I haven’t been able to fall asleep before midnight for about four years now. I manage very rarely, once in a while, to go to bed at 11 p.m. because I might be either drunk or sick. Other than those few rare occasions, I end up going to bed at around 3 a.m. consistently.
I’ve tried waking up earlier, but it seems like on the days that I have no obligations I can only wake up at noon. I force myself to go to sleep at 12 a.m. and I wake up at noon. I go to sleep at 4 a.m. and I’ll still wake up at noon. This doesn’t help me go to sleep earlier because if I wake up at noon it is kind of hard to go to sleep twelve hours later.
Then most of the times I’ve tried going to bed early I keep thinking that I shouldn’t, because then the day would end prematurely.
Though four days out of the week I have to wake up at 9 a.m. It would help a lot if I could consistently fall asleep at one o’clock and wake up eight hours later at nine, but I can never pull this off. Instead I osculate wildly from getting five hours of sleep during the week and then sleeping ten hours during the weekends.
Anyone else like this? Anyone know the secret to consistent sleep?
With me it isn’t so much I can’t go to bed early its just that if I am on a good sleep schedule, then something always seems to get in the way. I do tend to stay up all night surfing the Dope, playing bass, etc. I am a heavy sleeper though and if nobody wakes me up I will sleep 12-14 hours straight.
I can never fall asleep before midnight. Midnight is my earliest bedtime - I usually don’t get to bed until 1 or 2am. I think it’s become more a habit than anything else - when I was working it was easier for me to fall asleep ealier, but as a student it’s always something keeping me up - papers, drinking, etc.
Yep, 12-1 a.m. if I have work the next day, or 2-3 on weekends usually. Even at those times, I occasionally spend hours lying in bed unable to sleep. The funny thing is that I can be ready to pass out at 5 p.m., but six hours late and I would be ready to go for a run. I don’t think my Circadian cycle is activated by sunlight.
I can fall asleep at 9PM if I really really try. But as soon as that clock hits 10PM, forget about it, I’m going to be up until at least 3AM. It doesn’t matter how tired I was before 10PM, but after that point I am wired and ready to go. It is my most awake time of the day. Then I naturally sleep until about noon.
THe world of 8AM is a mystery to me, and I will never understand how people can do that.
There’s this thing called DSPS. It stands for Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. I have it, and it’s a pain in the ass. Means I can’t get to sleep till around two or three am, and then I have to get up at 6 or 7 for school the next day. So I go my weekday on not much sleep at all. Red Bull is basically my best friend, and by Friday, I’m a total wreck. I catch up on all my sleep in the weekends when I can sleep uninterrupted till midday.
Anyways, maybe you are suffering from this? This isn’t really good news, because it’s pretty damn hard to fix. There are things you can do with light therapy I think but I don’t know too much about it. I’ve only been having it for like four months now so my doctor is still trying to figure out what to do that doesn’t include putting me on Vallium forever. It can be treated, but not cured apparently. IIRC, most prone are people between 18 and 30, and like 50% of people who have it have been clinically depressed at some point in their lives.
With DSPS, you can’t get to sleep early at night, like even if you don’t sleep the whole night before your body just screws itself up and you end up hardly functioning but wide awake untill the early AM just as usual.
Anyways, it sounds like you might be suffering from this. I am in no way a medical professional and I know there are rules about giving medical type advice on this board. But it sounds like this might be a possiblilty, maybe something to talk to your doctor/therapist/naturopath/whatever about.
Maybe you should see a sleep therapist? If it’s like really, really impacting on your life anyways.
My natural sleep bed time is 12-1 am and up around 8. I travel a lot for work and I’ll arrive in a new country and the first week I’m up at six and in bed by 10, but then I settle into my natural settings. On weekends, I can easily stay up to 3 or 4 and just be happy as can be.
It must somehow be related: but I feel the most alert and energized around 9 at night, that’s when I want to do some work or whatever.
I only go to bed before midnight if I’m sick. Usually it’s more like…2. (Or later.) Then I have to get up at 6:30.
But the thing is that I could go to sleep around seven or so…or even earlier in the winter. I have literally fallen asleep while cooking dinner. Unfortunately there’s no way I can go to bed that early.
And no matter when I get to sleep, I don’t want to get up until 10 a.m. If I sleep later than 10 a.m. (not usual) I am cranky for the rest of the day. If I have to get up before 10 (5 or 6 days a week) I spend the next couple of hours on autopilot, then the hours after that vowing to get to bed earlier the next night. And then? Sleepy at 7, wide awake at 11.
I seem to need to be a little sleep-deprived in order to function.
I’ll fall asleep anytime if I’m tired enough. For example, 2 in the afternoon? No problem. I do it all the time.
