Insomniac | 
| Author: Gayle Greene
Publisher: University of California Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 31021
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 520
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6 x 1.7
ISBN: 0520246306
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.8498
EAN: 9780520246300
ASIN: 0520246306
Publication Date: March 10, 2008
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Product Description
I can't work, I can't think, I can't connect with anyone anymore. . . . I mope through a day's work and haven't had a promotion in years. . . . It's like I'm being sucked dry, eaten away, swallowed up, coming unglued. . . . These are voices of a few of the tens of millions who suffer from chronic insomnia. In this revelatory book, Gayle Greene offers a uniquely comprehensive account of this devastating and little-understood condition. She has traveled the world in a quest for answers, interviewing neurologists, sleep researchers, doctors, psychotherapists, and insomniacs of all sorts. What comes of her extraordinary journey is an up-to-date account of what is known about insomnia, providing the information every insomniac needs to know to make intelligent choices among medications and therapies. Insomniac is at once a field guide through the hidden terrain inhabited by insomniacs and a book of consolations for anyone who has struggled with this affliction that has long been trivialized and neglected.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 indispensible May 14, 2008
For anyone experiencing sleep difficulties, reading this book is an INDISPENSIBLE first step. The chapters on the biology and physiology of sleep systems, the information on the drug oligarchy's knockout pills masking as sleeping pills, the games clinicians play-- especially putting "depression" before insomnia....
it's all here, in well organized and engaging presentation.
If there is anything that is missing from this book, the reader will have a pretty good idea of where to go for further informaton.
Wonderful, unique, informative, and personal May 13, 2008
I think this is a wonderful book, and an incredible resource. It is a combination of an Insomniac's memoir with a summary of a huge amount of literature and research on insomnia, the status of sleep research and the lack of consensus among the medical community, treatments (both traditional and alternative), and the experiences and concerns of insomniacs themselves- what life is like with this "condition". Its a book for insomniacs, their friends and families, and the healthcare, healing, and therapeutic professionals who work with them. Nothing like it exists. Every case is different, but this book really does give some idea of how chronic insomnia impacts our lives. The author encourages readers to dip in, skip, and choose the parts that are interesting and helpful, and I think that is appropriate.
I've had serious, sometimes life-threatening insomnia for 20 years. That means, for the last 4 years, falling asleep at stop signs, and getting drowsy driving - I no longer drive for more than 30 minutes without wake-up medication (ProVigil/Modafinil, and alas, it worsens my sleep and gives me headaches, or I'd use it all the time). I don't know anyone with my kind of problem (my diagnosis is 'fragile sleep', the big expert told me, and he really did try to help, and did help, some.) The insomniacs I know are mostly people for whom sleeping pills seem to work. So it was really affirming to read Gayle Greene's story, her struggles, all the things she tried. She's right , we don't talk about it , and who wants to listen to all the miserable details. Yes, the discussion boards, [...] help. I got my best reference on Sleep Restriction there. And people do tell their stories, but at least when I hung out on Sleepnet, the stories were usually pretty abbreviated. I never told much of mine, it's too long and I didn't and don't now have the energy. She's put a huge amount of energy into this, and I so appreciate the results. She gives a voice to those of us who have been invisible. And so much information.
Yes she does complain a lot, as she acknowledges. That's part of the picture. And, she gives some sense of what it is like to live with managing this condition. Everyone is different. Everyone has to make their own decisions as to how to adapt, what to give up,what to try, etc. I do Sleep Restriction. It does help me, enough to be worthwhile, but it also complicates my life. And doesn't do as much as I'd hope.
I learned a lot from this book, about medications I've taken but not realized how they related to each other, about Sleep Restriction and the parts of the "recommended procedure" that I've forgotten about because they didn't work for me, about tools and strategies and supplements that I hadn't heard of or haven't tried. And insights into doctor's attitudes and comments to me, and the status of funding for insomnia research (appalling).
