If I can go to bed at around 1 or 2am and wake at around 10, I’m fine. But as soon as I have to get up at 7am, and therefore get to sleep earlier, I start having issues. It’s a cyclical thing of worrying that I should be asleep, making it harder to get to sleep, and so on.

Over the years I’ve tried to combat this in all kinds of ways: I rarely drink coffee and don’t drink tea after 4. I’ve tried magnesium, 5HTP and passionflower, valerian, and flower essence drops. I do yoga and take long walks.

At the moment I’m finding Melatonin very effective. It’s a natural hormone that helps regulate your circadian rhythm so that your sleeping pattern is more in sync with sundown and sunrise, like our ancestors. Not that I go to sleep at 6pm – but you get the idea.

Thirty tablets cost $38NZ and the pharmacist has to order it in because he’s not allowed to keep it on premises. Thirty tablets of Triazolam, meanwhile, are subsidized and cost just $3NZ. Triazolam is a benzodiazepine: the same type of tranquilizer as its more famous cousins, Valium and Xanex. Like all benzos, it’s addictive, with a long list of negative side-effects.

Melatonin also has potential side-effects, but why is the natural treatment significantly more expensive than the artificial drug?

Similarly, my doctor mentioned it was becoming harder for patients to get free counselling, and yet the government was simultaneously discouraging doctors from prescribing meds – and so doctors are placed in a quandary as to how to help people in traumatic, or stressful, situations.

It’s annoying, too, that bottled water and fresh juice are so much more expensive than sugary soft drinks. Or that brown bread is more expensive than white. The list goes on.

What society needs is more communal gardens to get people growing their own fruit and vegetables, which would help their health but also their sense of well-being and connection with the planet. We need more free counseling services for the confused among us, not only the suicidal.

And we need subsidies on supplements that have been proven to work (bearing in mind that a bunch of minerals and vitamins have been proven no more effective than a placebo).

Most importantly, we need to get out and see the flowers, not just sit inside watching TV and scrolling around online.