The following is a brief account of my slow descent into sleep-deprived madness.

Daytona Beach, Summer 1993—Some friends and I drop acid and spend the night in a motel. In the morning, one of them complains that I kept him up all night with my hideous snoring. No one has ever before told me I snore, so I quickly dismiss the news as an acid-crazed delusion.

My first Marriage, 1994—I begin having suffocation dreams. Still in denial, I assume it’s because I’m married to someone who makes me feel like I’m drowning. I get a divorce, but the dreams continue.

Chapel Hill, NC, Spring, 1996—Linda and I share a bed for the first time. She rates the experience kindly, assuring me that the noise is steady enough for her to sleep through. Given that I do not sleep in an iron lung, I can only assume that the steady noise she refers to is, indeed, snoring.

University of South Florida, Fall, 1996—I work as an adjunct instructor in comparative religion, teaching upwards of 200 students per term, nearly three times the load of an ordinary professor. My mentor, Drew, has been doing this for over a decade. He is a hard-nose, caffeine-addicted Christian Scientist and informs me that, if I ever want to get used to the seventy-hour workweeks, I must relinquish my mistaken idea that the human body needs sleep. Since I am not sleeping much anyway, I readily adopt his mind-over-matter philosophy and frequently boast that the dark gray circles around my eyes are a triumph of my will.

Around That Time—I am no longer convinced that the suffocation dreams are actually dreams. In them, I am always lying in whatever bed or couch my real life happens to have placed me in. It’s bad enough that I stop breathing; what really sucks is that I am aware that I have stopped breathing. I panic and try to get Linda’s attention. If she could budge me, I might wake up and resume normal breathing. But when I try to moan, nothing comes out. And when I try to move, I am paralyzed. Eventually I awaken gasping for breath and feeling like a truck just ran me over. My muscles ache, and I have no idea how I’m going to get through another day without having had any rest.

A Year and a Half Later—I no longer see how anyone could live happily by Drew’s no-sleep philosophy when I—its staunchest advocate—would gladly sacrifice a testicle for a half-decent catnap.

New Port Richey, FL, 1997—I drop by Drew’s home at ten in the morning. His wife tells me he’s still asleep and rarely gets up before ten thirty. Given his boasts of “no more than three hours a night,” I comment on how amazing it is that he doesn’t go to bed until after the sun comes up. She laughs dismissively, explaining that he usually goes to bed around one. This means he usually gets nine and a half hours of sleep per night—a full ninety minutes more than the prescribed eight hours. I feel seriously duped and am suddenly sorry for all the times I laughed at those poor, trusting saps who modeled their entire moral life on the advice of Jimmy Swaggart.

Seminole Heights, Tampa, FL, 1999—The neighbor across the back alley is driving me nuts. He’s a repo man and is often pursued by the people whose cars he just took. Gunshots are frequently fired, and I feel I must stay awake for the kids’ sake. I have no idea how my sleeplessness will protect them from stray bullets, so I occupy my mind with more satisfying matters—like fantasies about the savage fury I plan to unleash on this asshole in the morning.

Seminole Heights, Spring, 2000—My fantasy life takes a nosedive as the repo man’s wife shoots herself in the head during one of their many heated disputes. She dies, and the anti-gun tirade that I have been planning for months suddenly seems moot. My new, more modest fantasy is that the death of his wife will inspire the repo man to lay down his arms. Amazingly, I am way off base with this hope, and the late-nate gunfights continue unabated, along with my insomnia.

Shortly Thereafter—Linda reports that my snoring is no longer steady. It is a cacophonous series of irregular snorts and choking sounds that crescendo into a desperate gasp and is followed by up to a half a minute of breathless silence. The effect of this news on my already flagging sexual self-esteem is incalculable.

Seattle, WA, 2001—Linda gets a job on the far opposite corner of the country. Our Florida house is in foreclosure, and our ruined credit severely limits our Seattle housing prospects. We wind up in the ghetto next door to a hardcore alcoholic named Crystal who reeks of cigarettes, whiskey, and—for reasons I care not to speculate—human excrement. Not surprisingly, she is unemployed. And, since I work online, I am always at home whenever she needs company. She visits frequently, and, despite a formidable beer belly, tells me ad nauseum how people can’t get over how thin she manages to stay. She rubs her hips suggestively as she tells me this, and I get the distinct impression that she wants more from me than I am willing to give. Crystal is thirty–five but looks fifty, and this is the only thing we have in common.

September 11, 2001—Seattle is a miserable place. It’s not so bad that it rains everyday. What sucks is the overcast. I’m from Florida, I need sunshine. This endless succession of gray, low-pressure days makes me want to stay in bed. And that’s exactly what I do. I work enough to collect my paycheck, I take care of the kids’ transportation needs, but, other than that, I wish I were unconscious. Which is insane, since sleep doesn’t refresh me. It makes things worse. And it doesn’t help that a small band of heavily funded religious lunatics just knocked down the World Trade Center, killing 3,000 people to prove a point that they never actually articulate. The world is full of crazies, and I am not the least of them.

October, 2001—Crystal’s daughter, Brittany, bangs on our door, desperately begging us to let her in. Crystal is hot on her heels and stinking drunk. We let Brittany in but close the door on Crystal. Brittany explains that her mom has gone berserk and is trying to kill her. We call Brittany’s grandmother, Maureen, but Maureen sounds just as drunk as Crystal and tells us to leave her alone. We call the police, and Brittany is taken into custody.

