If you (don't) snooze, you lose.

• Author: Puterbaugh, Dolores T.
• Position: Life in America - Sleep

EVENTUALLY, adults talk about sleep the way adolescents talk about sex: most are not getting enough, or do not care what happens this weekend as long as they get caught up on it. If it takes alcohol or a pill to get some, so be it. They would rather get some (sleep) than almost anything else. On the couch, in the backyard, in the chair ... just get some Z's. What a drag it is getting old.

The typical American adult has an unhealthy, strange relationship with sleep. Poor sleep causes--and can be caused by--a number of psychological problems, including depression, anxiety, and their spinoffs. It almost is impossible to overstate how critical sleep is to physical and mental functioning. Severe sleep deprivation is a form of torture, and even an unmitigated pattern of low-level sleep deprivation alters brain chemistry and physiology. Mood, concentration, and memory all are impaired.

If sleep is so important, natural, and desirable, why has it become such a hassle? How has the pursuit of sleep devolved to the desperate behavior of a lonely 17-year-old? The answer is frustratingly simple. Despite the media's droning drumbeat on the importance of sleep, many American behavior patterns are detrimental to sleep. Most people who have trouble sleeping are doing something (or many things) that could not be better designed to disrupt sleep. Alarmingly, many of these individuals are convinced that the problem behaviors are the only things standing between them and absolute sleeplessness.

The National Sleep Foundation's 2010 report provides a snapshot of American adults' attitudes, challenges, and habits regarding slumber. Of the approximately 40% of the respondents who consider their sleep "a good night's sleep" most of the time, many rely on alcohol and/or sleep medications (both prescription and over-the-counter) several times each week. There are multiple difficulties within just this tidbit of information: mixing drugs with alcohol; psychological and physical dependence: and the known risk of very bizarre and sometimes dangerous behaviors that may accompany the use of prescription sleep medications. The latter include the following, while asleep: leaving the home on loot or driving; cooking and eating vast quantities of food; and other occurrences, all with no recall of the event. A patient using Ambien, for instance, may wake up and find herself still in pajamas, driving in an unknown area. There are anecdotal stories of business travelers, last asleep with the help of sleep medications to deal with jet lag, turning up naked in hotel lobbies in the middle of the night, looking for a cab. Business hotel personnel have, apparently of necessity, become accustomed to--carefully and tactfully--escorting sleep-walking guests back to their rooms. Despite the risks, prescriptions for sleep aids have risen at over twice the rate of all other prescriptions in the first years of the 21st century. In 2006, for example, Americans spent more than...