He picked up his glass again, but set it down on finding it empty. Another drink now and he’d sleep like the dead for an hour, then lie wide-eyed until morning. If there was anything he missed about being young, it was that careless ability to fall into oblivion like a bucket dropped down a well, then pulled up slowly, replenished. One of those gifts you didn’t know you possessed until it was taken away.
— the character David Cartwright in Dead Lions (Slough House Book 2) by Mick Herron