Lamictal Day 13: Sleep and Booze

I was expecting yesterday to be weird, after staying up late to watch the Shuttle land the night before (you can read my ramblings about that here if you're so inclined).  And it was.  I was tired when I got up after about 6 and a half hours of sleep (I can manage on 8, but do best with 9).  I took my meds, felt less tired, and then throughout the day I felt ... odd.  My mood was pretty good, but it felt fragile somehow.  My mind was racing a lot.

I've found that when I stay up late one night and shortchange myself on sleep, that I often don't feel like going to sleep the next night.  This is true no matter how tired I might have been during the day.  It's as if my body hits a post-dinnertime energy surge, and I'm not tired at all anymore, not even remotely tired, and I can't even think about going to bed and trying to sleep.

This happens frequently when I visit my family.  Except for my father, we're all night owls.  We don't see each other often because my brother and I live in a different state (different time zones even) than my parents and my sister.  When we get together, we tend to decide that starting a game of Trivial Pursuit at 12:30 am is a good idea.

It doesn't happen as much when I'm at home, but it happened last night.  I had planned to go to bed at a decent hour (for me, that's midnight or so), but I wasn't tired and I found myself chatting with a friend until 1:30 am.  At that point, since I was hungry (and still not sleepy!) I decided to pour a shot of vodka into my Trader Joe's mango lassi.  My experience so far with lamictal and alcohol is that my tolerance seems to be increased slightly, but that even one drink makes me sleep like a baby.

I still didn't even try to fall asleep until 3 am.  Then, I slept clear through until 12:30 this afternoon.  It's kind of nice having the power to  give myself a long, sound sleep with one measly drink.