Sleep. That place to which we all disappear for hours at a time. Drifting off. The mysterious and intangible loss of consciousness. The strangeness of dreams. Waking refreshed . . . or not so much.

As a kid, I was scared of the loss of consciousness that is implicit and inevitable in falling sleep. As an adult, I have, at times, felt even more afraid of the continuity of consciousness that is implicit and inevitable in being awake.

The protagonist of the novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation, by Ottessa Moshfegh, falls into the latter camp. She does not want to experience life. She wants to fade away, to live in the darkest shadows, where she cannot be found—not by anyone, and especially not by herself:

“And that was exactly what I wanted—my emotions passing like headlights that shine softly through a window, sweep past me, illuminate something vaguely familiar, then fade and leave me in the dark again.”

The protagonist adores sleep like nothing else in life. That is a very oxymoronic stance to take. Sleeping, she does not exist. Waking, she fetishizes sleep:

“The bed was a king, low to the ground, and whenever I slept in it, I felt very far away from the world, like I was in a spaceship or on the moon. I missed that bed. The stiff blankness of my mother’s eggshell sheets.”

I am currently coming out of a period of “rest and relaxation” myself. Over the past few years, I have experienced a variety of physical and mental health issues that I am treating with wellness activities . . . and prescription drugs. My doctor recently changed the dosages when I explained that I was sleeping too much at night, sleepy throughout the day, and struggling to get things done. The past couple weeks have been a wonderful period of awakening. And yet, I remember the great relief I felt upon descending, initially, into the sleepiness that would rescue me from my ailments.

One could, I suppose, judge those who use drugs that cause them to descend into sleep as somehow lacking in the vitals of life. Perhaps I and Moshfegh’s protagonist—and I may as well add Juliet and Romeo—are poor, broken, creatures who cannot sustain the light of consciousness as naturally given to us. Or perhaps, as in the case of Rip Van Winkle, intoxicating ourselves to sleep is something that just happens to some of us, beyond our control and comprehension.

Are you feeling sleepy?

I recently discovered a very cool chain of restaurants that are also bookstores in Washington, D.C. While in the city for another reason, I popped into one of the locations to check it out. As promised, the entrance of the restaurant was a little bookshop!

Delighted, I began to scan the book titles, pick out a few of them, and flip through the pages. However, this seemingly simple task was not very simple in regard to all of the books in the little lobby area. The fiction was arranged on a tall and thin bookshelf, and the top two shelves were beyond my reach. No ladder was in sight. As a writer of fiction with a last name beginning with A, I felt empathetic toward those poor beginning-of-the-alphabet authors whose books were languishing up there.

I could have taken the hard route. I could have tracked down an employee and requested access. But I was just browsing, not requesting a particular book. I didn’t want to ask an employee to bring me down all of them, or even some of them, only to promptly ask for them to be put back, or (worse) buy them out of guilt.

So I took the easy route. I browsed through only the middle- and end-of-the-alphabet authors’ books, ultimately buying the novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh.

This is a book about taking the easy route.

The protagonist, in response to distressing experiences and events both relatively recent and long ago, decides to gift herself what she calls her “year of rest and relaxation.” Her idea of rest and relaxation is taking enough psychotropic drugs to sleep away as many hours of her life as possible. She has the resources to do this, due to both an inheritance and, as the book jacket puts it, “one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature.”

This is a very funny book. The protagonist’s perspective and ideas are so wild that they shocked me into laughter many times. Other times, they shocked me into sadness as I had realizations about the nature of upsetting experiences, the long fallout of inadequate support during childhood, and how people cope in less-than-ideal circumstances. I was never sure whether to admire the protagonist’s resilience, or recoil from her careless and flippant attitude toward herself and others.

Sometimes, the author seems to be saying, we protect ourselves from the difficulties of the hard route . . . by working very hard to take the easy route. But it’s interesting that the protagonist sets a limit on the easy route. She commits to transitioning back to the hard route after one year. She seems to intuitively know that she needs to escape into sleep for a very long time . . . but not forever. I’ll let you read the book to learn how the plan works out for her. (It’s a page-turner, from start to finish!)

