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My neighbour's bin blew over in the wind last Thursday. I was going to walk past — I'd just nipped out for the paper — but her front door opened before I got level with it. Three hours later I understood why she hadn't been sleeping for three years. Her name's Eileen. Seventy-four. She's lived in the house next door since 1971. I've lived next to her for six years and the most I'd ever said to her was "alright?" across the hedge. She came out in a dressing gown over her nightie. Slippers. Hair in a loose plait. She saw the bin, she saw me, and she said: "Oh, not again." I picked it up. Started gathering the recycling. She stood watching me, one hand on the doorframe. "It was Frank's job," she said. "The bins. Always. Thirty-eight years of putting them out on the Wednesday night so the Thursday morning didn't catch us out. He did it the week he died. Wheeled them down the path like it was any other Wednesday." I hadn't known Frank. I'd seen him a few times in the garden — tall, white-haired, always a cardigan. I'd assumed he'd gone into a home. I hadn't realised he'd died. "Three years ago this February," she said. "Heart attack. In the kitchen. I was upstairs. I heard a noise and I came down and he was on the floor by the cooker." I didn't know what to say so I said nothing. I put the last bottle in the bin and stood it upright. "Cup of tea?" she said. "You'll have missed your paper now anyway." I went in. Her kitchen was spotless. The kind of spotless that comes from a woman who has nothing else to do at 4am. One mug on the draining board. A neat row of bills on the table. A kitchen calendar on the wall with GP, pharmacy and two appointments in careful pencil. She made tea in a pot. Proper leaves, warmed the pot first. Frank had taught her that, she said, when they got married in 1971. He'd said you can't start a marriage with teabags. Then she told me about the sleep. "I haven't slept through a night since Frank died. Not one. I go to bed at ten because that's when we always went. I lie there for a while. I fall asleep for maybe an hour. And then I'm awake." I asked what the GP had said. She laughed. A short, tired laugh. "Sleeping tablets. Zopiclone. I've been taking them for two and a half years. I take half a tablet. I get about five hours. I wake up at six feeling like someone's hit me with a frying pan. I walk around like I'm wading through treacle until about eleven, when I start to feel vaguely human, and then by two in the afternoon I want to go back to bed." She stirred her tea. "My daughter-in-law — Claire, she's a pharmacist — came to see me in the summer. She saw the zopiclone on the side. She said, 'Mum, how long have you been on these?' I told her. She was quiet for a bit. Then she said, 'Nobody should be on these for two years. You need to come off them.'" Claire, it turned out, had done some reading. Not the daytime-telly kind of reading — actual pharmacology journals. She'd come back two weeks later with printouts. "She told me the zopiclone was causing the morning fog. She told me it wasn't really giving me sleep — it was giving me sedation, which isn't the same thing. Sedated brains don't do the repair work that sleeping brains do. She said that's why I always felt worse the longer I was on them." Eileen looked at me. "She also said I was probably deficient in magnesium. Which I'd never heard of in my life. She said older people lose magnesium faster. Alcohol depletes it, which I don't drink, but she said lots of medications do too. Including some that Frank had been on at the end. Including some that I'm on now for my blood pressure." She went to the dresser and brought down a small box. "Claire bought me these. Healthy Metal. Magnesium glycinate in sachets. Tart lemon. You mix them with cold water. I thought it was one of her health fads at first — she's always on about some kombucha or other. But she sat with me at this table the night she brought them round and she talked me through the science. The glycinate form actually reaches the nervous system. The other kinds you buy in Boots don't. She was very particular about that." "She said to try it for a week instead of the zopiclone. If it didn't work I could go back to the tablets. But she wanted me to try." I asked what happened. "First night I took it, I slept seven hours. Seven. I woke up at five and I thought — have I died? Is this what being dead feels like? Because I'd forgotten what being properly rested was. I lay in bed and I didn't know what to do with myself." "Second night — same. Third night — the same. I rang Claire crying. I hadn't slept that well in ten years. Longer. Since the children were small." She looked at her hands. "I'm off the zopiclone now. Completely. I taper-ed over three weeks with the Healthy Metal helping, and I haven't taken one in two months. And do you know what the most frightening thing is? I think some of what I thought was grief was actually sleep deprivation. I thought I was going mad. I thought I was losing my mind because Frank was gone. Some of it was. But a lot of it — the confusion, the flatness, the not being able to finish a sentence — that was the tablets and the deficit and nobody thought to check." She looked at me properly. "You look tired, love. You sleep alright?" I thought about lying. I don't know why you lie about it — everybody else is the same. But I did tell her. Two years of broken sleep. Wine at night to switch off. Waking at three. Eileen shook her head slowly. "Same mechanism, love. Yours is the wine, mine was the zopiclone. Different drugs, same hole in the bucket. You can't pour magnesium out of yourself every night and expect to still have enough to sleep on." She pressed a sachet into my hand. "Start tonight. Don't wait. The free trial's five nights. My Claire set me up with the subscription after because I didn't want to stop, but you can just try the five. No commitment." I had it that night instead of the wine. Sharp, cold, a bit like a gin and tonic without the gin. Sat on the sofa at half past eight. Waited for the itchy feeling that usually sends me to the fridge. It didn't come. Or rather, it came and it went, and I didn't follow it. Went to bed at half ten. Slept through. Woke at six. That was four weeks ago. I've been through three weeks of subscription now. The 3am wake-ups stopped by night four. My husband asked me last Sunday what had changed. I told him about Eileen. He said he'd noticed I wasn't shouting at the kids in the mornings anymore. I took some round to Eileen's on Saturday. A tin of biscuits and a card from my daughter that I'd made her do because I wanted Eileen to see a child's handwriting in her house. She cried when she opened it. She said nobody had sent her anything in a child's handwriting since her grandson turned eighteen. Her bins have gone out every Wednesday night since. She told me. She said, "I can do the bins again now, love. I've got the energy for it. It was never Frank's job to do them. It was his job to do them because I was too tired to remember. I'd got too tired to remember, and I didn't know why." I'm telling you because if you're the person who can't remember why you're so tired — if you've been on sleeping tablets for longer than you meant to be, or pouring yourself a glass of wine every evening to shut your brain up — the mechanism is the same. Your magnesium is being stripped out and nobody is telling you. Healthy Metal. Free 5-night trial. £3.95 shipping. No subscription. Magnesium glycinate, tart lemon, one glass in the evening. The drink that does what wine and sleeping pills promise and don't deliver. Tell somebody after. Like Claire told Eileen. Like Eileen told me. https://www.healthy-metal.com/pages/5-night-trial P.S. — Eileen's pharmacist daughter-in-law, Claire, was the hero of this story. She's the one who did the reading. She's the one who came round with the printouts. If you know an older person on sleeping tablets, you might be the Claire in their life. Print this. Show them. Make them a cup of tea. P.P.S. — Five-night free trial is how I started. Eileen started with it too — the trial, then she upgraded. The point of the trial is you don't have to be sure. You just have to be curious. £3.95 shipping. No autoship. No small print. P.P.P.S. — I wasn't going to stop and pick up her bin. I was going to walk past because I was thinking about my own morning. I'm glad I didn't. Pick up the bin. Say yes to the cup of tea. https://www.healthy-metal.com/pages/5-night-trial