The Commodity of Sleep

With the insanely busy lives we all live these days, it's no suprise that millions of people have issues with sleep resulting in deprivation. In bed our minds race with what needs to be done tomorrow; we drink too much caffiene; we stay up late finishing late work. Ultimately the thought of getting a full eight hours seems insane. Like many other "disorders" in people's lives, drug companies have found a way into the sleep world. They make simple little pills, like Lunesta and Ambien, and market them with perfection.
Dependency on drugs like these are not the hard part for these companies. Getting people addicted to Lunesta-like pills is as easy as getting someone addicted to cocaine or even alcohol. Everyone is looking for an easy way to relieve the pain of these "disorders", and a legal one can be presented through the media quite easily. Take for instance this ad, put out by Lunesta (see bottom of post). The girl on the left looks misrable, as if she has tossed and turned all night trying to fall asleep. Her face is miserable and she grips her pillow and the blanket in rage. You may be thinking at this point: "Hey, that looks like me, any given day of the week!" Well, this may be true, considering how difficult it can be to fall asleep every night. This is where the drug companies hook you.
The next image is of  the same girl, except this time she is sleeping as sound as can be. Her blankets are perfectly smoothed, her hair is in place, and she even has a little green butterfly at her head to simulate dreaming. In her sleep, the girl smiles. If this doesn't make you want to take sleeping pills, I don't know what could. Don't we all want to have a perfect night's sleep?
By making sleep a commodity, these companies are able to play off one of our most inherent life needs: rest. This is a brilliant consumer approach. It makes us actually believe that to get a good nights sleep we need to have an expensive pill. Is this the truth? People have been sleeping for millions of years, plenty of them without some sort of substance. I do not personally know the key to a good night's sleep, but I think we are being manipulated by these advertisements to think we must spend money to sleep a good eight hours.


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