Everything You Wanted to Know About Sleep but Were Too Tired to Ask

Long gone are the beds of yore, when tired bodies found rest upon hay mattresses held together by a sagging rope frame. These days, in our technology-addicted 21st century, goose-down comforters, space agency-designed memory foam, hypoallergenic pillows, and 3,000-thread-count sheets are what you’ll find in the bedroom. But despite the upgrade in beddy-bye creature comforts, experts claim that more than 70 million Americans suffer from disorders of sleep and wakefulness. The more we try to fix our beds, it seems, the more people can’t get to sleep.

Apply that restless proportion to Santa Barbara County, and we’re talking tens of thousands of people who can’t get a restful sleep in our own neighborhoods. It just so happens that a couple of those fitful sleepers work here at The Indy. In this week’s special issue on sleep-coming out in this busy holiday season, when we all need a little more rest-we find out what Chris Meagher learned about his slumber habits when he spent the night at the Santa Barbara sleep center Arete; we read about Ethan Stewart’s psychedelic bouts of insomnia and how he’s dealt with it for better and worse; and we discover what apparatus D.J. Palladino must wear to bed to keep his disorder at bay.

Our hope is not that you’ll fall asleep reading their tales, of course, but that their insights and experiences might help you relax a little easier this season.

Sweet dreams!

• The Night Watchmen – Indy Reporter Chris Meagher Does Sleep Study

• Did Someone Call Me Snorer? – Working My Way Through a Sleep Disorder by D.J. Palladino

• Up All Night – Confessions of a Man and His Insomnia by Ethan Stewart