Studies show that optimal sleep is at least seven hours. When my insomnia started in early adolescence I was getting two. Suddenly the numbers on the blackboard were squiggling around, questions aimed at me sounded as if they were coming from outside a fishbowl, every morning I felt like I would shatter upon impact with the floor.

I started with the classic remedies: valerian root, ashwagandha, camomile; weighted blankets, earplugs, eye masks, noise machines. Then sleep hygiene — bedroom at 20C, getting up every 20 minutes, blackout curtains. Magnesium. Amino acids. At one point I was swallowing two heaped teaspoons of Icelandic volcanic ash morning and night.

A lot of these were soothing but nothing really worked long term. And my insomnia was becoming debilitating. I was very depressed. I was very thin. I couldn’t concentrate. A quick trip to the GP — followed by a spate of psychiatrists — meant I was prescribed sleeping pills before I’d even sat my GCSEs. In the 15 years since these have included zopiclone and zolpidem, and I’ve taken benzodiazepines such as diazepam too.

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For years these drugs were framed as standard care. Prescribed cautiously, yes, but without moral panic. Now regulators are issuing blanket warnings about dependency. This week it was reported that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency would require patient information leaflets accompanying benzodiazepine tranquillisers and Z-drugs like I used (as well as gabapentinoid painkillers) to carry the warning “May cause addiction, dependence and withdrawal reactions”, as well as issuing stronger advice not to combine the pills with alcohol or share them with others.

In my experience they were always a short-term fix. Almost all worked until they didn’t, and when the dose couldn’t go any higher I was just switched to a different variation.

By my final year of school, the escalation was total. I was chugging prune juice, cold-water plunging, getting acupuncture, spending evenings in sensory-deprivation tanks, having therapy, living on a zero-stimulation diet. I got through my finals by getting up at 1am every day — I mean, I was awake anyway — and learning the entire coursework for that morning’s exam.

Gradually a pattern set in that persisted for a decade: I’d try all the natural remedies and muscle through on little sleep, then the sleep would vanish entirely, I’d go a few days without it and a doctor would prescribe a short course of zopiclone or Valium to reset me. And as I grew up, the insomnia grew more complicated and I became more desperate — it’s thought to affect 37 per cent of adults in the UK — because adulthood comes with jobs, responsibilities, consequences.

It’s said that it takes 72 hours to go mad from sleep deprivation. My record is 69 without sleep. In this state your speech and gait weaken as your brain struggles to find footing. Judgment evaporates; logic goes with it. Then you add sleeping pills.

These medications are meant to last no more than ten hours. But when they’re paired with extreme exhaustion, I’ve found the effects can feel like they linger. I feel sluggish and slow, my tongue is heavy, my emotions blunt. I am more likely to act out of character and the days become blurry and fractured. This is the loop: I don’t sleep, so I take pills; the pills don’t put me to sleep, so my mind unravels; and when morning comes, I wake up impaired by the lack of sleep and the pills.

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A doctor prescribing to a tween in 2010 wouldn’t have bothered to mention risks like mixing Z-drugs or benzodiazepines with alcohol, or not driving or operating heavy machinery. My parents didn’t enquire further because they had a teenage daughter disintegrating before their eyes and a medically trained professional had handed them a lifeline. I was told not to exceed the prescribed daily dosage and that was the end of the warning.

I’m glad that the new warnings are being added although it would be helpful if the move was accompanied by other actions to help people like me. The warnings come without expanding access to the alternatives they recommend instead; the waiting time for individual insomnia-targeted CBT on the NHS is 55 weeks. I don’t want endless prescriptions. I want sleep.

There’s only so much one person can do and I feel staggeringly weighed down by the fact that I’m doing all of it and it rarely makes a difference: I don’t smoke, I don’t do drugs, I limit alcohol and caffeine, I exercise hard, I work harder, my stress management is exquisite. I have creative outlets, sleep hygiene, a clean diet, even my sex life is part of my sleep schedule — and still I can’t sleep.

Most people have to spend 13 hours a day with themselves. I often have to spend 24, regularly cycling between insomnia and medication — and I’m meant to believe that a beefed-up warning label, added this late, is the thing that will finally keep me safe?