Famed singer Madonna’s struggles with OCD and insomnia! What has her gay brother Christopher to say about his sister’s insomnia?
- The American singer, Madonna is a songwriter, actress, and businesswoman.
- She is the Queen of Pop.
- She released her first album in 1983 followed by a series of hit albums.
Similarly, she also did well in the acting line and won a Golden Globe Award for the best actress in 1996. She is the wealthiest woman in the music industry. But wealth could not buy her sleep!
Madonna talks about her OCD and insomnia
Madonna is known to be suffering from insomnia. Insomnia is a sleep disorder in which the person either is unable to fall asleep or to have continuous sleep.
In an interview given to Rolling Stone in 2015 at her home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Madonna talks about her sleep disorder.
She says:
“I have OCD.”
She continues:
“I’m complaining the same way about not being able to sleep in 1991 as I am right now.”
Regarding when her insomnia started, Madonna says:
“Unconsciously, probably when my mother died. And sleep’s never been an easy thing for me.”
Discussing her routine, Madonna said:
“If I can get six hours, I can get through the day. But because I want to have a career and also be an attentive mother, I tend to take a lot of breaks and deal with my kids, and then go back to work. In the recording studio, I never finish before 2 a.m., and then I have to get up at 7 a.m. for my kids. So there’s a lot of sleep deprivation.”
Madonna is not very fond of people who sleep a lot. She says of them:
“You start to go crazy if you don’t sleep. But I definitely don’t understand people who sleep 12 hours a day. I see that as the supreme indulgence, people sleeping until noon. How dare they? I never did that when I was a teenager…”
She says that she always had goals and she cannot relate to people who have no driving force.
Madonna’s gay brother talks about his sister’s insomnia
Madonna’s estranged brother Christopher Ciccone opens up about her sister’s sleep problem and OCD in his book ‘Life with my sister Madonna’. He writes:
“Schedule, in fact, is my sister’s middle name. Up at nine in the morning, in bed by eleven at night, with every hour in between planned by her as rigidly as any military campaign. With her mania for making lists, for running her life according to a timetable, in another incarnation Madonna could easily have run a prison, directed airport traffic, or been a five-star general. Sadly for her, though, her nights can’t be structured or played out according to a strict schedule, because she is an insomniac and rarely sleeps more than three hours each night.”
Christopher adds that he came to know about Madonna’s career when they shifted to Manhattan during the start of her career. At that time, she had an unquenchable desire for fame and fortune which led to her insomnia.
Her brother adds:
“Her tightly wound high-octane energy has meant that when she is on the road, she sometimes needs a sleep aid.”
Christopher explains:
“The pressure to perform, to entertain, to sustain, and to simply remain Madonna is immeasurable, and even I—who am now the closest person on earth to the Queen of the World—can’t truly fathom how it feels to walk in her size-seven shoes, stalked by so much expectation, so much adoration, so many who love her, so many who hate her, so many who long for her to fall flat on her famous face.”
What are OCD and insomnia?
OCD is an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Is a kind of mental disorder in which people feel the urge to check back on things they have performed in the near past. They do or think repeatedly.
They are unable to control their acts of thoughts beyond a short period of time. The cause of this disorder is largely unknown but genetics and stress have been found to contribute.
Treatment is mainly in the form of counseling. Some drugs work to control this disorder but not without side effects. Such people are usually a perfectionist, meticulous, ritualistic, absorbed, and focused.
Similarly, insomnia is an inability to fall or remain asleep. It is usually stress-related, but physical problems in an individual could also lead to it. Lifestyle changes need to be implemented to overcome this sleep disorder.
Sunlight, exercises, and a quiet and dark bedroom would aid in overcoming insomnia. Sleeping pills can be given but are best avoided lest they lead to habituation or overdose.
Short Bio of Madonna
Michigan-born Madonna is a singer and a songwriter. Additionally, she is also an actress and a businesswoman. Madonna is an American national.
Grammy award-winning singer Madonna is popular for her songs like “Take a Bow”, “4 minutes”, “Like a Virgin”, “Like a Prayer”, and so on.
Presently, she is a prominent name in the music industry as a legendary figure in the pop genre. Furthermore, she is also well-known as the “The Queen of Pop”, and “The Material Girl”. More Bio…