Menopausian Journey, Part 2

Insomnia, my old friend…….how I do not miss you.

I have spent the last two years in solitude and isolation. It is what I thought I wanted. I know now that it is both what I needed and an escape. I was slowly winding down, losing interest in life and the things that have always brought me joy and pleasure, telling myself this was the new me. How glad I am that I was wrong. How glad I am to now see me again, the true me. I find myself remembering little things that helped to define me, especially from my childhood, what it felt like to walk through my old brick elementary school building, the sound of my feet on the waxed hardwood floors, the smell of food being prepared from scratch in the lunch room, how it felt to sit in the living room of my home in El Paso when I was 5, watching the dust dance in the sunlight streaming through the windows while Christopher Cross played on the stereo, the carefree joy of catching fireflies on hot summer nights in my Ohio backyard  with my little brothers and the innate knowing that my childhood was mostly good.

I began to understand the significance of getting good sleep while studying with some great herbalists out of the Boston area. My first realization involved my child and how much sleep she needed – truly, like ten hours a day is best for children, especially teenagers. It is so hard for them to accomplish that with the nonsense that our society expects from them. Let them sleep; help them let their bodies do what is necessary for them to become the best versions of themselves.

I did not struggle with sleep for most of my life so when it became a problem it took me way too long to understand how it was affecting me. After months of being unable to sleep for more than one hour or two due to back pain, hot flashes and night sweats, after trying melatonin, my own sleepy time herbal tea blend and pharmaceutical sleep aids, I finally turned to cannabis. For most of my adulthood I did smoke cannabis, nightly, a little before bed. Just before the pandemic I stopped smoking it – I did not make a decision that I needed to, I just stopped wanting to.

At first, I was kind of excited to enter the cannabis world again – now there were stores I could just walk into, budtenders available to answer my questions and help me choose the right cannabis product for sleep. I did not have to smoke it anymore – all I had to do was pop a gummy or take a tincture! So began the journey to find the right dose, just enough to give me a good night’s sleep and a little bit of relaxation from the constant management of perimenopause symptoms. I spent a ridiculous amount of money trying this product and that, seeking one that met my need for real ingredients. I would find one that worked well, granting me three or four hours sleep before being woken with yet another hot flash or night sweat, before eventually building a tolerance to that dose or product.

In the final weeks before starting Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), I was taking around 100 mg every night just to sleep. Only it was more like being comatose. My daughter, home from living abroad these last two years, would try to wake me and be unable to rouse me. I would need to start ‘taking the pot’ around 7 pm so that I could get the high dosage into me, so spent my last two to three hours of every night out of my mind. I woke every morning feeling sluggish, my eyes gritty and swollen, for nearly four months. At the appointment to discuss if I could safely start HRT, the doctor assured me that sleep would come back immediately with progesterone. I took her at her word and stopped the cannabis cold turkey. She was right – I went to sleep that night and it has been glorious ever since, mostly. However, I had no idea that I would have withdrawal from the cannabis and that the symptoms mimic those of perimenopause – anger, irritability, nervousness, anxiety, restlessness, decreased appetite or weight, depression, insomnia, headaches, nausea, sweating, stomach pain, tremors, chills and physical tension. It was torturous and a very, very rough two weeks.

I know now that the brain fog I experienced twice over my sixteen year perimenopause transition was almost certainly related to my lack of sleep – this most recent second time was quite terrifying. The first time, in 2018, I spoke to my doctors and my psychologist, who all reassured me it was surely due to a busy life, no need to worry. In hindsight, I see that this was around the time that I was experiencing lucid, intense dreaming that lasted most of the night for months. While I appreciated the vibrant imagery, I was not getting proper rest during that time.

The brain fog progressed from minor irritants like forgetting an appointment or someone’s name to being unable to get one sentence out before forgetting what I was saying as I was saying it. It felt as if the words I was in the process of speaking were running away from me, my mind frantically trying to hold them steady, just long enough to get the thought out. In conversation with folks, I was unable to complete most of my sentences, searching my empty mind for the words that had just been present. I could see the concern in friends’ eyes, wondering what was wrong. I imagine it was like trying to have a conversation with a tweaker. I felt like a tweaker – where was I? Where was my brain? Where were my thoughts? Where in the hell were they running away to? I had notes everywhere because if I did not write down a thought immediately, it was gone, often leaving in the seconds it took me to pick up a pen. Many times I would come back to the note and have no idea what it was about or why I wrote down those words. The literal absence of any presence in my mind for periods of time was disconcerting, disabling, disturbing.

As a result of not getting proper sleep, I also completely lost my ability to focus, most of the time. This was incredibly unsettling, having always been a person who thrived on multi-tasking. It did come and go over the perimenopause transition but these last few months before starting HRT were very intense. I found myself unable to complete any task, getting distracted walking across the room by something that needed doing, moved, picked up, written down or….you get the picture.

Now that I am on the other side of these obnoxious symptoms, mostly, I can see clearly how detrimental the lack of sleep was for me. Now I start feeling sleepy a little too early in the evening but after so long of struggling to get restful sleep, I am grateful to fall asleep as soon as I close my eyes. I sleep for seven or eight hours, dream like a champion (oh, how I have missed dreaming) and wake early in the predawn hours.

Sometimes I try to sleep in, luxuriating in the coziness of my bed with my down comforters and squishy pillows. Thoughts swirl in my mind, though not in a bad way. The bad way is lying in bed at night as your mind races, all the anxiety you suppressed all day swirling through your mind, keeping you awake and causing stress. My morning wake-up thoughts are inspirational and motivating. I realize I am too excited to stay in bed – it is time to rise and get these thoughts down, writing more stories, essays and poems in these last couple of months than I have in my entire life.

 I spend those early morning hours appreciating the sunrise lighting the wild and beautiful mountains outside my window and nourishing my body with stretches and yoga. Nourishing my mind by transferring the abundance of thoughts and feelings into my writing, wondering with awe about the feeling that I am back, that my mind is not my enemy but my best friend, about the possibilities once again open to me.