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By: stickystebee
All I have to do to fall asleep is lie down in my comfortable bed. I am like one of those dolls that automatically close their eyes when they are put on their back. I am probably asleep within less than half a minute. I guess that I am lucky as I know of quite a number of people who find falling asleep quite difficult, and they have to use various aids to help them find sleep no matter how many beds they have tried. Sometimes the old fashioned aids such as counting sleep and similar mind games do not work, and some people have to turn to sleeping pills and other preparations.

Sleeping drafts have a long history and have been used through the ages in many different societies. Psychotropic drugs extracted from plants formed a large part of the shaman's and witch doctors arsenal of remedies and cures. Opium was a favourite potion of the ancient Greeks, as were various tree barks and herbs. Some of these were highly toxic and had many side effects. Some were hallucinogenic too. A small error in dosage could have a devastating effect. Modern remedies are often derived from these ancient ones, and even modern synthetic drugs are often simple variants of the original alkaloids.

In more recent times various bromide salts and chloral hydrate were used to induce sleep. These were replaced in the nineteen hundreds by barbiturates, which became very popular and were certainly overused. A problem is that at high doses they are extremely toxic and proved an easy route to suicide, and they have now more or less been phased out. They were replaced with benzodiazepines which though effective and much less toxic than barbiturates proved to be highly addictive. More recently these were replaced with a class of drugs called non-benzodiazepines which are much safer.
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I guess that I am lucky as I know of quite a number of people who find falling asleep quite difficult, and they have to use various aids to help them find sleep no matter how many beds they have tried. Sometimes the old fashioned aids such as counting sleep and similar mind games do not work, and some people have to turn to sleeping pills and other preparations.

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