BUT, if I’m not tired enough I can never “force” myself to fall asleep. I will just lie in bed for hours and hours. This is really annoying so I usually end up getting back up and either listening to music or surfing the Dope until I’m really ready. (hey, look what time it is!)
Some people just seem to be night people. My son is one of 'em. I think your schedule may have a lot to do with that, but it’s one of those “which came first…” things. People who force themselves into a false sleep cycle are usually unhappy with their jobs because they’re so damn tired all the time.
I’m definitely a day person. I don’t think I could ever do well in a night job.
It’s 5:17 AM, I am awake, and I am routinely awake at this time. I work the swing shift (1:30 - 10 pm) but even when I am not on swings, I stay up late. I just can’t get to sleep early, no matter what time I woke up the previous morning.
Yeah I am like everyone else here. I started trying to get myself up earlier by switching from a 2am-10am sleep schedule to a 1am-9am schedule and it’s been PRETTY successful…except I’ve gone back to falling asleep around 2 instead of 1. I still get up at 9 tho. I have to “put myself to bed” at midnight so I get an hour of rest before I get any sleep.
I’ve been like this for at least 15 years now. It was much harder to deal with when I was in school, having to get up at 7 and all.
My Dad will sometimes still bring up the fact that as a kid I never wanted to go to sleep and never wanted to wake up in the mornings.
I still don’t.
I’ve managed to settle into a schedule where I go to sleep between 11-12 so I can wake up between 5:30 and 6 to get to work on time (for 8). Weekends, I go to bed about the same time, maybe an hour later, but I’m up by 8 (not really my choice, I’d prefer to sleep in to 10… or noon) because my son is up by then.
He’s a morning person for sure.
Mornings are always a big production for me to get going, yet amazingly people at work think I am a morning person… but then I take the bus and have to be up and out early, so I have about 2 hours to wake up and be reasonably alert. I used to stay up to all hours, but I’ve managed to settle into this routine and most of the time it works for me. Took me a very long time though, and it doesn’t always work.
I’m fortunate in that I have never had the slightest trouble falling asleep and I sleep very soundly. My wife, unfortunatley, suffers from insomnia and then has very restless sleep when she does manage to doze off.
I don’t know that I’d call it a secret, but I keep the same schedule all week (in bed by 10:30 or so unless there’s we’re out on the town or have people in, and up at 6:30. Like someone else posted - If I sleep in too late I feel like I’ve wasted a big part of the day). I also exercise quite a bit and that seems to help some people sleep better.
I suspect the big changes in the amount of time you sleep during the week vs. the weekends are a habit by now. You don’t mention how old you are, but if you’re younger and in college this may resolve itself when you get a job that keeps more regular business hours.
If you have sleep apnea, anytime is bedtime. For me lying down “just for a moment” at 7:30 in the evening is a terrible mistake. But that said, I’m a bit of night owl by nature, so I have trouble going to bed at a reasonable hour. Usually around 11, 11:30 is when I go to bed. It’s the worst of both worlds.
See, if I went to bed at 9PM, I’d feel like I was wasting my whole evening.
My most productive hours are from 11PM to 3AM and 11AM-3PM. I have never been able to go to sleep before midnight with any regularity, even in med school when I often had to keep godawful surgeon’s hours. I’ve tried to shift to doing my hospital rounds in the evening, so I don’t have to be anywhere before my clinic at 10AM, but no matter how long I do I get calls all day asking, “Are you coming in today?”
I can fall asleep pretty much anywhere, anytime. This ability has caused nothing but glares and nasty comments from all my friends.
The only real downside to this is that I have to consciously avoid getting comfortable in a boring meeting or class, as I would have a tendency to start drifting off.
I can wake up in the morning, but it really takes a lot of effort on my part. Left to my own devices I’ll sleep in to about 10-12AM.
Leave your curtains/blinds open. When the sun gets bright enough, you’ll wake up and not be able to go back to sleep (at least you can resisit it). That’s my method for getting p at 10 am everyday.
I have sleep issues but as I’ve had them since I was a child I guess I’m just made that way.
In general I don’t switch off easily and it can take me a couple of hours to go to sleep. That doesn’t actually bother me and I just work around it.
What bothers me is that I CANNOT sleep early. I generally go to bed at 11pm at the absolute earliest and need to sleep through til about 6am or a bit later. Which really sucks when I’m deeply asleep and have to get up at 4am. I’m like a zombie if I have to do that but unfortunately those shifts come up often.
No idea what to do about that although over time (weeks) I do seem to adjust very slightly. If I needed to wake up that early for the rest of my life then I might gradually adjust to it. Who knows.