Candlelight milk and honey: An immediate remedy for 4am anxiety

I’m having a really bad night when I begin to hear the barking of distant dogs and the intermittent lonely car engine that must brave their start to a still dark day. It’s encroaching on 4am – dawn – and I have yet to catch a few good winks, never mind 40 of them.

Yesterday was one of those days that leads into the type of night where my mind refuses to come to rest. She’s trapped in a body that’s strung out with tension, muscles spasming their protest to a day not well lived. Before you think it; yes I do meditate regularly. In another post I’ll write about how meditation doesn’t magically make all your anxiety go away – but yes, it helps.

If by 9 I’m not beginning to let the motor unwind naturally by setting down the things of the day, of life, deadlines, bank statements and expectations – mainly the self imposed ones – then I can almost guarantee that I won’t be able to find sleep that night. 

I know this about myself, especially at these dreary dawn hours when it amazes me how I can reacquaint myself with this knowing and also refuse to craft a consistent and quietly consenting routine around it.

I have stubbornness issues, what can I say? Capricorn must be in my House of Self Loathing and Obstinance. 

Normally when sleep utterly evades me on these agonising nights of mind games, I turn to sleepcasts and wind down meditations. But when it gets to the 5th or 6th 40 min sleep cast and I’m still tossing and turning, part of me knows I’m wrestling with a loosing battle.

First rule of sleep: the harder you try the more elusive those bloody prancing sheep.

Tissue salts for anxiety

Now, there’s only one thing that can help me now. Tissue salts and honey milk. It’s a simple recipe and it’s best made by candle light; not because of loadshedding*, but because anything done by candle light – especially at these sombre hours of solitude – feels like an intervention of emotional kindness versus the cortorising approach of operating theatre-esque bright lights.

If you don’t yet know about the miracle of tissue salts, I’ll leave that educational journey to Margaret Roberts. For my purposes, it’s safe to say, that no other homeopathic medication holds a candle to its tender but reliable efficacy.

The ones you want to be using at these hours of waking darkness are 2,4,6 & 8. No 6 and 8 especially are miracle workers. No, 6 particularly treats nervousness, anxiety and an overthinking mind and No. 8 is exceptional for muscular tension.

Photo by Hans Vivek on Unsplash

Recipe | Honey milk for anxiety

1. First, light that damn candle so that you don’t feel so alone.

2. Next, warm up some milk on the stove. I prefer to use plant milk. Soy milk is nice at night because it’s also somewhat thicker and more filling. (Another fun symptom of being awake at these hours is the incessant rumbling of your stomach, reminding you that you’re miles from a meal and really shouldn’t be awake to experience the pangs of your digestive juices.)

3. On to the tissue salts. I find it best to pop 4 to 6 of each tissue salts mentioned above into a small pestle and mortar. You could use a wooden spoon and a bowl too.

4. Crush them until you get a fine powder.

5. Add them into your hot milk, along with a tsp of honey and a flat tsp of cinnamon.

6. Stir it up well and drink.

7. You should find your way back to sleep in no time. Set an alarm for 9 am so that you get enough sleep to function the next day but not so much that you can’t reattempt to regulate your sleep the following night.

Remember that healthy mind shutting off routine I mentioned above? Meet yourself there. You really do deserve it.

That’s the best thing about tomorrows – you get another chance.

Oh, and don’t forget to blow out the candle.