Hugh Gibbons' references and extra information
PPhunnybone for May 2014
for pharmaceutical physicians, colleagues and friends

Dear Dr Hugh: things keep whizzing round in my head in the middle of the night?  What do you prescribe?  A.N.Onn.

Plain Mr Hugh replies: The obvious thing is: let someone else’s voice take over.  One strategy is simply to accept insomnia, get up, and use the time productively – watching the shopping channels on TV, for example.

Or reading.  For this, partners need to be permissive in bed, and be OK with the light on, and maybe wearing a Lone Ranger mask. You’ll still be tired next day, but with a little more enriched.

Shakespeare spoke of sleep knitting up the unravelled sleeve of care.  But here’s another recommended way called Automemory Rehypnosis, which is a term I’ve just invented but may be known to others as boring yourself back to sleep.

John Mortimer of Rumpole of the Bailey was on the right lines. “The main aim of education should be to send children into the world with a reasonably sized anthology in their heads so that, while seated on the lavatory, waiting in doctors’ surgeries, on stationary trains, or watching interviews with politicians, they may have something interesting to think about.”  And awake at 2am.

So apply your own anthology – as recommended.  You’re in charge of the formulary.

First is counting - not sheep, but things from your own anthology of experience.  List the vehicles you’ve driven; airports used; libraries visited.  Add up places where you’ve have some form of refreshment on holidays in the last five years.  Or rooms you’ve slept in during your life (upwards of 250 for me). 

Your knowledge gives you alphabetic lists, working from A to Z.  Animals.  Actors.  Capital cities.  Seaside towns of the world.  First names.  Aircraft or car manufacturers.  Biblical names (Aaron...Zebediah).  Rivers (Avon…Zambezi).  Medicines: (Aspirin…Zovirax)  Vegetables (Artichoke…Zucchini).  Animals (Aarfvark…Zebra).  Places in Spain: Aranguez…Zaragosa.  Places ending in Ton, Don, Ham or burg/borough.  Get the idea?  Then try it tonight.

Reversing the alphabet is also good.  Lists words ending in each letter of the alphabet: AquA, AlB, ArC…  Or places: Albania…CadiZ. 

My rule is: when you’re awake, don’t look up lists ready for sleeplessness.  Use only what you’ve acquired over the years.  Another rule is sensible exemption: if you can’t think of an example starting with J, Q, or X, then accept one with the letter somewhere there.

The surprise may be finding how much you know – the size of your anthology.  It makes you happier to be awake, as you can feel pleased with yourself. It may not help you sleep.  But it does make your feel a lot better about the scope and depth of your knowledge, and memory.

What usually finds me happily awake is  Now for each letter of the alphabet, each letter in second place: AArdvaark, ABacus…Azure. Then in third place: DrAW..DoZe.  Then fourth: MirAcle...MarZipan. Each means 26 words – so each completion is around 570 words. You can mind you Qs and Xs.

So that may help.  Or read the odd clinical trial.  Or something from Human Resources.

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