I’ve been sleep talking for 23 years – can doctors help me finally stop?

It’s 3am. A normal Tuesday night. My housemates are asleep, all is quiet and dark; no one stirs. Except, apparently, me. My 23-year-long sleep talking problem was never something that bothered me, but that was until I started recording my nocturnal monologues and heard the kind of things I was saying. Such as tonight’s snippet, in which my normal cheery voice is replaced by some kind of hoarse monster from Paranormal Activity. “Why are you dead?” I snap, in the actual dead of night. It was – if you’ll excuse the pun – a bit of a wakeup call. 

As I say, my sleep talking was generally something I was at peace with. My school reports said I nattered all day, so it made sense that I did the same thing at night. Plus, it seemed to be a crowd-pleaser when I told over here wouldn’t put a sock in it. And then there was that awkward time I muttered “I love you” to a guy I’d started dating, which was way too early to be dropping the L bomb.