Weird practices for a few hours of sleep

He probably swallows more sleeping tablets than eating food everyday. Then, he takes snake bites and scorpion stings to catch up some sleep.
This is neither a scene out of an English horror movie nor a Hindi potboiler.  Nor it is a story lifted out of a fairy tale book.

Dileep Chaurasia, who is in his late forties and lives in Dumka village in Jharkhand, has this peculiar problem. He does not know what has made his life so miserable that he needs pills, snake bites and scorpion stings to get a few hours of sleep.
"What sin have I committed? Why, on the earth, is this happening to me? God knows, whether I will be ever able to get rid of this curse," Dileep repeatedly says. "Probably, death alone can provide me some succour from this malaise," he adds with a wry smile.  For the past several years, scorpions and poisonous reptiles have become part of this man's life. On occasions, Dileep has swallowed 200 sleeping pills in one go and followed it with snake bites and scorpion stings to sleep for just a few hours.

    His family is clueless about his strange problem that has been plaguing him since 1994. "We have already spent several thousand of rupees on his treatment and got him treated by noted specialists," said Dileep's wife.

Feels drowsy
"What's the way out. I have now learned to live with drowsy feeling most of the time. Bahut jatan karane ke baad kahi jake do ya teen ghanta kabhie nind aajata hai. (Sometimes I manage to sleep for barely two or three hours that too after resorting to a lot of weird practices)," Dileep told Deccan Herald. Dileep is a strict vegetarian and has donated blood to his family members some times in the last few years.

When prodded to reveal how the problem started, he said "all was well till 1994. One night I was jolted out of my deep slumber to find an angel standing before me. She sought my friendship. When I agreed, she asked me not to make their friendship public. From that day onwards, she would take me to a faraway fairyland and would drop me back before dawn. This continued for many months and in the meantime my business also prospered. Once I boasted of our friendship to one of my friends and my troubles started from them," claims Dileep.

The distraught family members have already paid a number of visits to the mazaars and babas but to no avail. However, psychiatrist Dr Devshree Akhauri with Ranchi Institute of Neuro-Psychiatric and Applied Sciences describes Dileep's ailment as psychological problem. It is just a hallucination. Snake bite is a clear case of substance abuse. The problem can be treated, but it would take a long time, Dr Akhauri, Research Officer, Department of Clinical Psychology, added.