Your sleep schedule

Since the inside of your body is like the Middle East, with all the chemicals fighting each other and everything always on the verge of total collapse, you'll find that sleep is unpredictable and usually only comes when you don't want it.

You load your body full of caffeine in the morning, to stay alive, and then you slowly add more and more chemicals to the mix throughout the day: nicotine, antacids, analgesics, alcohol, anti-depressants, sedatives, and more caffeine. You've become so adept at managing this balance, that you probably know instinctively when your body needs a little pick-me-up, or put-me-down. But when it's time to sleep, all this better living through modern chemistry is going to complicate things. Also, since the power of everybody's livers is slightly different, like microwaves, it's impossible to know exactly how much of any one chemical you need to take in order to have its effects kick in or wear off in time for sleep.

You have a couple of choices now, the best of which is obviously to take over-the-counter sleep aides, no matter what else you've put into your body. Look at it this way: it's over-the-counter, so it can't possibly hurt you. It doesn't matter that your blood is more man-made at this point than natural--WalMart would never sell you something that could possibly hurt you if you take the recommended (or just slightly higher) dosage.

Another choice you have is to try to flush out your system with a bunch of water or maybe charcoal. But the problem with this idea is that it might work. And then you'll be left with a body in its natural state. And that's sick.

You can also just resign yourself to never sleeping well at night and spend most of your time during the day trying to find a place where you can take a 10-minute nap. Some good places for this are: your car, the cold linoleum tile of the office bathroom, the spot under your desk where you're pretty sure no one can see you, a nearby park, any vacant lot, a relatively clean dumpster, the roof of a building, the cold linoleum tile of the gym bathroom, and the subway.