NAVY 1996-2018 — The VA CBT-I program I should have done a decade earlier

Twenty-two years in the Navy, Surface Warfare. The job runs on watch rotations — six on, six off, eighteen on for surge — and by the time I retired I had not slept a normal night in fifteen years. I assumed it was permanent. VA primary care prescribed me ambien. It worked for about three months, then it stopped, and the rebound insomnia was worse than the baseline. I lived on five hours of broken sleep for the next four years. My PCP finally referred me to the VA's CBT-I program — Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia. Six weeks, weekly. It is boring. There are no breakthroughs. There is no insight. It is a structured protocol about restricting your time in bed, stabilizing your wake time, learning what to do when you can not sleep at 0300, and slowly extending your sleep window as your body relearns. By week four I was sleeping six hours. By week six I was sleeping seven. I have slept seven to eight hours a night for the last two years. I take no medication for sleep. I am writing this because nobody told me CBT-I existed. I should have done this in 2008. If you are still on a hypnotic and you are still not sleeping right, ask your primary care for a CBT-I referral. The VA has it. It works.