
...I asked...
...When Davis took him off drugs, he went through withdrawal symptoms...
...Along with friends, I started drinking hard liquor in the afternoon, not stopping until late at night...
...I borrowed the little red gelatin capsules from my college roommate, a graduate student in biology, and I was thankful for the sleep it provided me...
...I chose a flashy psychologist who favored hypnotism and p.sychodrama...
...Ben Gordon, the staff economist of Senator Gaylord Nelson’s subcommittee on monopoly, a man who had focused public attention on industry abuses, simply urges those with sleeping problems to “go see a doctor...
...They were, I mistakenly believed, safer than real sleeping pills, which had an ugly aura of hard narcotics about them, that world of downers and uppers, fixes and overdoses, which is so repugnant to a nice person like myself...
...Most likely, though, if you personally don’t suffer from the problem, it seems as insignificant as a hangnail, and as easily solved...
...The next day, I nearly broke down the door getting into my neighborhood health food store...
...The profitability of the drug industry is perhaps epitomized by the success of the Hoffman-La Roche company, the Swiss-based firm, which Fortune admiringly profiled as “one of the most profitable enterprises on earth...
...Glancing upwards in prayer, I carefully maneuvered myself into bed...
...In fatigue-laden voices, they ask, “What should I do...
...He answered, “We’ve done studies showing these drugs are dangerous, and I don’t think you need them...
...The lame could walk, the deaf could hear, the blind could see...
...I became an eccentric...
...But Dr...
...When I spoke to Dr...
...I don’t have any trouble falling asleep,” he says...
...Can’t I get a prescription for, say, chloral hydrate...
...Debilitating...
...I fell asleep without drugs...
...Reading further, one learns that warm milk, a hot bath and a relaxed state of mind are what’s needed...
...I was familiar with the dramatic case histories of those masterful men with beards who waved pocket-watches before your eyes, whispering mesmerizing words to end your problems...
...It spends at least $1 billion a year on promo tion...
...Here at last was the person I was seeking, a genuine expert in sleep, a man, who, by definition, commanded all the world’s wisdom on insomnia...
...There were other methods out there, and I was willing to try them all...
...Eventually the mere concept of getting up at a regular hour was enough to send me into a panic, so in college I at last had the chance to structure my days as I pleased...
...I can’t afford that,” I said, “but can you tell me about your list of recommendations...
...I was desperate and, besides, the Physician’s Desk Reference (PDR) had said it was safe...
...When I did, the temporary expedient stretched into nearly a year, and my definitive ther- apy seemed impossible to find...
...Then I learned that this indifference ran through virtually a whole range of professionals...
...But I was in no position then to question the wisdom of something that looked so official, embossed letters and all, It wasn’t until after college, though, that I bowed to the temptation of formal sleeping pill prescriptions...
...The ritual steadily evolved over the years, shifting only to add new drugs or gestures...
...Below them, the weak and diseased supplicants waited at the shrine of better health, Our Lady of the Pharmacy...
...I quickly learned that his sleep lab was booked up for months and cost a few hundred dollars...
...I have no idea what it means,” a friend once told me with a smile...
...A few companies have contacted me over the years, but I think they were just checking up on my scientific progress...
...A non-barbituate like Dalmane, the drug hailed by my sleep expert in New York, suppresses REM sleep after prolonged use, as well as destroying the deep sleep stage...
...Davis, after all, had published her best-selling book in 1954, and naturally researchers must have been seeking non-drug treatments for insomniacs...
...The researcher who made the announcement, Dr...
...There are 200 brands of sleeping pills on the market now, and there’s research under way for 39 more...
...The next hour or so was spent on missions of varying importance to the bathroom or window sill, swallowing aspirin here and there...
...She described her vitamin supplement treatment for a man who had tried to give up speed, tranquilizers, and sleeping pills for 11 years...
...Preliminary tests indicated that, unlike sleeping pills, L-tryptophane is non-addictive and doesn’t disrupt normal sleep patterns...
...I’ll look into it when I get a chance,” he promised...
...You will just continue in a deep, restful, healing sleep...
...Out of frustration, he prepared a special tape for me that I could play at my bedside...
...It’s abhorrent to me...
...I introduced myself and said, “I’d like to know if you’ve done any tests on calcium and magnesium supplements...
...there’s none of the drama and suspense we have come to expect for our major health problems...
...Peter Hauri...
...I envisioned myself moving from one discipline to another, an exhausted wretch traveling across the landscape of salvation, trying yoga, rolfing, EST, primal screams, psychic healing, biofeedback, anything to help me sleep...
...Well,” he said, “what seems to be the problem...
...I once had to take a pill after surgery, but I’ll never do it again...
...on the right, a tiny bar testifying to the dramatic effect of a month of TM...
...How about a little hint...
...The term immediately impressed me, and I sat there reflecting on its authoritative elegance...
...Surely, then, Art Levine could sleep...
...These how-to articles are virtually interchangeable, and those in the supermarket tabloids, like National Enquirer and Midnight, alternate each week, the come-on headlines shuttling from one rag to the next, right behind Jackie 0. and Cher...
...The company, as a sop, sent me down two five-gram sample packages, and by carefully following the procedures used by Hartmann in one of his published tests, I managed to swallow some of the bitter-tasting powder...
...Insomnia lacks the cachet of other afflictions...
...Arthur Levine is a contributing editor of The Washington Monthly...
...He paused dramatically...
...One spring day, soaring gracefully over a broad-jump pit, I suddenly wrenched my back and crawled away from track practice with an agonized moan...
...Above all, I vowed to myself not to worry whether I would get to sleep...
...On the left, a huge bar showing pre-meditation insomnia...
...He was my psychiatrist, and I sighed with relief as he reached for his prescription pad, a dramatic gesture postponed until the end of a session...
...There was no need to rush...
...That’s very interesting...
...That’s not as fashionable-or easy-as nailing the FDA and the corporations, but, after all, the liberal critics aren’t personally bothered by the kind of intense anxiety and depression that keeps the coffers of drug companies filed...
...Is there a doctor in the house...
...To ease the back strain, I began sleeping with an enormous roll of blankets under my leg (a normal ractice) and a bed-board on the bed was transformed into an enemy object, best approached with fear and caution...
...As I took the bus over to his office, I was trembling with anticipation...
...so diffuse...
...Finally, when my prescription was ready, a voice boomed out, “LEVINE...
...It didn’t work,” I said...
...Gee, that’s funny, I never heard of that...
...Then, with the radio softly playing, I would lie there, waiting...
...Wagman put me in touch with her supplier, the researcher who had been running studies of the substance since the mid-1960s...
...Go to bathroom...
...So, in my case, I sometimes have this bitter fantasy that all the researchers, doctors, and reformers suddenly start thrashing about in their beds in a sleepless frenzy...
...As it turned out, he was like some character from a Me1 Brooks sketch on psychiatrists...
Vol. 8 • April 1976 • No. 2
