Sleep Helpers to Ride the Rails

If you do not fall to sleep easily on a train, a simple remedy may be your ticket to complement your rail ticket: Sleeping pills. Tylenol PM was found to work nicely. If you want to spend a few more dollars, get a 30-day script for ten or twenty milligram Ambien which you cut into 2.5 mg chips. The original 600 milligrams of an Ambien (30x20) prescription will give you 240 sleep-inducing chips that will last for several years of Railing. While OTC sleep pills are cheaper and more readily available, Ambien does not give you a drousy wake-up (personal experience). If one does not do, take another.

Remember, attitude is important. If you wake up and allow yourself to be angry, you will initiate the biological fight or flight response that will elevate your central nervous system chemicals to make you as alert as possible for self-survival. Like most problems in life, chuckle first and the problem will be less. Like Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans disaster, the real reason for most people failing to optimize their lives or sleep is their response to the initial problem. If you must be dumb, please go to the lounge car--don't grumble and wake others up.

Do not use alcohol to try to induce sleep. Absolutely, do not take alcohol with Ambien unless you want to risk wandering off of a train that will leave without you but leave with your personal articles--see Saskatoon Swirling Dervish. Accounts of alcohol and ambien leading to bizarre behavior are numerous and should not be taken lightly. You don't want to wake up in a strange place and wonder how you got there, e.g., a jail.

Like all medications that alter baseline metabolism in the body, you should not use them chronically without vacations from them so that you body can restore its baseline metabolism, e.g., aspirin, alcohol, caffiene and opiates. Otherwise your body's stasis will become acclimated and you will need ever higher doses to maintain your edge until you fall over the edge: ulcers, dementia, high blood pressure, and madness. Ambien is life preserver that should only worn when you are in the water, not on dry land.

I personally would rather have a sleep aid that I use on occassion than fight trying to sleep. Life is quality not quantity of time.