The plight of Lisa Holland, from Chesterfield in Derbyshire, may strike a chord.
" I just stopped sleeping," she says. Her insomnia had worsened to the point where she was only getting a few hours of shut-eye per night.
Matters came to a head in the early hours of a particularly bad night back in 2016.
The sleepless hours ticked by as a 90-minute motorway drive to Ms Holland's senior job in the live events' industry loomed in the morning - a potentially dangerous journey for someone suffering sleep deprivation.
"I was just pacing around in my bedroom," says Lisa. "I caught myself in the reflection, and I just looked like a zombie, just walking in circles. And I thought... what are you doing? This is ridiculous." Lisa's experience is becoming increasingly common.
Almost three quarters of people in the UK (71%) don't get the recommended 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night, according to a study last year by insurance group Direct Line. It found that one in seven were getting less than five hours.
Could an increased use of apps and other technology designed to help us get to sleep be the solution? Many of us seem to think so.
In total, the global sleep technology sector was worth $15bn (£12.4bn) last year. The same report predicts that it will jump to $67bn by 2030.
Sleep issues can be caused by a wide variety of factors, including stress, shift work and caffeine or alcohol consumption. If you're part of the "insomniac army", you may be reading this through a haze of fatigue, mental fogginess or - hopefully not - grumpiness.
And that spills over to the economy. One report says that sleep deprivation costs the UK up to £40bn a year in lost productivity.
It is of course not just a British problem. A third of Americans don't get enough sleep, according to the US's Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, which says the situation threatens the nation's health.
But of course none of this was on Lisa's mind when she was forced to confront her problem. All she knew was that she needed help.
Her doctor initially prescribed a short course of sleeping tablets - which would knock her out for a few hours at a time, but didn't guarantee quality rest.
She eventually discovered the phenomenon of sleep stories - which are soothing tales provided via apps and podcasts. She opted for those on the meditation app and website Calm.
"I sleep so much better now," she says. "Even if I've got a lot on at work, and I'm thinking about various things - like what I've got to do tomorrow," she says. "I think it's a comfort blanket."
So most nights, she opens the app on her phone, selects a bedtime story, and lets it play through the speaker.
"I think it's the tone of the voices, how they slow their voices down and leave longer gaps between sentences," she says. "I think it does something to your thinking and listening brain."
More and more of us who struggle to get to sleep are a turning to tech for help, and it's not just about soothing bedtime stories.
The burgeoning sleep technology market includes devices to track our slumber patterns, apps providing restful mediation, as well as services to manage medical disorders like sleep apnea or narcolepsy.
Such tech is now being recommended by health agencies. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, part of NHS England, last year recommended that people suffering from insomnia try an app called Sleep.
Sleep has a virtual sleep assistant called "The Prof". Powered by AI software, he aims to help users get to sleep more easily.
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