The myth of sleeping pills needs to be destroyed here. Sleeping pills are useful for two weeks only; after that the body develops a tolerance to the pills and they become less and less effective in inducing sleep. The reason why most people continue to take them beyond two weeks is to avoid rebound insomnia. Rebound insomnia is a withdrawal symptom experienced after sleeping pills are stopped. Rebound insomnia should be distinguished from true insomnia. When the sleeping pills are stopped, rebound insomnia follows immediately, and one must be prepared for not sleeping well for the next few nights. Natural sleep should commence after the rebound insomnia passes. Hence it is most important to stop taking the sleeping pills gradually. The tragedy is that most people stop taking the sleeping pills suddenly, and consequently they cannot sleep because they experience rebound insomnia. They then believe they have lost the innate ability to sleep, and they immediately start taking the sleeping pills again.

*90\174\4*

The word “pain” comes from the Latin word poena which also means punishment. So there is nothing new in the association of these two ideas. The child is educated to a complicated system of values and behaviour which allows him to take his place in society. This is achieved primarily by the process of reward and punishment. Love and physical rewards are given for being good; and hostility and physical punishment for being bad. This is the learning process in its simplest form, and as a means of leading the child to acceptable behaviour it is very effective. However, the constant association of pain with punishment conditions us to lose sight of the biological

purpose of pain as a simple and helpful warning against injury. The child is constantly reminded of this association so that it persists into adult life. If in fact corporal punishment is not inflicted, the threat of it is usually still there, and even if it is not actually threatened it is referred to obliquely, “If you had been properly punished when you were younger, this would not have happened.” This is the child’s ordinary experience, so the two ideas, pain and punishment, become fused together in his mind.

*112\57\2*

«The job. How can you complain about not having enough to do? It seems too stupid for words. But that’s what it is. Just plain bored. Sounds silly. Instead of just sitting and doing nothing, I get irritable. Irritable with myself. Irritable with the people around me. Irritable with a society that lands me in a job like this. Worse than all that, I bring the irritability home with me to my wife and kids. Snap at them. Then I feel guilty. Then more on edge than ever. »

They laugh about the civil service. Joke about it. But there is often that glimmer of truth in the things we laugh about most readily.

Man. As a species we have survived. We have survived because we have learned to assert ourselves against an inhospitable environment. If we graduate into a changed environment of continuing calm and ease, we are left without the normal challenges of life to which we have become accustomed over countless generations. It demands that we adjust to a new way of living in which our innate assertiveness has no external outlet. We seem to be lost. Our brain is alerted, but there is no outlet for mental or physical activity. And we experience this deprivation as boredom.

Other interests and hobbies are a help. Not much to do at work and our mind can run on enjoying the challenge of our hobby. The same applies when our work is mainly repetitive, requiring little mental effort on our part.

*6/98/5*