The beckoning of a comfortable bed promises a deep sleep and a refreshed, alert body the following morning. Anyone who has experienced a restless night can attest to the lethargy and moodiness associated with sleep deprivation. But, what happens when sleep deprivation is a persistent evil toying with the mind repetitively for weeks, months, or even years?

Insomnia has a vicious way of altering its shape from restlessness into a perverse form of physical and mental misery. Sleep deprivation was used as a form of torture by the KGB, and in Japanese POW camps, for a very good reason. Reports of its use in Guantanamo Bay show it is still a favoured form of torture in the twenty-first century. Why wouldn’t it be? Deny someone sleep for a few days and pretty soon the mind goes out on its own agenda and the prisoner is revealing top-secret information while submerged in a sleep-deprived psychosis.