That about sums it up. Tired of the increase in poor sleep. Wake up with head filled with crap. Awake for a few hours. Crash…oh, usually about an hour before I need to get up.
Fucking insomnia.
I hear you, brother. Insomnia is a motherfucker. Only thing that ever worked for me was Nytol (I think you Yanks call it Tylenol PM) and some vigorous exercise about 4 hours before bedtime. All the best!
Ambien works for me. Even when I don’t take it, I know I could take it, and it removes that issue of stress about the insomnia compounding and keeping me from sleeping.
From another thread:
Podcasts or audiobooks work like magic for me, especially if I wake up in the middle of the night because I’m worrying about something. Hey, if I’m listening to Ira Glass (or Josh ‘n’ Chuck from Stuff You Should Know) tell me about someone else’s problems…
Audiobooks by soft-spoken Brits seem to work well, too. I can’t wait to get to bed tonight, and drift off to Neil Gaiman reading his own stuff.
(And, since I know I’ll be waking up at 4-fookin’-o’clock (grrrr), I’ll put in the earbuds again then. And that way, even if I don’t go back to sleep, I’ll at least be learning something…)
Oh, and during bad times that gets combined with warm milk, an antihistamine, and Trazadone.
Agreed. I was woken up more than three hours early by my bladder, and immediately kissed away the hope of getting any more sleep. I was a fucking wreck at work yesterday, I nearly fell asleep during the 4-5pm slump (possibly a post-lunch blood sugar plunge, idk). I’m going to be even more of a treat today.
Sleeping pills tonight, I do think.
I suffered from insomnia for quite a while until I read something by Dr. Oz about how the bedroom needs to be cold–the colder, the better, especially for severe insomnia.
I tried it and have been sleeping better ever since, though it is freaking cold in the house when I get up in the morning. Totally worth it.
As an aside, when I went on citalopram (I believe the brand name is Celexa?) it took my insomnia from “super-mega-incapacitating” to “wake up for a few minutes around 4 am, pee, drift quietly back to sleep.” It was not prescribed for insomnia, per se, but it has been a lovely side effect.
(Note that SSRIs have notorious not-so-lovely side effects, so it’s not for everyone. But I thought I’d throw it out there.)
Sympathy time: There is nothing worse than progessively waking yourself up more and more by being anxious about falling back asleep: “Ok, so I’ve only been awake two hours. If I fall asleep NOW, I’ll get three hours of sleep … Maybe I can still get an hour and a half … Ok, if I fall asleep RIGHT FUCKING NOW, I’ll still get forty-five minut-- oh, fuck it.”
What sucks is that not only am I barely hanging on here, but I think I may have slightly drifted off an hour ago.
Even worse is that I know I’ll be wide fucking awake at midnight tonight.
Fuck insomnia.
Ambien works for me as well, but I don’t like taking it. My doctor said that it can lead to memory loss and there was an article out (can’t remember where sorry, magazine in Dentist’s office) that stated that sleeping pills can reduce life expectancy.
So I take them as infrequently as possible. I do have a backup plan though. Schiff has an herbal sleep supplement called “Knock out” that seems to work pretty well. The only problems I’ve noted with it so far are that it (and this is both good and bad news) tends to only last for about 4 hours and like you, I have both kinds of insomnia-can’t get to sleep, can’t stay asleep.
The other thing is that on occasion, I’ve noticed it leaves me slightly groggy in the morning (this is generally if I’ve taken it too late at night). It does dissipate with exercise and coffee and isn’t anything like morning after grogginess with prescription pills though.
And yes, I hate insomnia. I just came off of about a three month bout of it. UGH, still not sleeping great, but at least getting 4-5 hours a night instead of the 1-3 (or less) I was logging a few weeks ago.
Best of luck, I feel for you.
That was a truly terribly controlled study, and the conclusions were entirely unjustified based on the study design.
It didn’t take into account that people with terminal cancer are going to have insomnia and take Ambien. So, correlation, not being causation at all, Ambien looks like it is killing people.
Ambien is the bomb for me. I dont have insomnia but I wake up at least twice a night to pee. If I take an ambien I don’t wake up to go to the bathroom.
I can agree with the findings that it can be addictive though. Yeah it gets me high right before bed but thats not where the risk of addiction comes from for me. For me its to easy to just take the pill to guarruntee a full nights sleep and it makes me want to depend on them.
Yeah, Ive been there for years…I got insomia during my school exams at 15…im now 31 and its still there. After a few years in my teens I stopped fighting it, yeah im tired but the thing that makes me worse is the worrying and the stress it leads to.
After a few years I started accepting it for what it is and if I couldn’t sleep I found productive stuff to do (I taught myself how to play accoustic guitar over a 2 year period. I kept it by my bedside and whe I woke/couldnt sleep I practiced playing chords)
If it helps anyone ,I got told the following by a therapist friend at University when I was really struggling during my exams…hope it helps someone…
Lie down on your bed and get comfy. Its essential that everything is as you would like it to be for sleeping (light off/dim, nice and warm etc)
Close your eyes and concentrate on your breathing…breathe in and out, in and out in nice heavy slow breaths
as you breathe in, imagine the air filling your body all the way down to your toes
breathe back out and imagine all the air emptying from your body from your toes up…
As you breath out feel your body getting heavy, as if the air emptying has made you heavy on the bed…start with your toes and feet, imagine them feeling heavy as you breathe out…
Breathe back in, slowly and steadily but imagine that the air only fills to your knees…your feet stay heavy.
When you breathe out imagine that your knees are also now heavy…the weight of your feet is pulling your knees onto the bed…
When you next breathe in , the air will only fill to the top of your legs…when you then breathe out your legs will feel heavy…
repeat all the way up your body…
breathe in up to your fingertips, hands, elbows, shoulders, tummy, chest and head…
to be honest ive never made it past my chest.
This might help someone as its certainly helped me. Wether its because it relaxes an overly tense bosy, or focuses a worried mind I dont know but if you have difficulty falling asleep (Or falling asleep again during the night ) then its worth a try. Its worked for me when ive needed it for 15 years.
Hope that helps 
I get woken up by my kids, and it can wake me completely up.
One trick about ambien is that half an ambien works have as long (eg, it doesn’t make you sleep have as deep). I find though that if I get smaller than about 1/3 of an ambien it doesn’t put me back to sleep.