I was interviewed for this book, years ago, and had no idea of what to expect. It is so much more than I could have imagined, so much information, and the personal touch adds enormously. I highly recommend it.
Thanks May 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This isn't a `self-help' but a self-helping book. Here's just about everything you can try, with details about what happened to the author when she tried them. She is wonderfully careful to stress that everyone experiences insomnia differently, and the best she can do is share her own and a few other's experiences. And her indignation that medical science has simply given up on insomnia as just too hard.
This book will be loved by everyone with insomnia, and only hated by the true believers in the various (and self-contradictory) "cures". Greene is a grouchy insomniac with style, and a great sense of humor. Certain passages (alone at the sleep convention, packing for a trip, confronting male doctors with female issues they'd rather ignore, etc.) deserve places in illness humor books - assuming there are such things.
While there's nothing really you can do about insomnia, there are all sorts of short term things that, at least for awhile, help. Most of them aren't good for you, long term. For myself, I've worked through the whole range, running from alcohol through Ambien, by way of chloral hydrate, probably all the benzodiazepines ever in existence, and a period when I decided to not sleep at all by way of a very large (and very illegal) bottle of Dexedrine. Stay up 5 days and sleep for two. Works fine until the induced schizophrenia goes florid.
Greene's insomnia seems worse than mine, and she fights it every inch of the way. Thank God, because the rest of us seem to have been forced into servile mode: I know what a great favor you're doing for me and I don't deserve it, but please prescribe me some pills anyway. Doctors are in the horrible position of knowing that the pills available are all wrong in one way or another. Quacks, credentialed or not, have to believe in the virtues of their own panaceas or admit to themselves that they've mislead and mistreated their patients. There is no one more righteous then a questioned credentialed quack!
I'm tempted to thank Greene for not resting in trying to help us find our own voice.
 Finally...a view from those experiencing insomnia! May 1, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
As someone who worked with scientists and was required to go to their meetings (often sponsored by big businesses of some kind or another), and read their often-biased writings, it was interesting to read about a health issue from a lay person's point of view. Greene starts out strong, both in giving case studies of others, her own problems and issues with sleeping, the background behind the science, the problems with the conferences and the obvious funding of the science by business, even the nutritional and alternative aspects of dealing with insomnia.
The problem is the often repetitive nature of Greene's complaints. Even though the reader (who are going to be people going through insomnia themselves) sympathizes with Greene, after awhile the 'whining' gets a bit much. The issues are real, as is Greene's own lifetime problems with sleep...however, the book could have used tightening, and the publishing house should have insisted on the presentation of each part only once, including her own case.
That being said, Greene's book definitely bears reading for those who want better information concerning insomnia. She does manage to bring everything together in one book, including both useable information for individuals (women especially who tend to go through massive problems with sleep after menopause), and current state of the science. Since we should all be more proactive in our own health care, this book gives information to take to doctors to discuss. Even Greene suggests that readers may not want to read the entire book, depending upon their needs.
Karen Sadler
 Not a Soporific April 20, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
It takes a person who is pretty obsessed and anxious about sleep to write such a book. It is a very personal book. This is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. It certainly comes at the problem from another, much needed, perspective. However, it does seem flawed by the author's preconceptions that the problem is primarily physiological, genentic, hormonal, etc., but not either a breathing or psychological problem, at least for her.
It is continually an argument that cannot be won, which came first, the chicken or the egg. Does she have an inherited genetic predisposition to be an insomniac; is it hormonal; is depression and anxiety caused by lack of sleep or lack of sleep caused by depression and anxiety. I am sure that there is not one solution to a problem with multiple origins, some of which--- the hormonal and genetic possibilities--- as well as keying in on the sexual discrimination aspects (i.e. primarily a problem of women), she does an excellent job of highlighting. However, one glaring omission is a discussion of sex and sleep. Maybe the reason so many older women are not able to sleep is because they are sexually deprived! I have always found sex to be an excellent soporific. This book is not. It is a very engaging and enjoyable journey, despite its flaws.
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