I mention the Calm app in my last post "New eye glasses, pillow, and mattress" which is part of my "Why the headaches?" series.

I heard about the Calm app and installed it from the iOS store on my iPhone. I just did the trial for a month or so before purchasing a 1 years subscription. The free trial came with only 4 "sleep stories". What is a sleep story? Think of it like a mommy reading her toddler a bedtime story. Only, I was the toddler, and the mommy was some stranger reading me a story to help me fall asleep. Sleep is so important, so I knew I needed a non-medicine way to help me fall asleep.

Let's take a step back. I suffer from occasional anxiety, such as when flying on an airplane, so I have a prescription for Xanax, and found myself taking a pill before bed recently to calm my thoughts so I could sleep. I realized that I hated relying on medication, so I stopped. Introduce: the Calm app.

So, the free trial was lovely until I got bored of the same 4 stories. I received an email from the app with a promotional offer. I received that offer email like 4 times and finally the last time I received, I said "let's do it!" Believe it or not, but I have never ever paid for an iPhone app. Not even a .99 cent app. But what did I do? I purchased a 1 years subscription for $40 for this Calm app, putting all my eggs in one basket.

Let's just say it helps a lot and I love it! While it helps me to go to bed every night and I pick a different story quite often, it doesn't keep me asleep like the Xanax did because it only helps me to fall asleep. The good news is that my husband doesn't care that he will suddenly hear a calm voice talking about Queen Victoria or a dragon in a cellar, at 2:00am. The stories range in duration from 12 minutes to 40 minutes. My favorite is a story that is 25+ minutes at the start of the night because I really need that long story. Then, if I need another story in the middle of the night I do about 15-20 minutes. I have found limited stories, at least the ones that appeal to me, to be at the 25+ minutes, so there is some repetition, but overall, it's enough.

The concept of the app is fantastic, obviously. However, the search filter for searching the stories needs a little work. I find that I take too long searching for stories, which is not great at 2:00am, and I wish there were some more app filters to utilize.