I’ve been in Berlin with loads of mates this weekend for a gig one of them had organised. Night of the gig, I was exhausted, as it was running from 11PM to 11AM, and I’d been up since 4:30AM beforehand to catch my flight. Trying to have an afternoon nap is impossible when you’re in an 8-person hostel dorm and the dorm next door is full of ragingly pissed European men screaming a broken English “Winter Wonderland” and literally hammering their fists against your wall. So in order to stay awake at this gig, instead of doing speed, which would have been the more sensible and sobering option, I decided to split a gram of coke with my pal. I mean, it worked, and resultantly I was up until about 10AM, but fuck me was I ever pissed. Absolutely annihilated. I’m at the point in my life where this sort of antic is deeply embarrassing to me. I hate myself for being this person with such terrible self control. Fortunately I was just a lumbering dinosaur and nothing too wretched happened during the several hours where my memory completely failed me, but going on holiday with all your friends for a gig you’d been anticipating for months and then not remembering about three quarters of the bastard thing ... ugh.
Anyway I probably would have slept perfectly fine unaided after that. 28 hours awake and dancing and chemically abusing my body is enough to put anybody out. Could’ve just passed out right wherever I was stood. But for some reason I decided to seal the deal and guarantee a completely uninterrupted sleep by taking half a Xanax, which I’d already been told was ‘particularly strong’.
This was Saturday morning at 10AM.
I woke up at 8:30AM on Sunday.
Twenty two motherfucking hours.
I think on rare occasions I’ve probably slept for 12 hours or so in the past, but that’s not been for a great many years. This is twice the length of any other sleep I’ve ever had in my entire life. And given the strength of the Xanax combined with the amount of booze in my system, I’m honestly probably quite lucky to be alive. If I’d taken the whole pill I’m not sure I would have been so lucky. My breathing must have been extremely shallow. I’m no scientist but I’m wondering if it’s just the coke which kept me going? Either way, fucking hell. I’m glad I only learned that fact in the sober light of two days later, and not yesterday when my brain was a howling tangle of anxiety and depression and I could barely utter two words without feeling like I was going to throw up and have a panic attack, too scared to go back to the hostel and be alone but too fucked up to muster eating or drinking or engaging with everyone getting drunk around me. Sleeping forever is considerably worse than sleeping for 22 hours. But 22 hours is still pretty fucking long. Imagine if I had died there on that blue plastic single mattress in Germany in the middle of a weekend bender with about 30 mates. What a bummer!
