Can I be the first to recommend a good night's sleep? You really do feel better after a solid 10+1/2 hours or so. I was thinking about the various natural methods available for assisting one to get off to Nod of an evening:
> Read a few pages of a book. Not just any book though, it'll need to be something good, so as to hold your attention. I particularly recommend the hallucinatory prose of William Burroughs and Paul Bowles, or the complexities of Lawrence Durrell, rampantly riddled as he is with oft-arcane poly-syllabillic adjectives.
> Try talking to your ex-girlfriend for about 1/2-an-hour before you go to bed. As well as putting you to sleep, a possible therapeutic spin-off is you might get over her way fast.
> Music. Music is good. Music works, man [or at least, it does for me]. You're going to need something without too much explicit beat. That means no Gatecrasher techno, Steve. Try the works of the heroes of the 60's avant-garde minimalist school - Terry Riley, Richard Maxfield, Tony Conrad, Henry Flynt, Harold Budd, La Monte Young et. al. Otherwise more contemporary practitioners - Surface of the Earth, John Clyde-Evans, K-Group, Birchville Cat Motel, RST, Eso Steel, Signer...
> Popular wisdom holds that onanism, the science of self-pleasure, is a sure-fire method of unducing sleepiness. I couldn't possibly comment, as they say.
Counting sheep is silly. I've never managed to achieve anything other than to end up with a pen full of sheep in my head, and worry about what I was supposed to do with them.
If you can't get a full night's sleep without help [I know I can't always] there are a number of options, of the chemical variety, to assist:
> See your GP and blag your way to a prescription for sleeping pills. There are a couple of good-ish ones around which aren't habit-forming and don't interrupt your R.E.M. cycle either, which means everyone wins [translation: they don't just knock you out leaving you groggy when you arise in the morn]. I'm thinking particularly of Imovene [a.k.a. Zopiclone], which I heard first about when reading Douglas Coupland's Shampoo Planet.
> Tranquilizer and anti-anxiety medications - specifically, the benzodiazepine family - will help you achieve a good night's rest. Which of these you can get your hands on legitimately may depend on how crazy you are. These are generally dangerously addictive.> An alternative to the benzo's could be to raid your grandmother's medicine cabinet for halcyon and valium. Take as directed, and then some.
> Particular products derived from Cannibus sativa can help remarkably well with sleeping - perhaps a couple of spots of some nice pungent oil - although experiences vary - as do side-effects, which can be long-lasting, and probably addictive too.
Getting really drunk isn't recommended. I appreciate that 1/2 a bottle of vodka will knock you out something wonderful, but you won't feel better for it in the morning.
Finally, one other suggestion for getting enough sleep: quit your bastard of a job. That way you can sleep to 1pm every day, ensuring plenty of rest each and every night.
Last evening I was lucky enough to be present as world-renowned research scientist Dr. The Sneak conducted some ground-breaking experiments. The purpose of the research was apparently to find the effective surface tension of a dead mouse. I had the formula explained to me by Dr. The Sneak thusly:
Don't jump to conclusions; we're not talking about some sort of nasty sickly peach flavoured muck here, but rather pure grain alcohol. It's the stuff that looks like vodka. You know, some guy'll walk into a bar and order "schnaps" and it says "schnaps" in the sub-title and the barman drops a small glass onto the counter and reaches for some nondescript bottle filled with a clear liquid and sloshes a measure into the glass and the guy slams it back slams down the glass and says "danke" or "grazie" or "obrigado" or whatever and wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand...