It is 11:30 p.m. After an hour of reading on my couch — the bed is reserved for sleep, said the doctor — I begin to feel my eyes closing. Quickly, I need to go to bed. After a well-rehearsed ritual, I lie down full of hope: "I will sleep at least... 6 hours, a good restorative sleep!" The hours pass: 1:30 a.m., 2 a.m., 2:30 a.m. Walking while counting the lit windows; deep breathing; listening to The Count of Monte Cristo in audio book (it is said that it lulls)... Nothing works, even the podcast Soporifique, Histoires ennuyeuses pour s'endormir dedicated to industrial carpet cleaning techniques. I will finally fall asleep around 5 a.m., lying on the cold floor, whose discomfort causes this little bicycle in my head to derail like a crazy cyclist. Daytime colonizes my nights. The next day, I will painfully get up around 7:30 a.m. with a jackhammer in my head and the feeling of acting in a movie with a few seconds of delay compared to the other actors. The whole day will be a struggle to manage to think and accomplish the tasks of daily life. Welcome to the wonderful world of insomnia! Having talked about it (a lot) around me, I discovered that I was not the only one suffering from what some already call "the new disease of the century." Indeed, according to the latest barometer from the National Institute of Sleep and Vigilance (INVS), a third of people aged 18 to 79 complain of insomnia issues, whether it be problems falling asleep or nighttime awakenings. Sleep is not an individual matter nor a refuge from the world. Claire Pagès explains in her latest book, Dormir. Essai de philosophie sociale (Vrin, 2026): "Sleep is first of all an experience, [...] experience of a particular bodily schema of the sleeping body, experience of a suitable or disturbing environment, experience of a place." Sleep is therefore also an experience inscribed in a historical and social context: "One observes no cancellation of the condition of precariousness, night worker, woman, incarcerated person or person on the street. Sleepers do not fall into the same sleep, but continue to be the object of specific solicitations: they continue to carry into their sleep concerns related to their social being." From this, insomnia can very often be assimilated to a "psychosocial" disorder, which is explained by "an improper sleep environment" and "a psychological imbalance," without being able to clearly distinguish the two. This dimension allows for a better understanding of why modern insomnia is often associated with the advent of industrial society. For historian Roger Ekirch (The Great Transformation of Sleep, 2021), it would be particularly the result of the disappearance, in the 19th century, of biphasic sleep, which he considers more natural: before the industrial revolution, sleep was divided into two phases, interrupted by an hour or two of activity around midnight. With the development of artificial lighting, city dwellers got used to shifting their bedtime and extending the first sleep, which became sleep as a whole. At the same time, the industrial ethic of efficiency and productivity contributed to valuing an earlier morning awakening. This new relationship with sleep led to the emergence in the first half of the 20th century of a new market: that of insomnia treatment. A century later, the problem has not disappeared. According to American essayist Jonathan Crary (24/7. Capitalism on the Attack of Sleep, 2014), sleep is even more than ever threatened. In its deregulated version, the capitalist system, for reasons of profitability, simply no longer sees the interest in sleeping: markets are active 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Infrastructure allows for continuous work and consumption, while screens pour out a continuous flow of notifications and information. In this world without rest, time must be optimized and every minute occupied. However, "when one no longer has personal time, one no longer has the desire to fall asleep, or at least sleep evades because it is felt as a dead time, a threat in relation to the sum of things still to be done, the notifications that continue to arrive without respite," summarizes David Le Breton (Sleep, an Anthropology, Métailié, 2026). I live in this state every night. To the point of feeling that my brain has gotten used to waking up to get its share of activity. Insomnia has become a system of which we are consenting victims: it structures our lives and occupies our conversations. "How are you? Tired..."