All the things she tried to be able to sleep, ending up successfully with meditation. An interesting, fairly engaging overview of sleep difficulties and remedies. ( )

In her search for a sound night's sleep, the author explores both the mundane and the exotic. From doctors to spiritual guides, from new mattresses to a whole new house, she is relentless in the search for how to deal with chronic insomnia. I like the exploration of the history and the science. It was interesting to learn that the current norm of eight hours of continuous sleep is a relatively recent development for humans. The focus of the medical community has been on those areas such as sleep apnea and drugs where the solution can be monetized. This book includes other approaches such as meditation, hypnosis and therapy. It also features interviews of experts with widely different approaches. The author weaves the technical information with her own personal journey, and thus makes it an interesting read. In the end, I think that the solution to wakefulness at night is as individualized as the unique history of each insomniac. ( )

Personally, I have had a few bouts of insomnia myself, typically related to an exciting turning point in my life. My dreams seem to be rehearsals for any mishaps that may arise in my new endeavors which wake me up and keep me awake. For the most part, however, I sleep well. Morrisroe, it seems, has not slept well in a very long time. She did have some bouts of positive sleep in her life, but generally she can’t seem to stay asleep. She traces it back to her family history of light sleepers and eventually to a childhood trauma involving her grandfather stumbling down stairs to fetch a glass of water for her in the middle of the night.

In her efforts to find a good night’s sleep, she begins at a sleep disorders clinic where she is informed that she has an abnormal sleep pattern. Then she is prescribed one drug after another in search of a cure to no avail. She interviews sleep doctors, attends sleep conferences, participates in dream meetings, and ultimately stumbles on meditation. She found that the calming influence of meditation allowed her to quell those insidious thoughts that kept her awake. I wish she would have thought of meditation earlier because I could have told her in chapter one that she was too tightly wound.

I didn’t find anything particularly new or groundbreaking, but overall, Morrisroe balances her own story with informed research on these various sleep-related topics. I think I have a tendency to expect too much out of memoirs on cultural topics because they seem to leave me unfulfilled. While it started out going in the right direction, by the end I was tired of hearing one person’s perspective.

Not bad, but meditation over medication? Weird. ( )

If you are looking for a general overview of theories of insomnia and practical advice as to how to deal with it, this is a good place to start. But what makes "Wide Awake" really good is that it is a scream to read. I was not seeking it out because it was funny. But I finished the book, reading it like it was a novel, because it was funny.

I checked this book out because I was interested in the subject of insomnia and wanted more information and ideas as to how to treat it. What I got was something which might actually be even better, a personal memoir about the author's struggles with insomnia. You get a quick tour of the major ideas and theories from a very personal point of view: that of an author who has been there and done that. Topics include sleeping pills, sleep clinics, cognitive behavioral therapy, sleep courses, hypnotherapy, wake-promoting drugs, shift-work disorder, sleep apnea, mattresses, power napping, searching for a quieter neighborhood, trying to sleep in an ice hotel north of the arctic circle, meditation, and the study of dreams.

Morrisroe is on a mission, to get some sleep, and so it is a succession of stories as she tries one thing after another. None of them are completely without merit, but none of them give her satisfaction until a combination of factors at the end finally seems to get her back on track. I won't reveal the ending, but I am not convinced that what worked for her will work for everyone, and she doesn't seem to think so either, and certainly isn't promoting it. In fact, it's not even clear what it was, exactly, that helped.

She leaves the impression that there is no real "science" of sleep. Even the best, brightest, and smartest of those in the field are still struggling to make sense of the whole thing. The really smart people understand that while we've got quite a bit of interesting research, there are just a whole bunch of things that we still don't really know -- like why we sleep at all, for example.

Because it's a memoir, and because the author doesn't present herself as an expert, she isn't committed to defending or attacking this or that idea or set of ideas. In the end this is actually more helpful for us than it would be if she had just tried to write a more systematic treatise. Thanks for the book! ( )