The first time I gave him a gummy, I thought, ‘Oh my God, have I killed him?’ He just passed out in front of the TV. That never happens.” Jen is remembering giving her son, David, six, melatonin to help him sleep. She got them from a friend, a paediatrician who gave them to her own child. “It was sort of hilarious. She had half a tub of gummies, and her husband met my husband in a car park near a roundabout to hand them over, like some underhand black-market deal.” Her tone is light, but in fact she and her husband were becoming increasingly desperate for sleep. “They were like gold dust.”
By meeting in the car park to exchange the gummies, the husbands weren’t breaking the law, exactly, but they were stepping into a legal grey area. Melatonin is a synthetic version of the sleep hormone that occurs naturally in our bodies, rising at night in response to darkness and helping us get to sleep. It isn’t strictly illegal in the UK, but it is a prescription-only medication, and it can only be prescribed to children by a paediatrician under a specific set of circumstances, usually for children with a diagnosis of autism or ADHD. The rationale for this pathway is so that the paediatric specialist can rule out any potentially physical causes or underlying disease relating to the sleep disorder. Side-effects can include drowsiness the next day, nausea and feeling dizzy.
