My initial reaction was to chalk it up to getting old, one too many drinks and possibly dabbling in chemicals my brain had no business in playing with. However, the older I get, the more tired and stressed out I get, the more times my body slips into exhaustion – as in the chronic fatigue kind – I realize, that I need a lot more sleep.

By my own right, I’m an office champ. I stay out late, binge drink regularly and manage to make it to my morning appointments, be it work or play, hungover hell or high water, I’m there, faking a drunken haze or not, gritting my teeth and holding my physical wits to their end.

See I used to think that was cool. But it’s become more of a visage. Smoking looks cool, but the things it does to your body, not to mention that it’s a dirty habit, isn’t technically cool at all. It makes you smell terrible, it comes with a horrible addiction and kills a lot of people, starting with a slow painful sickly decline.

When you’re in your twenties you’re the envy of all the cubicle hugging, hung out to dry, broken dream homebodies that praise you in the mornings when they smell that hint of last night’s sordid affair. When you’re in your thirties you become a concern among your peers or a vehicle to their sad and upended days. If you have children, you’re that guy that comes home late to your kids, cheats on his wife and is in dire need of therapy and an intervention.

My liver at one point is going to give up and stop regenerating. I can feel my kidneys some days. It doesn’t hurt, but most people don’t even know where their kidneys are. I can feel them some days. I don’t think of it as a good thing.

Then I read articles like this. Sleep more important than food? You’ve got to be kidding me. Next to drinking, I love food. My weight…issue is mainly due to my love of but not limited to:

1. Food
2. Beer

I often for the sake of fun, take my banner in-hand and wave the almighty flag emblazoned with the motto “We can sleep when we’re dead!” Trot around the rounds of shots and the late night debauchery to keep the energy, momentum and spirit alive. Little do I know that the irony hammer comes crashing down and the very thing I’m striking against is in fact killing me. I used to scoff at those who went to bed before ten. I snickered at those who demanded eight hours of sleep. Now, the Sand Man writhes in retribution as my feeble attempts to find a good night’s rest is in vain. Before I brushed off his efforts to put me to sleep, now I beg for a small dose of that sparkly sleep powder to fill my eyes so that my mind can find some much needed dreaming.

Many of the effects we suffer are invisible. Insufficient sleep, for example, deeply impairs our ability to consolidate and stabilize learning that occurs during the waking day. In other words, it wreaks havoc on our memory.

- TONY SCHWARTZ, Sleep is More Important Than Food

Everything that I’ve come to put together in a whirlwind of a lifestyle is an active contributor to the way I that I feel. I am stuck in my own maelstrom of maladies.

Many people gain weight as they age, too. Interestingly, chronic sleep restriction increases levels of appetite and stress hormones; it also reduces one’s ability to metabolize glucose and increases the production of the hormone ghrelin, which makes people crave carbohydrates and sugars, so they get heavier, which in turn raises the risk of sleep apnea, creating a vicious cycle

- Dr. Charles A. Czeisler, the Baldino Professor of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School

Thirty-three isn’t twenty-three. I make faces when I take shots now. I need glasses to drive at night. My muscles take three days to recover after a tough work out. Yes, I’m getting old – and I’m totally accepting of the fact that I’m expediting the process by mixing a myriad of virulent vices in my office champ way of life. However, as ridiculous as it sounds, it disturbs me most that I’m hammering that final nail in the coffin by not getting enough sleep.