Since the age of 18, a good night’s sleep has been a fleeting luxury (Picture: Jenny Benjamin)

It’s 2.53AM and I’m wide awake.

Next to me, against the stark silence of the night, my husband gently snores. It feels like a taunt. I could cry.  

He’s living proof that sleep comes easily for some, but in my case, it’s an elusive state that becomes more difficult to achieve the harder I chase it.  

Since the age of 18, a good night’s sleep has been a fleeting luxury. Now 48, I’ve spent three decades battling my insomnia. 

It started during my A-Levels. The night before my first test, sleep eluded me. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t nod off, and my periodic time checks only seemed to be making matters worse.

In truth, I didn’t sleep well before any of my exams, but at the time I simply put it down to nerves and marvelled at how adrenaline can keep you going. 

By 2003, what was once an annoyance during exams had entrenched itself into every aspect of my life, and by that October, I finally decided to seek help from a healthcare professional. 

I was prescribed Zopiclone – a sleeping pill (Picture: Jenny Benjamin)

My GP listened and it didn’t take him long to diagnose that I was suffering from sleep onset insomnia, a condition that describes an inability to get to sleep even when you’re tired. 

I was prescribed Zopiclone – a sleeping pill that helps you fall asleep more quickly and also helps stop you waking up during the night – and some anti-anxiety medication to help with my worrying about not being able to get to sleep. 

Initially, both had a positive impact. I felt a lot less anxious and consequently was able to get to sleep quicker and, even better, actually stay asleep for the entire night.

But medication like this is only prescribed on a temporary basis. My issue, however, was unfortunately anything but temporary.  

This became the start of a hellish, year-long ordeal (Picture: Jenny Benjamin)

Over the course of the next 14 years, I found myself on a medication merry-go-round because I didn’t need them all the time.

Then the real crash came in 2017.  

A routine dinner with friends left me lying awake, unable to sleep. I hadn’t drunk or eaten too much so there was no obvious trigger, yet once again I was wide awake.

This became the start of a hellish, year-long ordeal.

I would get no more than four hours of sleep a night, if any. I started suffering headaches, brain fog and lost my appetite. My energy levels dropped, and I cancelled my gym membership as I felt too tired to go.

Desperate to protect what little sleep I could get, I soon stopped making morning or evening plans, effectively isolating myself. Unsurprisingly, after a while, the invites stopped coming altogether, not that I blame anyone for that. 

In July 2019, I quit my job (Picture: Jenny Benjamin)

My insomnia wasn’t just playing havoc with my personal life though. My professional life was suffering too.  

I was a senior financial analyst, managing a team in what was a high-pressure role. But the brain fog and headaches meant it was becoming increasingly difficult to be on top of my game.  

Eventually, it reached a point where I decided it was no longer worth the stress and anxiety.

So in July 2019, I quit. 

A lot of people around me were shocked; they couldn’t believe that I would, in their words, ‘throw everything I had worked so hard for away’ just because I ‘wasn’t sleeping well’. But it was the right decision for me.

For a long time afterwards, I admittedly felt guilty about placing the burden of being financially secure squarely on my husband’s shoulders. But my overriding emotion was one of relief. 

I also know I’m not alone in fighting this battle (Picture: Jenny Benjamin)

Since stepping back from the corporate world I’ve seen an improvement in my sleep and I have found solace in spending time with my daughter and volunteering.

Naturally there are times when I get frustrated and angry that a condition that I can seemingly do so little about seems to have taken over my life. But I also know  I’m not alone in fighting this battle. 

Recent research by The Sleep Charity revealed that nine in 10 adults are experiencing sleep problems, with an estimated 14 million silently struggling with undiagnosed sleep disorders. 

As an admin for an Insomnia Support Group on Facebook, these findings are no surprise to me.  Every day, I see more members join the group, sharing stories of sleepless nights and desperate days, and I genuinely believe we’re in the midst of a sleep crisis in the UK.  

I have found solace in spending time with my daughter and volunteering (Picture: Jenny Benjamin)

After all, poor sleep has been found to increase mortality by 13% and is linked with all six of the major health conditions in the UK including cancer and cardiovascular disease.

For this reason, and many more, The Sleep Charity is calling on the government to introduce a desperately needed national sleep strategy. 

It will suggest that sleep education and sleep support advice should become a central feature in all public health campaigns.  

Next, that advice on sleep should be delivered in much the same way that stopping smoking, getting active and reducing alcohol is provided. 

And finally, that the quality support available to patients with insomnia or sleep apnoea on the NHS should be improved. 

But I know that accessing the right support and treatments for sleep disorders is currently a postcode lottery – often compounded by the fact that some GPs lack knowledge of sleep disorders or the treatment pathways that exist.

It’s time these challenges were urgently addressed.  

Sleep should not be a luxury; it should be a given and improving the support and treatments available would make a transformational difference to the lives and wellbeing of many millions of people like me. 

This article was originally published September 22, 2024

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