I missed my son's sixth birthday last year.
I was home. I just couldn't get up.
I'd come off three nights in a row. The last call ran into the start of my next shift, so really it was closer to four. I told my wife I needed an hour. She said the party started at two.
She woke me up at four.
I walked into the kitchen and my son was sitting at the table eating leftover cake by himself. He didn't look up. My wife didn't say anything to me, which was worse than if she had.
That was the moment I knew something was wrong with me. Not normal-tired wrong. Something else.
What I thought was wrong
I'd been doing this work for twelve years. Three 12-hour nights a week, sometimes four when we were short. I knew night shift was hard. Everyone knows that. What I didn't get was why I was getting worse at it.
I used to bounce back in a day. Then it was two. Then I started losing whole weekends. By year ten I was sleeping fourteen hours after a run of nights and waking up feeling like I'd been hit by a truck.
So I tried to fix the sleep.
Melatonin first. 3 milligrams. Then 5. Then 10. Helped for about a week. Magnesium glycinate. Ashwagandha. CBD oil. Blackout curtains. Eye mask. Earplugs and a white noise machine. I cut caffeine after my shift. I tried sleeping in two blocks on my days off. I tried sleeping in one big block.
I went to my GP. He told me I needed more sleep. I asked him when.
Every fix worked for a few weeks then stopped. By the time I missed the birthday I'd spent about two grand over three years on stuff that didn't fix what was actually broken.
I felt stupid about it. Like I was the only one who couldn't figure it out.
The turn
There's a guy at my station. His name is Dan. He's 54. Been a paramedic since he was 22.
I'm 38 and I felt worse than he looked.
We were sitting in the back of the rig one night between calls, eating gas-station sandwiches at 3am, and I asked him how he was still functional. Not as a joke. I actually wanted to know.
He reached into his bag and pulled out a small bottle of capsules. Handed it to me. Said, "Just take one in the morning. It's not a sleep thing."
I figured he was about to launch into some longevity-bro speech. He didn't. He just went back to his sandwich.
I read the label on the drive home. NMN. 500mg. Single ingredient. I'd never heard of it.
I went down the rabbit hole on my next break. Then for about a week after that.
What's actually happening
Here's the part nobody told me.
Your body has a chemical that does most of the cellular repair work. Builds energy. Fixes DNA damage. Runs almost all of the maintenance that's supposed to happen while you sleep. It's called NAD+.
Your night shifts drain it.
The problem isn't sleep. Your body's stopped making something it used to make. NAD+ is produced on a daily rhythm tied to your internal clock. When your schedule breaks the clock, the production line breaks too. You can sleep ten hours and you still won't make what you used to make.
That's why every sleep hack I tried only worked for a week. I was getting more sleep. I just wasn't refilling the tank.
Then I found the WHO data. In 2007 the World Health Organization classified night shift work as a Group 2A probable carcinogen. Same category as UV radiation. That's not a metaphor. That's their actual classification.
I read that on my phone in the rig and just sat there for a minute.
And here's the part that scared me the most. The damage doesn't reset on your days off. Every shift you don't refill the tank adds to it. The hole gets deeper every year. That's why I was getting worse at this work instead of better.
What finally moved the needle
When I went back and read about NMN properly, the dose Dan was taking made sense. 500 milligrams. That's the dose the published research uses. Not 250. Not whatever random number is on a bottle at the supplement shop. 500.
I ordered some. Took one capsule every morning. Didn't tell anyone, including my wife, because I'd been burned too many times on supplements that did nothing.
First two weeks: not much. I was honestly about to write it off.
Then week three I had a run of three nights and woke up on Sunday morning and got up. Just got up. Made coffee. Took my son to the park. Didn't crash at noon.
I almost didn't notice because that used to be a normal Sunday. Years ago.
The thing that changed wasn't energy on shift. I still get tired at 4am. I still drag through the back half of a 12. The work is the work.
The thing that changed was recovery. The day after the night. The weekend after the run of three. Used to take me two whole days to feel halfway human. Now it takes most of one.
I'm not going to tell you it cured anything. It didn't. I still work nights. I'll work them for another ten years probably. But I'm not destroyed by them anymore.
My son had a school assembly last month. I drove him in early. Stayed awake through the whole thing. Took him for ice cream after.
Small. But that's the whole point.
Why I'm writing this
I wasn't going to. Two guys at my station saw the bottle in my locker and asked what it was. Then a nurse I work calls with at the hospital asked. Then someone on a paramedic subreddit messaged me after I mentioned it in a thread.
So here.
The brand I take is called Stratus Labs. Single ingredient. 500mg NMN per capsule. Made for shift workers, which is the only reason I bought it instead of one of the longevity-bro brands. The bottle in Dan's bag was a different brand. The science is the same. This one's just easier to find and they're not trying to sell you a personality cult.
Third-party tested every batch. They post the certificate. No subscription trap. 60-day money-back guarantee, you keep the bottle if you don't like it. That's the part that made me hit buy.
Try it
If you want to try what I tried, the link's below. $59 for a month. Less than I was spending on stuff that didn't fix anything. They drop it to $49 a month if you stay on it.
60-day money-back guarantee. Take it for two months. If you feel nothing, send back whatever's left. They refund you. You keep the bottle.
I'm not getting paid to write this. I'm a paramedic. I don't have a podcast. I don't have an Instagram with my abs on it. I'm a 38-year-old guy on three nights a week who got tired of missing things.
If you work nights you already know what I'm talking about.
Try it for two months. See what happens.