Freaky Deaky Melatonin

Which brings me to my next point.... Don't smoke crack.

Now as far as abusing over the counter, natural health supplements on the other hand... feel free to experiment. Actually, that stuff's probably just sugar pills and overpriced plant refuse. Nevertheless, as benign as much as the unregulated health supplement industry probably is, some of it will affect you, and not always in the ways you intended. Case in point for myself: melatonin. Not quite the same at St. Johns Wart or hanging crystals from your door jams as it is in fact a chemical that readily, normally exists in your body; it is similar in that there haven't been too terribly many published, verifiable studies done which show any merit to ingesting it on a regular basis. At least as far as I can tell. Allegedly, however, it is supposed to aid with sleep, regularize your sleep/wake cycle, fight cancer, and generally make for a fantastic day. For me, on the other hand, it mostly just makes me crazy.

My roommate and some other friends started taking it after a medical school lecture a few years back shared with us the boons to be had. Upon discovering this I of course had to join in. I don't have terribly much to do work wise now, and so could feel free to sleep in as long as melatonin felt I needed to sleep in for. Unfortunately, that's not what melatonin had in store for me, however. Instead about an hour after I took it and was already lying in bed I started to feel jittery. The weird twitchy feeling was quickly followed by an intense tired sensation and that shortly thereafter by my first sleep for the night.

My first sleep also brought my first dream which involved a series of fire alarms with the last one leading me out into the rainy night all alone only to be robbed at knife point. My assailant tried to take me to his car for whatever nefarious reason and, as he was going to the driver's side and lighting up a cigarette, that's when I made my break for it. After a smirk and a long drag on his cigarette he gave chase and, within a few minutes, I woke up. Disturbed but still very tired I quickly feel back to sleep.

And so we come to dream two. Dream two involved an evil clone of myself who of course had to be subdued and, later, a demonic teddy bear who, though not very strong, you knew was gonna mess you up if he got the chance. Run and go get a knife to cut you with was my guess. So that dream took its course and next thing I know it's about 9:00 in the morning. Time to get up and do some work. Unfortunately melatonin was not done with me, however, as I felt all funky dream-like for the first hour or so. Within an hour after that I was asleep again in my chair at the computer instead of being productive with my studies. In light of passing out while sitting upright, I decided to concede defeat and take a nap for a few hours. The nap was thankfully a pleasant one, but after all is said and done I have to say, "what the heck melatonin? Why you gotta be like that?" If that chemical really is normally in our brains it was put there by the devil.

And as a final note, after sharing my experience with my roommate he happily informed me that both he and he girlfriend had had vivid dreams when they first started taking melatonin too. Yeah, thanks for telling me.