I recently went to a cocktail party in Paris that featured an electric violinist, a tarot-card reader, and bowls of chicken fingers lining the banquet tables. By the time I returned to my room, at a hotel called La Fantaisie, I was hungry, what with the chicken fingers I didn’t eat, and a little jet-lagged. On my pillow was a small packet, which immediately lit up the chocolate receptors in my brain. No such luck. Because this was 2024 and the hotel was new and stylish, the packet held sleep gummies. Next to it was a satin eye mask embroidered with the words Bonne Nuit. And a bonne nuit it was.
The quest for a better sleep is everywhere, but it wasn’t always so pressing. In the 90s, power players bragged about how little they slept (four hours, said Martha Stewart; three, one-upped Arianna Huffington). In the 2010s, it was how much (8 hours, Huffington revised; 12 on average, said LeBron James). And just last year, Dakota Johnson jacked that to 14. Why bother getting out of bed? Besides, isn’t everyone except James walking around in somnambulist cosplay anyway, passing off their pajamas and nightgowns as legit garb?
But now there’s nuance. There’s research. There’s the irrefutability of data. Those who know about these things are pursuing a more enlightened brand of sleep. Not quantity but quality. Deep sleep.
This special sleep has become a luxury item to go with a vintage Birkin, a seat on a spaceship, and a custom super-yacht. “It’s a status symbol,” says Milton Pedraza, chief executive of the Luxury Institute, which studies the habits of the ultra-wealthy for businesses that serve them. (Don’t we all?) His clients in the medical and hospitality worlds are “adopting it as something they want to offer,” Pedraza says.
Concierge medicine is at the ready. Dr. Jordan Shlain, the founder of Private Medical, with offices in rich-people cities—let’s call them enclaves—throughout the U.S., tells his members, “Sleep is the thing.... Sleep is the most foundational component of your waking life and your longevity.” In a panel discussion he hosted called “Doctors with Drinks,” Dr. Shlain focused on sleep, sex, and psychedelics—the three s’s—yielding much of the floor to Dr. Tony Masri, a sleep doctor and neurologist whose Helyx Health clinic addresses mental health and sleep.
People are so preoccupied with sleep that Dr. Masri can barely qualify as a Doctor with Drinks. “I can’t go to a cocktail party without people telling me about their sleep,” he says.
This special sleep has become a luxury item to go with a vintage Birkin, a seat on a spaceship, and a custom super-yacht.
There’s logic behind the obsession. “Anyone interested in longevity and wellness is interested in sleep,” Dr. Masri tells me. “We used to think of sleep as one of the pillars of health. We now realize it’s not a pillar, it’s the foundation. If you’re having problematic sleep, deal with it. Really, seriously, get some support, because your nutrition, your exercise, sex, all of that is so secondary to your ability to cope with life if you’re not sleeping well. Sleep is first.”
Dr. Masri thinks about quality and drills down into the REM phase, when the eyes move rapidly, the body is temporarily paralyzed, and the mind dreams. It is also the period when the brain processes information and emotions. “We know REM is better for longevity,” he says. “The more REM you have, the better. The less you have, the more risk there is for an earlier death.”
Naturally, that finding freaks people out sufficiently. Hence the cooling-and-heating mattresses, the hyperbaric oxygen chambers, the blackout shades, the white-noise machines, the candles, the lotions, and TikTok’s viral “sleepy-girl mocktail” (magnesium, cherry juice, and sparkling water). “I have a hard time believing that your sleep is going to get better when the latest start-up mattress is in your life,” Dr. Masri says.
The whole notion of trying to hack your way into a night of quality sleep has some sleep experts concerned.
“I see this trend towards ‘How can I get less sleep but better sleep?’ among people who are trying to be bionic in some way and want more time in the day,” says Janet Kennedy, a clinical psychologist and founder of NYC Sleep Doctor. “The idea of needing to spend thousands of dollars on products to polish something that isn’t tarnished, I think it’s making people more anxious than they need to be.”
