Hey friends, it's Anne here, and I have a question for you.

How did you sleep last night?

Unfortunately, there is a one in three chance that your answer is not well.

Today, on to the best of our knowledge, we're talking about what keeps us up and how we became a nation of sleepless people.

Stay tuned.

Wisconsin Public Radio

It's to the best of our knowledge. It's to the best of our knowledge.

Do you ever have trouble sleeping?

Steve Paulson does.

I'm not a great sleeper to begin with, but there was a period that lasted probably about five months where it was awful.

I really wondered if I would ever be able to have a regular night of sleep again without a pill.

As the night approached, I would start getting really anxious because I would think,

I'm not going to be able to fall asleep. If I did manage to fall asleep, I'd wake up in the middle of the night, and I couldn't get back to sleep.

I was so anxious that I just, I couldn't lie in bed. I had to get up, literally pace around the house.

There was this one period where actually I would get up at two or three in the morning and go on the exercise bike.

And I would just pedal for half an hour, trying to wear myself into sleep.

It was this weird combination of being totally wired and totally exhausted.

I wasn't sure if I was ever going to be able to sleep again. As this dragged on, the insomnia, it really, it affected my mood.

I got depressed.

I could just feel my whole mood sinking.

The worst nights, it was like my shadow self came out.

So, yeah. like my shadow self came out. Everything that was negative in my head just came crashing into my mind.

...