Sominex Nights

I had 9 hours of uninterrupted sleep last night and I could not feel any worse. Why? Last night was the end of 2 weeks of pure holiday bliss where I naturally acquired a really bad sleeping pattern. How bad? I would naturally go to bed around 4.30am and would never see the day before 2pm. Every year, it's the same. After 2 days of holidays, I just naturally morph into an owl and spend most of the night awake. Being a 9 to 5 girl, I was dreading going to back to work and not looking forward to it, purely because of my sleeping pattern being totally out of synch or attached to a different timezone almost! This year, I thought I would take action and have a sleeping tablet to help going back to bed at a more normal time. On recommendation of @jaynee_t, I went to Boots and bought a little box of Sominex (£3.59 for a box of 8) and wanted to share my experience with you.

What it says on the packet:

Sominex is a night time sleep aid to relieve occasional sleeplessness. Sominex is for those occasions when you cannot get to sleep because your natural routine is disturbed. For temporary (short-term) relief only. Sominex contains Promethazine Hydrochloride. This is an antihistamine which also has a sedative effect, making it a useful sleep aid.


This was a first for me and I've never taken any sleeping tablets before. I was extremely dubious about its effects, and was curious to see whether it would knock me out as my friend @jaynee_t reported. I took 2 tablets (recommended dose was 1) and I am happy to report it that it worked, it worked very well indeed.


But it wasn't without a conscious effort for me. I was hoping it would knock me out, it didn't. I had to make the effort to leave my phone aside, stop playing with it, tweeting etc otherwise, I am not sure I would have fallen asleep ever. When I woke up this morning, I felt like I was hungover, I felt like I had been sleeping for 2 hours. I was happy I managed to go to bed early (10pm is an absolute record for me) but I felt dreadful when I woke up, absolutely dreadful. Was it the result of taking 2 tablets instead of 1? I don't know, maybe. But what I know is that I could have slept for a whole 6 more hours. Overall, I am beyond happy about sominex. I can't believe how powerful it was but there is only so much a sleeping aid can do and it will take more than 1 early night to fix the damages I've done for the past 2 weeks to my sleeping pattern.