Trifecta Therapy

Insomnia has made an unwelcome return to my life this week. It has been creeping up on me for a few weeks, making a surprise appearance here and there, but this week is the longest bout I’ve had to deal with in quite a while.

Years ago I battled it long and hard, after living with it for several months. Actually at that point in my life it wasn’t so bad. I was still in school, working full time, and had a more than full time girlfriend. Time was at a premium then, and walking around like a zombie for days on end was probably very good for my relationship at the time.

When school settled down a bit and my work schedule was cut I figured the insomnia would die down. After a couple weeks I realized it wasn’t going anywhere and looked for answers. It seems there are a ton of “experts” who have foolproof ways to fight insomnia, or maybe it was a ton of fools with expertproof ways. Either way, I tried most of them. Some seemed very plausible, eating or drinking certain things at certain times of the day made a lot of sense to me Give your body what it needs when it needs it, and this should help restore your circadian rhythm. Others seemed ridiculous, like taping a coin to each of my temples and covering them by wrapping a tube sock around my head, but it seemed I should try them just in case. No luck with the dozens of “cures” I tried.

After many months I found that a balanced diet, lots of time in the gym, and a very active sex life combined to be the best way for me to treat my problem. Even with other issues stressing me out at the time, these three things kept me sleeping well night after night.

In the last few months I have been more active, and have been eating a healthier diet than I had been for quite a while. My stress levels have been low, and I am very happy in my personal life. This week has been somewhat of a break from that. My stress levels have risen and I haven’t been as active as usual, partially due to the weather, which should change this weekend. And now not only is my sleep affected, but I also have this amazing bouncing knee that won’t stop anytime I am sitting in a chair. I’m a zombie with restless leg syndrome.

I know that I need to continue to pursue my insomnia treatment trifecta, and I really hope this weekend will do a lot to get me back on track. Maybe by Sunday night I’ll be in bed at a normal hour getting some much needed rest. Or maybe I’ll just play in the blogger Big Game and/or the FTOPS ME which has more than a quarter million dollar payout for the winner. That would definitely help me sleep better at night.

Speaking of poker, I think I need to find the time to enter a live tourney or at least get a home poker night together with some friends soon. I’ve been playing exclusively online all this year. I haven’t played a serious hand of live poker all year. I like playing on Full Tilt and all, but I am mostly playing limit right now to grind the bankroll to a respectable level and, like I always said about dealing black jack when I was at MGM, I could teach a drunk monkey to do that. It’s not always fun to be on auto-pilot when I am on the digital felt, and with the problems involved with reloading online right now, I need to have a little more padding to account for variance. Smart and responsible poker isn’t always fun and entertaining poker.