It is late, and you are still awake, and you have started doing the arithmetic — if I fall asleep now, that is five hours. Almost everyone alive has done that arithmetic. Here is what people hand each other, in eleven different kitchens, when it happens.
Read in the order the sun finds them — west to east, following the numbers.
teh deh man-sa-NEE-ya
You need
Steep and sweeten. Given to adults for sleep and to children for almost anything.
Manzanilla is the Mexican answer to a very long list of complaints. For sleep it is reached for without a second thought.
The same soft apple note as the Levantine cup, warmer for the cinnamon.
You need
Steep for ten minutes. Drunk in the evening, often nightly.
Bush tea for a restless night — part of the everyday household herbal practice of the islands.
Grassy and mild, a little like green tea without the astringency.
tee-YUH
You need
Steep five minutes. Traditionally taken after dinner, not at bedtime.
The tisane du soir — the evening infusion, and the one French grandmothers press on anyone who seems wound up.
Honeyed and faintly green, like the smell of a warm garden in June.
ROY-boss
You need
Steep for five minutes — unlike black tea, it will not go bitter if you forget it.
Naturally caffeine-free, which is why it is drunk in the evening and why South African parents give it to babies with colic.
Round, red, faintly sweet on its own. Takes milk surprisingly well.
Drink it like builder's tea and it will behave like one.
بابونجba-BOO-nej
You need
Steep, covered, for five minutes — covered matters, or the volatile oils leave with the steam.
In the Greco-Arabic tradition chamomile is cooling and relaxing, for a temperament that has run hot all day.
Soft, appley, familiar.
گل گاوزبانgol gav-za-BAAN
You need
Steep the flowers until the water turns a deep violet-blue. Sweeten with nabat.
Persian practice reaches for borage for a racing heart and an anxious evening.
Floral and gentle, a little like a mild hibiscus. The colour alone is worth it.
जायफल दूधJIE-phal doodh
You need
Warm the milk gently — never boil it hard. Grate in a very small amount of nutmeg, no more than a pinch. Stir in the ghee. Drink it in bed, not at the table.
Ayurveda calls nutmeg a nidrajanana — something that brings sleep. Turmeric milk gets all the attention abroad, but for sleep it is the nutmeg doing the work, and only a little of it.
Warm, faintly sweet, and woody at the back of it. Comfort more than flavour.
If you have had turmeric latte, this is its quieter, older cousin.
cha tum sen
You need
A very small pinch, steeped briefly. More is not better here; it turns quickly bitter.
Cooling and quieting, for a mind Vietnamese practice would describe as overheated.
Green and genuinely bitter. An acquired cup, and people who love it, love it.
酸棗仁湯swan dzow ren tahng
You need
The seeds are simmered rather than steeped — twenty minutes or so, until the water darkens. Strain, and drink an hour before bed.
It has been prescribed for a restless mind for something like eighteen hundred years. Chinese medicine reads sleeplessness as a spirit that will not settle, and this is the formula it reaches for first.
Faintly sour, faintly nutty, more like a broth than a tea.
대추차DEH-choo cha
You need
Simmer the jujubes until the water is deep red and the fruit has gone soft — twenty minutes at least. Sweeten with honey at the end, off the heat.
Jujube is considered calming and blood-nourishing — for the tired-but-wired, rather than the simply tired.
Like a warm, thin date syrup. Properly sweet, and the most comforting cup on this page.
Close to a date and ginger tea, if you have had one.
ほうじ茶HO-ji-cha
You need
Steep for thirty seconds in water just off the boil. That is all.
Roasting burns off most of the caffeine, which is precisely why it is the tea Japanese households drink in the evening and give to children. Nobody claims it as medicine. It is just what you have after dinner.
Toasty and mild, almost like a light coffee without any of the edge.
Look at what they have in common. Four unconnected traditions — European, Levantine, Latin American, North African — independently reached for chamomile. Three East Asian ones independently reached for jujube. And nearly every cup here is warm, lightly sweet and free of caffeine, which suggests the ritual is doing as much work as the plant. A warm drink at a fixed hour is a signal to a nervous system, and every culture on earth seems to have worked that out without comparing notes.
None of the above is medical advice. These are household preparations, described as the households that make them describe them. They sit alongside medical care and never in place of it.
With warmth, from a great many kitchens.