The Next Day—Crystal is livid and begins a campaign of relentless harassment. As it turns out, she has a very long history of legal problems, and this most recent incident has spawned state authorities to remove Brittany from her custody indefinitely. In true alcoholic fashion, Crystal refuses to examine herself and instead blames me for ruining her life. Brittany is the lynchpin in Crystal’s steady inflow of welfare, and Crystal tells me that if I ruin that for her she is going to take my children away from me the way I took her child away from her. She says she will go to their schools, where I am not around to protect them, and she will take them and I will never see them again. This does not bode well for my sleep.

The Following Months—I have gone certifiably insane. I sleep on the living room rug with my shoes on, always prepared to defend. I keep a bat by the door and have begun to scope out places where I might be able to hide Crystal’s body if I had to. There’s a tape recorder by the front door and another attached to the phone. I need to build my case. I need evidence that this woman is dangerous. I forbid the kids to sleep in their own rooms, as Crystal might break through their windows in the middle of the night. I believe I am protecting them, but in the back of my mind, I know they are more scared of me than of Crystal.

December, 2001—Our oldest boy, Josh, can’t take it any more. He goes back to Florida to live with his biological dad.

January, 2002—Our middle boy, Zack, follows suit, moving in with his biological mom for the first time in his life. My heart is aching, because I have always been his rock, but now I am weak. And crazy. And tired beyond belief.

New Port Richey, FL, 2002—I begin the healing process. To Linda’s chagrin, I insist that we move back to Florida to reunite with our children—and the sunshine. If there is a way to get better, I’m determined to find it. Oddly, it never occurs to me to get a sleep test. My bouts with insomnia aren’t all that frequent, and I usually sleep a full eight hours per night. True, I wake up feeling worse than when I went to bed, but I assume this is due to a general depression and do not know that poor sleep itself can be the cause of such depression. I go to a general practitioner who prescribes Lexapro. He’s got an entire closet full of samples, a fact that suggests he has a healthy financial relationship with its manufacturers, but I am so desperate for a fix that I try it.

Three months later—My penis no longer works. Lexapro has taken away the depression and replaced it with extreme lethargy and impotence.

Somewhere Around That Time—Linda gets online and learns about apnea—a disease that restricts breathing during sleep. This decreases the production of seratonin, causing depression, and limits the flow of oxygen through the body, causing the body to feel exhausted in the morning. I get a sleep test and receive scientific proof that my suffocation dreams are more than mere dreams after all. Now that I have a name for my problem, I am filled with hope that a solution is at hand.

Immediately Thereafter—There are two types of machines that help apneacs breathe properly at night. Sleep lab techs conduct experiments that prove conclusively that the more common type won’t work for me. But there is hope that the more specialized type will help. I don’t have insurance, but I am so desperate for a fix that I readily pay the $700 it costs to get one. I try diligently for a month to make it work, but it won’t. The clinic techs tell me I’m just not giving it a fair chance. I need to relax and get used to having a mask on my face. This is bullshit, because I am not at all bothered by the mask. The kids call me Darth Vader, and it is a source of great amusement for us all. Sometimes I even fall asleep in it. But never for long, because it forces air in when I’m trying to breathe out and vice versa. It makes me gasp more desperately than ever before, and I am deeply saddened to know that the cure for my disease only intensifies the symptoms.

Shortly Thereafter—I try a new drug. It’s called Wellbutrin, and it has the opposite effect of Lexapro. Sleep is no longer a problem because I am now too wired to even attempt it. My penis works again, but what does that matter when I hate everyone so much that I am incapable of giving anyone the kind of admiration it takes to fuel a fantasy? I snap at people for the most infinitesimal offenses, coming to believe, for example, that the use of clichés is justifiable cause for homicide. God protect the next person who bids me to “have a good one” or unthinkingly asks, “Hot enough for ya?” It will only be hot enough for me when I am burning in Hell for having slaughtered your unoriginal ass right here in the Piggly Wiggly, right in front of the fat-faced little grandchildren that your bumper sticker so inanely beckons me to ask you about. I’m on Wellbutrin, mother fucker! It’s never hot enough for me!

About Two Months Later—I find myself lying on the staircase, drooling and blabbering incoherently. I have had a Wellbutrin breakdown and don’t know how long I’ve been laying there. Linda’s new job is in California, and she’s gone all but a few days a month. This leaves me as the sole caregiver of our children—a precarious position for a man who thinks he may have crapped himself but lacks the mental capacity to find out.

The Next Day—I decide to heal myself without the aid of drugs. I am grateful to Drew for introducing me to the idea of the mind’s curative powers, but I disagree with his assertions that the material conditions of our lives our mere illusions. My lack of seratonin is real. I might never be able to change that. But what I can change is how I deal with it.

Epilogue: It would be so cool if I could tell a story that Drew would approve of. It would be so cool if I could say that I used the power of my mind as a medical cure. But the fact is that I used it to chill out and wait until technology caught up with me. There is a new kind of sleep machine, and, much to my delight, it works for me. I sleep well every night. Maybe not perfectly, but enough to get through the next day in relatively good spirits. There is still much healing to be done. I’ve yet to convince Linda that the change is real—that it’s going to last. And I can still see a lingering caution in my children’s eyes. But they are young and open to change. And even though they remember a dad who used to sleep with a baseball bat, they prefer to see the other things. And this is all I ask for. Don’t see me as perfect, boys. See me as someone who loves you. I am your Darth Vader. I am your father. And when the mask comes off, there is still something good there. Maybe even something loveable.