Dr. Masri starts his treatment by eliminating things that cause sleep problems rather than adding things that may or may not help. And guess what’s No. 1 on the do-not-do list? Yes, alcohol—something his patients would rather not hear. Too bad. “I have not seen a case where someone’s sleep has not gotten better when they cut out alcohol.” He also moves things that aren’t so enticing earlier in the day: B vitamins, for instance (“They’re often in energy drinks”), big meals, and, more obviously, caffeine. “People say, ‘I can have a cup of coffee and fall asleep,’” Dr. Masri tells me. And I immediately text his quote to my partner, who has used those exact words when he orders an after-dinner espresso. “It can be detrimental even if you fall asleep. It can affect your sleep architecture.”
You also might want to take away sleep medications and those melatonin gummies you subscribe to on Amazon. Good-bye, delicious melatonin gummies. “Melatonin is a hormone that regulates your circadian rhythm, and we produce it ourselves,” says Kennedy. “It doesn’t need to be augmented.” The experts believe that melatonin helps with jet lag when the body’s natural production is disrupted. Otherwise, “I’ve seen melatonin cause early-morning waking and night waking when people take it too late. And then they’re hungover during the day.” This I text to my sons because I’m that much fun.
Ultimately, the gurus I spoke to believe that the best sleep is a medication-free sleep—whether that medication is Ambien, Klonopin, Xanax, or over-the-counter Sominex, Unisom, Benadryl, Tylenol PM, or melatonin. Much of their work involves weaning people off these many substances. “For example, benzodiazepines suppress REM sleep. So that’s not good long-term,” says Kennedy. “Even if they have a bad night, a bad night without medication feels way better the next day than a bad night with medication.” Dr. Masri turns to medication only as a last resort “because the worst thing is not to sleep.”
A better solution is cognitive behavioral therapy, which can change the thought process and activity around sleep. Dr. Masri recommends weekly C.B.T. sessions for four to eight weeks. And for couples whose sleep is incompatible—Cameron Diaz recently told Molly Sims on her podcast, Lipstick on the Rim, that she and her husband, Benji Madden, sleep in separate bedrooms, what’s known as a “sleep divorce”—Dr. Masri suggests couples therapy, which is a lot cheaper than an actual divorce.
All this effort to track and optimize sleep is clearly causing its own mess. And trying to Dakota Johnson your way into feeling rested isn’t a solution. “I see people all the time who spend 10 hours in bed getting a lot of fragmented sleep,” says Kennedy. “I help them realize that maybe they only need seven hours and that trying to get eight is actually creating a bigger problem.”
The average adult needs between seven and nine hours of sleep, according to the National Sleep Foundation. But experts tend to be allergic to the words “average” and “need” when fused together. Says Kennedy, “Plenty of people are on the lower end of that or don’t even need a full seven.” People look at the range and think “more is better, which is not necessarily the case,” she adds. Instead, Dr. Masri suggests patients try to understand their own sleep needs by analyzing their habits on the weekend: Do you sleep an extra hour on Sunday? Do you need an alarm to wake up on Monday? If so, you may be sleep-deprived and need to go to bed earlier.
It seems as if today’s most prevailing sleep disorder is the one caused by the pursuit of a better night’s rest. “People feel like their sleep is broken when it’s not,” says Kennedy. Our problem isn’t necessarily the lack of sleep or sleeping pills, which plagued us in the past: it’s performance anxiety.
Kennedy has words that are as comforting as a bedtime story. “You’re going to have nights that feel amazing, and you’re going to have nights that feel O.K., and you’re going to have some nights that are more frustrating,” she says. “There’s such a reduced tolerance for discomfort in our culture right now. Even in our language, we’re supposed to be 100 percent all the time.”
Her solution is to build resilience. “If you have a bad day after a rough night and let your body get itself back on track, you’re ahead of the game.” Imagine such a thing! Dr. Masri utters words that sound like heresy for a sleep doctor: “You want to sleep to live, not live to sleep.” Bonne nuit.
Linda Wells is the Editor at Air Mail Look