A person will die from total lack of sleep sooner than from starvation. Death will occur in about 10 days without sleep, while starvation takes a few weeks.
A specialist has told me that there is absolutely no reason for a doctor to refuse sleeping pills. He absolutely could not get inside my previous doctor's head to figure out what good the doctor thought he was doing by not honoring my request for sleeping pills when I was sleeping only 2 hours a night for years. "What would it have hurt?" he asked, to humor me with a brief trial. And the answer is, that it would have hurt the doctor's ego if the sleeping pills I requested turned out to be more effective than the anti-depressants he wanted to prescribe.
There's a statistic that I can't lay my hands on right now, if I recall correctly though, one sleepless night results in a 30% loss of efficiency at work the next day. Multiply that by hundreds of near-sleepless nights, and you can see that I was approaching 100% loss of efficiency.
I was, essentially, non-functional due to lack of sleep. By some laypeople's estimation, I was half-dead. When I got into the sleeping pill clinical trial, the pills were strong enough to overpower the pain that was keeping me awake. I slept 8 hours a night, and was actually able to do something again.
If you're having problems with "tired and wired" or other reasons for not getting a good night's sleep, put your foot down that the doctor MUST give you sleeping pills. This is not about his ego -- this is about your health. If he works for a medical group, go over his head to Administration and let him try to explain to them why he's not addressing your sleep problem.
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