Forty-five minutes to an hour during normal times, but rises towards two hours when I’m stressed or anxious. As a teenager I used to take medication to help me fall asleep, but I don’t anymore.
when im at home in my bed it takes me about a half hour if im really tired and an hour if im kinda tired. Some nights it will take me 3-5 hours but that doesn’t happen very often.
But the thing I hate the most is when I am at a friend’s or relative’s house. I can’t fall asleep. My eye’s won’t stay shut. I just lay there all night trying to fall asleep. I’ll get real pissed when I see light starting to creep into the windows because I know i’ll be tired all day.
On average about an hour.
Watching something meaningless on TV often helps or chamomile tea but I will often wake again after a half hour or so then it takes another hour to fall back asleep.
I can’t remember ever waking feeling refreshed in the morning.
I could be on the World Champion Sleeping and Napping Team. I’m always asleep in less than 5 minutes, and once I’m asleep I sleep very, very soundly.
As a recovering alcoholic, I never used to fall asleep, I’d just pass out. Once I quit drinking, it took me FOREVER to learn to fall asleep naturally. I had to basically teach myself to fall asleep. Now I do a short mental exercise where I just clear my mind (like I said, it’s a short exercise), and I’m asleep in no time. I figure it takes me less than 5 minutes. My wife says I’ve fallen asleep in the middle of a sentence. “I think I’m going to clean the garage this weekend after I …zzzzzzzzzzzz”.
Almost always an hour. In fact, if I’m calculating how much sleep I’m going to get, I always factor that in. It’s half one in the morning now, so it’s going to be another, say, half hour before I’m actually in bed, so I won’t be getting to sleep til three… and so I get about four/five hours sleep, depending on when I get up. And then I bitch about being tired…
Damn, I’m off to bed…
Ooh let’s form this! 
Almost always an hour. In fact, if I’m calculating how much sleep I’m going to get, I always factor that in. It’s half one in the morning now, so it’s going to be another, say, half hour before I’m actually in bed, so I won’t be getting to sleep til three… and so I get about four/five hours sleep, depending on when I get up. And then I bitch about being tired…
Damn, I’m off to bed…
Unless I’m in a deeply thoughtful mode I can normally fall asleep within about 10-15 mins…
If I go to bed thinking about something it can take me 3 or 4 hours though which really drives me up the wall as I hate waking up and still being tired.
I’m going to say about 30 minutes. I no longer allow myself the opportunity to check the clock–I used to do that and it took hours to fall asleep. My husband can fall asleep the second after his head hits the pillow, though.
It usually takes me less than 5 minutes to fall asleep. But I always wait until I am really tired before I get into bed. If I try to fall asleep before I am really tired it will take me a little bit longer to fall asleep.
ditto, except I’m 26.
Less than 5 minutes 95% of the time. Less than 30 seconds on occasion.
I’m another one who’s never had a problem getting to sleep. When I’ve been a little sleepy in the middle of the afternoon and had to go somewhere that night, I’d lie down and set the alarm for a half hour or 45 minutes and take a nap and wake up feeling better.
I think it takes me about an hour to fall asleep on average, too. Doesn’t appear to be a lot of middle ground in this thread. I’d be doubtful of the claims people are making about falling asleep in as little as 2 to 5 minutes, but my SO does this, and I’m so jealous. I suppose I get even by giving him random knees to the back and elbows to the head, since I practice Bed Kung Fu when I do finally fall asleep.
I fall asleep the second my head hits the pillow. My partner, however, takes 30-40 minutes to go to sleep, so he insists on chatting while I’m falling unconscious.
Partner: So, do you think the Civil War influenced European diplomatic history? (I swear he actually said this.)
ME: (Garbled snort) Huh, Wha. . ? I’m trying to SLEEP!
It takes me around 4-6 hours…which means I typically get 1-2 hours sleep a night! Sometimes I stay awake all night-which means the next day is hell! I’ve been to several sleep clinics…they don’t know what to make of me!
I’ve tried everything…nothing works. I console myself that Napoleon only need 3 hours…and he lived a pretty normal life.
pokey said:
“It takes me about an hour. What I really hate is that sometimes when I’m sleepy i feel like I’m going to fall asleep right away but then I think, “yay I’m falling asleep really fast tonight!” and it wakes me up and then I have a whole hour to think about how close I was.”
That’s so me. I read somewhere (may have been here) that you can only fall asleep when you aren’t thinking about it, hence the fact that you can never remember falling asleep. Anyway, I do that too. I’ll be extra-sleepy on the very edge of falling asleep and I’ll think “hey I’m falling asleep!” and then instantly I’m wide awake. I’m not even trying to think about it - my mind just wanders like that.
Someone on this board suggested in some other thread that if you roll your eyes in the back of your head you will fall asleep quickly because that’s the position your eyes are in when you sleep. That TOTALLY works, however, you’ll think “hey I’m falling asleep!” and then wake back up, and it never quite works the next time you try to roll your eyes back. Its a vicious cycle, I tell ya. Anyway, takes me an hour + to fall asleep. And I’m such a light sleeper its horrible.
SLIGHT HIJACK
Is there any possible way that I could sleep more deeply or learn to fall asleep to tv/music? I thought maybe I could just leave the TV on all night for a week and eventually I’d be able to sleep through noise but I have a bad feeling that would screw up my entire sleep cycle.
It takes me somewhere between 5-10 minutes. I can usually make myself fall asleep even if I’m not particularly tired, but know I should go to sleep. It’s pretty convenient, and my fiance hates me for it. He’s a really light sleeper and often takes an hour to fall asleep.
It takes me at least 45 minutes, and on Sunday nights it can easily take two or three hours when I try to readjust to my weekday schedule.
The annoying thing is that when I’m studying in the evening or something I can doze off in about fifteen seconds. When I’m actually in bed I can’t fall asleep at all. Grr.
About 45 minutes on average, but it can take up to three hours. The biggest problem is when I have work or an early class the next day that I really have to make and have trouble falling asleep. Usually I just can’t get out of bed if I’ve had less than 6 hours of sleep, so that meant a lot of skipped nights of sleeping. I’m also one of those people that simply can’t go to sleep early regardless of when I woke up.
The wierdest was for about a month recently, I was getting only 3-4 hours of sleep a night, but had absolutely no problem waking up refreshed. Wish I could have kept it up…