You thought sleep was the last refuge. You thought sleep was the one thing that couldn’t be packaged or pressed or juiced or diced or Instagrammed and made nice. You thought sleep was safe.

You were wrong.

Where were you when Arianna Huffington invented sleep? How many courses into a dinner party does Huffington get without telling the story of how she woke up in a pool of blood after falling asleep at her desk and hitting her cheekbone? Do her friends text the 💤 emoji under the table? Probably.

Huffington has set up Thrive Global, to help people to go from “surviving to thriving” and, in part, to train them to get better sleep. Except, this isn’t just sleeping better: the movement is known as clean sleeping. #cleansleeping. #sleptclean.

Meanwhile, the Mail this week published an article by Gwyneth Paltrow from her new Goop Clean Beauty book on the “biggest health trend of 2017” – sleep. Paltrow writes: “Sleep plays such a powerful role in determining your appetite and energy levels, and I believe it should be your first priority.”

Let me first say that I like and agree with Paltrow, and Huffington, too. Sleep is incredibly important and, as someone who suffers from chronic insomnia, I know this only too well. I am glad that the importance of shuteye is being recognised. But why does it have to be a trend? It is quite something that being practically unconscious can be monetised. Just as the Brits and Americans turned hygge into A Thing, rather than us all just agreeing that, yes, mulled wine in front of a fire in your socks is quite nice.

But the dominant narrative of sleep has undoubtedly changed. It used to be that people boasted about how much they could achieve on how little sleep. Colleagues spoke of how few hours’ sleep they had – the adult version of talking about how little revision you did before a test. The presentation you did on three hours’ sleep is in the same family of “What? This old thing?” when complimented on a £300 Marant sweater. Or the “I’m so bad at drawing!” before turning the easel to reveal a Picasso.

Now it’s out with the Thatcher-like four power hours and droning on about how CEOs and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs such as Jack Dorsey rise at 5am after a couple of hours because you can sleep when you’re dead. The new boast is all about turning in at 10pm.

If there’s one thing more boring than someone talking about their dreams, it’s someone talking about their sleep. (And, of this, I am guilty.) I have always struggled with sleep. I have tried and tested countless sleep gadgets in my work as a tech journalist. I have trialled glasses that attempted to reset my circadian rhythm by shining blue light into my eyes. I have drowned my pillows in lavender spray and endured the brassy aftertaste of zopiclone. I have grabbed daytime slumber in my boss’s office, at Prague airport, on the floor of a Russian army barracks and the 214 bus. Sometimes I woke up in such bizarre positions or places it was amazing that someone hadn’t drawn chalk around me.

For a few weeks at the beginning of 2016, I slept. Hours. Regularly. “THIS IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE HUMAN” is something I genuinely wanted to shout each morning. I think I had more sleep in that month or so than in the whole past decade. People spoke to me and, for once, their words weren’t bits of bread entering the soupy exhaustion of my brain that I would somehow have to digest and respond to. Sleep made me sharp. Sleep was wiping a misty window. An ice cube on the neck. I could take out three defenders and lob the keeper before breakfast, no problem. But soon I was back to 1am snatches of Twitter, late nights and stress.

It may be that sleep is a luxury that only the wealthy can afford. People not working, say, three jobs. Or not having to get up at ridiculous times for long commutes into cities they cannot afford to live in. Or not lying awake at night stressing about bills and rent. But Huffington and Paltrow are right – we can all make changes.

I would just say that the eye mask you buy doesn’t have to cost £20, nor do you have to rest among seven pillows on the bed of a luxury hotel to get some rest. So, here are a few basic, non-lux, sleep tips:

• It is important to have your bedroom as dark as possible. You don’t even need to invest in thick curtains – just think about the state of the world today.
  
• Leaving your phone outside of your bedroom is a good idea; Trump’s tweets will still be there in the morning, and they will still be as terrifying then.
  
• Keep a sleep diary if you must. Never mention it.
  

And that’s it. The perfect night’s sleep, all without an Instagram filter in sight. Well, one can dream.