Are you taking the easy route in some aspect of your life? Do you have plans to transition to the hard route?

I was stumped by yet another medical mystery.

I have been plagued by migraine headaches for my whole life. My triggers include too much sunlight or sunlight from certain angles; overheating; too much alcohol; dehydration; not enough sleep; too much jostling while traveling by car, bus, train, plane, boat, roller coaster, horse and buggy, etc.; jostling from too much coughing; and vomiting for any reason. (Apologies if that was too graphic for you. . . . If it was, you may wish to stop reading.)

These migraines are no small deal. They leave me moaning in bed in severe pain. And they last ten days: exactly ten days, no matter what I do, diminishing in severity during that time. Luckily, I get them only a few times per year. Unluckily, they are debilitating, causing me to miss work, social engagements, and regular life activities; and they are extremely unpleasant.

(And people wonder why I don’t like to travel! Have you ever been stuck in a New York City hotel with a ten-day migraine?)

My usual medicine for migraines is ibuprofen. Lots of ibuprofen. 800 mg, 4 times a day, for 10 days. This allows me to return to work within a day or two, though at that point I still have frequent intervals during which I need to lie down.

Having heard about other medicines on the market, I asked my doctor about my options. Over a period of a year or two, she recommended a series of drugs, all in the triptan family: rizatriptan, sumatriptan, etc. I must have tried them all. But I could not keep a single one of them down. Within half an hour to an hour of taking a pill, I would acquire a level 10—maximum strength!!—headache, vomit the pill up, and stagger off to bed for the next several days.

Finally, after completing the brutal rounds of the triptans, my doctor recommended magnesium supplements. In previous months, I had taken a daily magnesium pill, but it did not seem to have any effect. However, my doctor explained that magnesium is not always absorbed well by the body, and some supplement formulations work significantly better than others.

Upon hearing this, I scampered off to the Internet. There, I read that, indeed, some magnesium pills are nearly useless because the body does not absorb the mineral. Yikes! I decided to try, instead of a pill, a powder that I mix with water. The manufacturer claims that the magnesium in this powder is in an easily digestible form.

Well, and guess what? I have not suffered from a ten-day migraine attack—knock on wood!—since beginning this daily powder supplement regimen, which was many months ago. (When I feel a headache coming on, I still reach for my ibuprofen standby and pop those pills as soon as possible, along with half a slice of bread so they are absorbed. This has happened several times in the past few months, but none of these twinges have developed into a full-blown attack—knock on more wood!)

This solution may not work for everyone. Everybody’s body is different. But perhaps it will help someone out there; and so I share my story.*

But anyway, here’s the main medical mystery here: why on earth didn’t my doctor share the magnesium idea first, before hitting me up with the hard stuff?

(I have some guesses as to the answer, and none of them are pretty. Fortunately, though, you stopped reading back at the second paragraph, so you will not be filled with desperation at the suggestion of pharmaceutical companies’ mighty, and powerfully complex, hold over physicians (see, for example, this article about human tendencies toward reciprocal gift giving); or patients who insist on the hard stuff, and as much of it as possible, and are offended by attempts to seek more natural solutions. . . .)

*Please be so good as to refer to the footnote in my original Medical Mysteries post.

So what’s that big book about, anyway?

That fat book you’ve been reading for months on end—the one with a blue sky and white cloud on the cover—what’s the deal with that? Is it about the sky?

I’ve heard of it, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, but before I commit to such an undertaking as to actually attempt to read the thing, can you please, please, please give me a hint as to what it’s about?

Um . . .

Tennis? Drugs? America? Life itself? Yeah, one could say it’s about the sky. . . .

However, one of the many joys of IJ is discovering for yourself what it’s about. It may take a hundred or more pages of reading to even begin to put the picture together. But clarity does come . . . phenomenal clarity . . . along with a big dose of ambiguity. That’s my kind of book.

What’s yours?