Right, so the sleeping mix I thought would be a harmless clear liquid turned out to have the consistency of water, the colour of treacle and the smell of… manure, I guess would be closest. Fortunately it didn’t taste of anything.

You mix it up in a little bit of water, knock it back then thirty minutes later go to bed. Next thing you know, it’s next morning and the alarm is going off. There’s a gentle breeze blowing in through the window, and you feel wonderful. The world is a pretty place, you have bags of energy, and you even look forward to a train ride in to work.

Then, around one in the afternoon, it comes back to haunt you. One minute, you’re feeling fine, then the next you feel it take over your body. It’s like a wave that starts in your limbs and climbs higher and higher until mere seconds later it hits your head, weighing down your eyelids, taking all strength from your neck, and you slump back in your seat, barely able to keep awake.

‘Are you alright?’ asks the person beside you.

‘Have you been sleeping at your desk?’ asks someone else as they walk by five minutes later.

I shake my head at them, which by now feels like it is full of cold, and make a supreme effort to focus on my screen and get on with something useful for the next hour until eventually, slowly, it starts to wear off, leaving me with the shivers.

I am fine now, and I was fine all the way through pilates on a mat beside a newcomer with a permanent hard-on he kept hiding with his hands. I think perhaps the dosing on the side of the bottle is too much for me, though.

I will try again tonight, but I will use half as much, and if I lay awake again, staring at the ceiling until 3am, I will try something different next time around.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2003 at 11:35 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.