3 a.m. is a special kind of hell
The witching hour of insomnia. But what if disrupted sleep was actually biologically natural?
At 3 a.m., I am a ghost, wandering around my apartment in the dark.
3:30 a.m. I will sometimes read. Often, I’m doomscrolling. My browser tabs are a constellation of endless distractions that reflect fragments of my attention. Spare me the cries that blue light exposure at this hour is the worst. I’m well aware, but I light up the screens anyway.
4 a.m. I’m back in bed and counting slowly to one hundred and back down to one again. I don’t know if counting sheep actually works, but I’ll try anything to push my thoughts out toward the edges.
And then, finally—but not always—the moment where I’ll feel myself drifting.
If you are a chronic insomniac, you know that the hours between 3 and 4 a.m. is a special kind of hell. I could do a roll call on social media at 3:30 a.m. (and I have, many times) and be met with a chorus of fellow insomniacs—mostly women—wide awake and commiserating through this witching hour of sleeplessness.
But why 3 a.m.? Why is it always this particular hour, with some variances on either end?
On a biological level, this is the time when the body’s circadian low point meets the slow rise in cortisol levels. Sleep fragmentation during REM cycles makes it harder for insomniacs to re-enter into sleep. On a psychological level, it’s prime time for existential worry because there are few external simulators to distract us from emotional spiraling.
None of this is new information to me, but what I learned next blew my mind: in pre-industrial times, waking up in the middle of the night wasn’t unusual or considered a failure of sleep. It was part of the night’s natural rhythm, a lucid state between dreaming and waking.