The ABC (that’s the American, not the Australian, Broadcasting Corporation) were kind enough to draw my attention to an article on their website: College Insomniacs Resort to Sleeping Pills. Usually when people email me and say, “You might be interested in this,” they’re wrong (and if they read and considered my reviews policy, they would know it), but this time, it’s very relevant to something I’ve talked about before here: Getting good sleep.
photo credit: dominiqs81
It’s also relevant to my theme of alternatives to drugs. Not because the students the article profiles were looking for such alternatives, but for exactly the opposite reason. Their first thought when they were having difficulty sleeping was to pop a pill.
According to the article, “use of prescription sleep aids has nearly tripled among 18-to-24-year-olds over the last 10 years”. The three students interviewed cited anxiety and racing thoughts among the reasons they found it hard to sleep, and blamed the stress of dealing with the demands of study, work and an active social life.
Dr. Akram Khan, a sleep medicine expert at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland… said he doesn’t believe that rising stress levels are the only reason for the increase in the use of sleep drugs. “I would say that the biggest factor is the marketing that these drug companies are doing,” he said. “The ads offer an easy fix and people want some kind of a magical fix.”
Although the ads mention that these medications can cause headaches, nausea, dependency and should not be mixed with alcohol, Khan noted, “All this is spoken so fast that, even as a doctor, I find it rather difficult to follow what they’re saying.”
Which is fairly normal behaviour for a big company trying to sell its product, but is obviously ethically questionable.
Most sleeping medications haven’t been approved for long-term use beyond six months. “The ideal thing would be to use these drugs as a last resort measure and as a short-term measure to help you streamline your sleep,” Khan said.
But this isn’t what the students are doing. One student interviewed said, “As much as I didn’t think there were other things affecting why I wasn’t sleeping, my doctor opened my eyes to what types of things were really the underlying causes. I think it’s better to fix those before you turn to medicine.” She has stopped using the medication now. But the other two were quite happy to use medication rather than look at their unhealthy lifestyle or the underlying issues of anxiety and worry. This isn’t an uncommon scenario in modern life: They’re stressed, too busy, easily influenced by marketing, and focussed on quick fixes to symptoms rather than good fixes to underlying problems. They’d prefer to alter their body’s balance with drugs than restore it by changing their behaviour to something more sustainable – which would require going against the flow of what everyone around them is doing.
The article ends with some good advice on lifestyle changes to improve sleep, similar to what I offer in 7 Tips for a Better Night’s Sleep.
The piece as a whole is, if I can use the phrase, a wakeup call. If you’re having trouble sleeping, pills should be the last thing you use, not the first. Look at those healthy lifestyle modifications first, and if you’re still having trouble try a relaxation recording like my Good Sleep download. Sleeping pills interfere with the normal sleep mechanism, should only be used short-term, and are a last resort after you’ve tried everything else.
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