A Correction

Last night I was whining because my legs hurt. That wasn't quite true, and in the spirit of complete disclosure (or complete boredom) I now wish to set the record straight.

I suffer from what is called "Restless Legs Syndrome." It's an apparently neurological condition where when one is trying to sleep, one's legs feel like they want to run a marathon. The sensation is difficult to describe. Mostly it's just an overpowering desire to move one's legs, sort of like Tourette's Syndrome only affecting the legs. I call it "Creepy Legs" because they don't hurt, really, they just feel really strange and creepy and the only thing that helps is moving them. I tell people my legs hurt because everyone knows was pain is, but only 2.7% of the population understands what creepy legs is. How do you describe to someone who doesn't have it the intense and overpowering urge to move your legs? And it's not just a psychological thing where you lay there and think "I believe I'll thrash my legs just to amuse myself." No, it actually feels weird - it feels like there is electrically charged dryer lint between your skin and your muscles.

It varies in degree. Many nights I don't have it at all, and many nights I do. Usually just sleeping in a particular position with my legs stretched a certain way is all the relief that is required, but sometimes it's worse than that. Standing up for a minute or two helps, and curiously enough, standing on one leg (either one) seems to help even more. Sometimes I have to walk for a while. And sometimes nothing helps and I have to just get out of bed and sit at the computer.

It usually starts just as I am about to fall asleep, in that weird netherworld between consciousness and sleep where (among other things) I have all sorts of peculiar "dreamlets", things that aren't really dreams but aren't really real either (hypnagogic hallucinations, I think they are called). If it's bad, I have to get up and walk around, but curiously, the medical evidence suggests that walking around isn't what helps, it's the elevated level of attentiveness. I think that's why standing on one leg is pretty effective - not being a gymnast, I have to concentrate a certain amount to balance, and the act of concentration is probably what brings the good, not the actual muscle movements.

I've never been able to discern a pattern. Exercizing before bed neither hurts nor helps. Hot baths neither hurt nor help. Eliminating sugar from my diet helps to a point, and leaving my legs uncovered when I get in bed helps to a point. Nothing seems to reliably banish it, though I know of a way to trigger it that works every time. If I take a nap in the afternoon, I always get creepy legs; it's just a matter of how long it takes. And the attacks are extremely intense and annoying, so bad that when they come, I often leap out of bed as though the house is on fire. Needless to say, I don't take a lot of afternoon naps.

I used to take clonazepam, which doesn't really do anything about the condition; it just sedates one and allows one to sleep through the creepiness. Very odd medication, clonazepam. It would make me goofy. I would blurt nonsense phrases and would be filled with a strange and, at bedtime anyway, entirely inappropriate sense of euphoria. I would wander around, blunder into walls and basically comport myself like a sixteen-year-old who had just had his first beer. I'm told that I would occasionally start laughing for no obvious reason, though I hasten to point out that I do that most of the time even without clonazepam.

Clonazepam is not without its risks, including habituation (which I noticed) and addiction (which I also noticed, though I suspect my addiction was psychological rather than physical - I became uneasy when my prescription ran out). It has other side-effects, including an odd thing called "emotional anesthesia." That didn't sound like something I wanted, so I stopped taking clonazepam and figured that a certain amount of disturbed sleep was better than emotional anesthesia, whatever that was. Why couldn't the chief side-effect of clonazepam been boss sound effects? I mean really.

So these days I do battle with creepy legs mano a mano, without pharmacological reinforcement. Some days I win, and some days I don't. Last night I didn't.