If there were an Olympics for sleeping, I would’ve been a gold medalist. While this doesn’t say much about my athleticism, it says plenty about my astounding ability to drift off as soon as my head hit the pillow. Not to boast, but I was Simone Biles-like in my napping skills. It was dazzling to watch, really, or so I’ve been told. I could sleep anywhere—planes, trains, automobiles, Broadway plays, my cousin’s Bat Mitzvah. During class? Now, that was sublime.

Fast forward to 2018. I’m in full perimenopause, but could still snooze like a woman whose ovaries were chock-a-block with healthy eggs. Then, early one morning, I got a call from my mom who had moved to Los Angeles the year before and was living next door to me. She had fallen. I rushed over to her apartment and found her lying on the floor. She had been there all night, trying to work her way to the phone.

Not surprisingly, she broke her hip. After several weeks in a rehab facility, she returned home. I planned to stay with her a few nights before a nurse could start. That night, after making sure she was comfortable, I got onto her couch, where I had slept blissfully for so many nights in the past.

I lay there for hours, wide awake.

The next night, same thing. And the next.

Welcome to my new normal.

When I thought about it, I suspect the shock of seeing my once-lively mother lying helplessly on the floor kicked my perimenopausal insomnia into gear. It was as if my mind and body got jolted into realizing, “Oh yeah, you’re middle-aged now; time to kiss your sleep good-bye!” Lying there in the dark, my unconscious mind seemed to be fighting a losing battle against my conscious mind, which finally took pity on the former at about 5 AM, just two hours before I had to get up for work.

I couldn’t understand what was happening. How could I be so exhausted and still not sleep? My husband, no stranger to my sleepless nights, had plenty of suggestions. Magnesium! Nothing. Sleepytime Tea! Made me super drowsy, but I still didn’t go the distance. Then he pulled out the big guns—Nyquil. I downed a shot of it from that little plastic cup like it was top-shelf tequila and lay back in bed, waiting for relief.

What I didn’t know was that I was one of the lucky few who actually had the OPPOSITE reaction to the ingredient in Nyquil. Which meant that not only was I not sleepy, but I nervously paced around the room like a dog desperate for its morning walk. It got so bad that I took off the clothes hanging on the drying rack, a.k.a. the never-used elliptical machine, and worked out for over an hour until my brain shut that shit down.

At this point, I was starting to feel a mixture of those first few weeks of hallucinogenic exhaustion I had with my newborn daughter and just straight-up hallucinations.  It was time to call the doctor. She prescribed Ambien. I was reluctant to try it after reading about Ambien-Eating and Ambien-Walking, and according to Roseanne, Ambien-Tweeting. But I was desperate. Even my friend’s story of his friend who took Ambien on a plane and woke up to find his wrists taped to his seat didn’t deter me. I popped a couple and said a silent prayer.

The next morning, I experienced something strange. As in, I didn’t need the jaws of life to pry my eyelids open. Ecstatic, I rolled over and smiled at my husband. He smiled back, the kind of smile you give your spouse the morning after you’ve left your kids at your parent’s house for the night.

“Wow,” he said. “You were on fire last night!” Um, come again? Yes, apparently. Several times. According to him, I was as randy as a pimply teenager on prom night. I smiled. I blushed. I couldn’t remember a damn thing. But I had slept, so I didn’t mind missing out on being the hit of my own sexy-time party. The next night, I took it again. Unsurprisingly, my husband had no objection.

I felt even more refreshed that morning, though a bit groggy. My husband reported, with just a hint of sadness, that there was no reappearance of Horny Wife 2.0. I went downstairs and made some coffee, not because I needed it, but because I wanted it. I sat down with my laptop and checked my emails and was excited to discover an email from a potential employer I had met with a few months prior. A good night’s sleep AND a new job? This day was getting better and better. I eagerly opened the email. The employer thanked me for my continued interest, but unfortunately, there weren’t any current job openings. “Continued interest?”

I hadn’t been in contact with them for months. Then, my eyes traveled down to the email below it, and I felt the hot flash (intentional choice of words) of horror and embarrassment on my face. Turns out, while I thought I was sleeping peacefully, I was, in reality, applying for jobs with lengthy, sloppy, emotional emails—at three in the morning! Now, Ambien Sex was one thing, but Ambien Applying was the drunk dialing of job searching. I flushed the remaining pills down the toilet.

More sleepless nights—then weeks and months. I tried everything. Meditation. Sound machines. Threatening myself with no dessert for a week if I didn’t go to bed RIGHT NOW (hey, it worked with my toddler). Nothing. I realized I had to accept what I couldn’t change, that I would be awake for the rest of my life. The FOMO from hell.

Then, last year, something unusual happened. I noticed that I started to feel this weird, foreign sensation during our evening TV time. It was the feeling of struggling to stay awake. The kind of feeling you had as a kid waiting up for Santa or the Tooth Fairy. The sense that if I just stopped fighting it, I’d fall asleep. Was this really happening? As I drifted off, my daughter announced, “Mom’s asleep,” and turned off the TV. Bless her; she’s very good about not Netflix cheating.

Unfortunately, her thoughtful gesture instantly brought me back to life. I got up, cleaned the kitchen, brushed my teeth, got into bed, and stared at the ceiling, more awake than a kid on Christmas morning. The next night, while watching TV, I got sleepy again. But this time, I told my daughter not to, under any circumstances, turn off the TV. And I slept. Upright, still in my clothes, no night guard. A deep, deep, blissful, snoring sleep. I was onto something. Like my earlier, sleep-champion days when I struggled to stay awake in theaters or darkened lecture halls with distant activity and competing sounds, the TV was having the same effect. Eureka!

I now have a system. I get everything done before we watch TV. Dishes washed, phone charged, moisturizers applied. As my favorite dark comedy, Succession, and other crime and cult documentaries flicker across the room, so do my eyelids. My advice to all my perimenopausal sisters dealing with insomnia or interrupted sleep. Two words—whatever works. Don’t apologize for whatever you need to do to sleep because your sanity depends on it. Champion your need to sleep at all costs.

Nowadays, I sleep upright on the living room couch with the TV on, still holding the remote, looking like the “Mom” version of Weekend at Bernie’s. Is it weird? Totally. Go ahead and laugh. I’m too sound asleep to notice.

Elizabeth Wexler is a writer, fully menopausal, and living in youth-obsessed Los Angeles, where 30 is the new 80.