When the late nights come back

They will come back. The usual occasions are easy to list. There's a deadline week at work, or a holiday that moves every routine by two hours. There's an illness, yours or a child's, or a new series that everyone's talking about. A run of days when the hour at eight got eaten will do it too. Then one Tuesday you find yourself on the sofa at ten to one with your phone in your hand, as if the last two months hadn't happened.

That doesn't undo anything, and it doesn't mean you misunderstood the book or didn't want it enough. An old habit stays underneath a new one for a long time, and tired, pressured weeks are just when it resurfaces. What helps is a small response, made soon. Tomorrow evening, take the hour at eight, close the kitchen at nine, and go up when you're tired. There's no need to make up for the late night or to start counting again from one. I'd advise against counting nights at all. A streak makes one slip feel like a collapse, and then the collapse seems to license a week of them.

It's worth asking what brought it back. Often the answer is that your own time quietly vanished from the early evening, and the late stretch came back to fill the space. In that case the late night was useful information. The need hadn't gone anywhere, and it won't be argued out of existence. If the hour at eight has stopped working, find out why and move it, shrink it or defend it. Twenty minutes that really happen are worth more than an hour that usually doesn't.

Sometimes the answer is that the days have become too much, and no arrangement of the evening will fix that. If every day leaves you emptied out, then the problem is the load and not the bedtime. It might call for a hard conversation at work or at home, or for help with caring. It might mean dropping something you've been carrying for years. I can't tell you which from here. I can say that those decisions go better on enough sleep.

There are also times when the right response is a doctor. I raised some of these before chapter 1, and here's the fuller list. See a GP in any of these cases.

• You go to bed at a sensible time and lie awake for a long while, or wake in the night and can't get back to sleep. If this has gone on for months, or it's making daily life hard to cope with, or changing your habits hasn't helped, see a GP. The usual treatment is a form of cognitive behavioural therapy designed for insomnia. Sleeping pills are rarely prescribed now, and then only for short periods.
• You stay up because you dread lying in the dark with your thoughts. That's different from wanting time to yourself, and it often goes with anxiety or low mood, which are treatable.
• You sleep a reasonable number of hours and are still very tired every day, or you've been told that you snore loudly, gasp, or stop breathing in your sleep. Those can be signs of sleep apnoea, which needs testing.
• Your mood has been low for weeks, or you've lost interest in things, whether or not sleep improves.
• You've had thoughts of harming yourself. That needs urgent help the same day, from your GP, an emergency service or a crisis line.

Two smaller cautions. If tiredness is making you unsafe to drive, treat that as seriously as you would drink. And keep taking any prescribed medication as directed. If you think a medicine is affecting your sleep, raise it with whoever prescribed it before changing anything.