Lavender oil. Eating kiwis. Masturbation. Everyone has their own “hacks” when it comes to falling asleep in 2023; the days of counting sheep are long gone. Jennifer Aniston’s top tip for battling insomnia is to “sleep with my phone at least five feet away from me”, while Martha Stewart recommends focusing on your breathing. In her 1973 feminist novel Fear of Flying, author Erica Jong notes that, sometimes, the only way to overcome sleeplessness is by pretending you don’t care about nodding off. “Then sleep became piqued, like a rejected lover, and crept up to try to seduce you.”
In a world where human sleep patterns have increasingly been plunged into chaos, people are having to turn to ever more creative – and often bizarre – means of getting their 40 winks in. Today, the internet is littered with tips and tricks that promise a sound sleep, but not all of them are effective and none are foolproof. (Kiwis, by the way, contain serotonin and antioxidants, which is why it’s thought they might have sleep-promoting benefits.) The result is a society with a growing problem on its hands: persistent sleeplessness – otherwise known as insomnia.
