# How do people survive severe insomnia **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 12, 2015, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524 "2015-04-12T23:58:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kayT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayt/32/3633_2.png) [@kayT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayT)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/21 "2015-04-14T02:09:50Z")
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#): > > Kay, have you ever had periods in your life when you did sleep well, if so how long did they last? I slept very well when I was young. I have a belief that I stopped sleeping well when my father died but this could be totally something I made up. That occurred when I was in my 30s. I’m 68 now. I do know that when I was in college I slept very well, being able to sleep in on the weekend until 10 or 11 if I was up late the night before. I could never do that now. How about you? ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/22 "2015-04-14T02:27:27Z")
Father of a newborn here. Lack of sleep is beating the hell out of me. The fact that it is temporary is what’s keeping us going. ---
**Author:** ![pbbth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f9ae1b/32.png) [@pbbth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pbbth)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/23 "2015-04-14T03:17:04Z")
I get about 5 hours on a good night. Once I’m asleep I don’t have any problem staying asleep unless something wakes me up (toddler, hungry cat, banging pipes, etc.) but I can almost always fall right back asleep if I don’t have to get out of bed to address a problem for anyone. But the falling asleep part? I suck at that. I lay down and my mind immediately starts turning, thoughts about crazy crap that isn’t important, thoughts about really important stuff that I have no immediate control over, etc. Just faster and faster and louder and louder until I’m surprised the activity in my brain doesn’t wake up everyone in the house. My husband is awesome and lets me sleep in on the weekends so I can sort of catch up a bit and it helps tremendously. Lots of people recommend that I not do this and just try to get on a schedule where I go to sleep at the same time every night and wake up at the same time every day. Those people aren’t the ones left sobbing uncontrollably before work because they’ve now gone 12 days in a row on very limited sleep because they were too dumb to get some sleep while they had the chance. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/24 "2015-04-14T04:13:04Z")
> [@kayT](#): > > I slept very well when I was young. I have a belief that I stopped sleeping well when my father died but this could be totally something I made up. That occurred when I was in my 30s. I’m 68 now. I do know that when I was in college I slept very well, being able to sleep in on the weekend until 10 or 11 if I was up late the night before. I could never do that now. > > How about you? I have had insomnia since I was a child. At 40 I was divorced and y insomnia simply vanished almost instantly. I was an emotional wreck from the divorce but I was finaly sleeping. I slept good for about 10 years maybe 15 years and then it started acting up again. It wasn’t too bad until I retired about 3 years ago and now I have bouts that come and go. If I get 4 hours I consider that decent, 6 hours I consider a great nights sleep. I never have problems falling asleep but after 30 min to maybe 2 hours I wake up and then the rest of the night I usually can’t get back to sleep. About 6 am I ight be able to grab another hour. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/25 "2015-04-14T05:53:41Z")
Insomniacs will often underestimate how much they sleep. When you are sleep deprived it becomes possible to essentially “black out” and feel as though you just closed your eyes for a moment, when in fact you slept for an hour or two. The other answer to the OP is that the nature of sleep changes depending on how sleep deprived a person is. You will enter REM sleep more rapidly and stay in that state for a longer cycle. We don’t understand very well the functions of the different stages of sleep, but this change may well be crucial in allowing someone to survive on very little sleep. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/26 "2015-04-14T06:02:21Z")
It must be past my bedtime…there were three commercials for insomnia medicines on TV just now… ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/27 "2015-04-14T08:12:17Z")
Tonight fell asleep a little after 10 and was back up at midnight. Hopefully will get back to sleep before morning. ---
**Author:** ![JustinC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justinc/32/8083_2.png) [@JustinC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JustinC)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/28 "2015-04-14T11:09:20Z")
No one has mentioned marijuana, yet. It sends me to sleep fairly quickly although the next day I can be a bit ‘spaced out’ (stupid). Booze also helps but the next day I can feel pretty bad, as it’s usually a minimum of two bottles of wine to zonk me out. I find a small dose of prescription drugs helps, changing them between a few as this _may_ help with tolerance. Those I take, some are anti-anxiety (benzos and ‘z drugs’) and one is an antidepressant - I **don’t** mix them - I stay at or under the recommended dose. It’s either that or getting between 3 - 6 hours sleep a night. Falling asleep I find the hardest part, my mind just gets going and churning. It’s hard, hard work to stop it doing so but sometimes I’ve been successful in falling asleep without anything. I kind of have to ‘lock’ my thoughts, stop them getting going. It’s very difficult and takes a lot of concentration, although sometimes is easier after doing some yoga. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/29 "2015-04-14T11:38:16Z")
Would a person with the severe insomnia that **WhyNot’s** friend has benefit from being put under anaesthesia or induced coma? ---
**Author:** ![tapu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@tapu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tapu)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/30 "2015-04-14T13:27:32Z")
Like Michael did? ☹ ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2015, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/31 "2015-04-14T22:58:00Z")
Well, took one sleeper at 10:30 and another at 04:00. My bladder seems to be shrinking… I found that the benzo [Clonazepam](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonazepam), while generally used as anti-anxiety or anti-panic is a good sleeper. For those who don’t want add another pill to their cocktail, if you have one benzo that you take at night, maybe just switch? I was surprised it actually worked - most “sedatives” have no effect on me. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2015, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/32 "2015-04-17T07:01:26Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > Would a person with the severe insomnia that **WhyNot’s** friend has benefit from being put under anaesthesia or induced coma? It reminds me of Michael Jackson begging his doctor to give him propofol to put him under. If a guy with that level of wealth can’t treat his own insomnia what chance do regular people w/o those kinds of resources have? Does medicine as a whole even understand what we need sleep for? Are stage 4 sleep and REM sleep the only important stages or are all 5 stages important in their own way? ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2015, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/33 "2015-04-17T07:46:04Z")
I have been poking the medical types about “sleep” off and on for years. The only biggie I recall is the discovery of REM and its association with dreaming. Physiology and psychology are doing a Newton/Quantum dance, as far as I can tell. One side is as likely as the other to make the next “big breakthrough” - but don’t pencil it in on your schedule. **WhyNot** ’s friend should really make an exception and use chemicals as needed to at least get some activity recorded in a sleep test. But that is just my approach - with no idea what is going on inside the brain, I would not expect any help. Just stay under for as long as one can - there may well be some red flag show up - but only when unconscious. . ---
**Author:** ![obbn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/d6d6ee/32.png) [@obbn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obbn)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/34 "2015-04-18T03:00:47Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > I already have to take a handful of pills every day, for various chronic conditions, some life-threatening. Their combinations have no documented side effects. Adding another med would increase the chance of a serious, unpredictable side effect. I’m still trying to find a pain med that I can safely take, and there doesn’t seem to be one. I’m a chronic pain patient and take a boat load of narcotics everyday. There are times where I can’t seem to get to sleep, stating at the ceiling for hours. My doctor prescribed a sleeping pill for me and didn’t seem concerned about me taking it with morphine or oxycodone, although it worried me greatly. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/35 "2015-04-18T03:21:10Z")
> [@usedtobe](#): > > **WhyNot** ’s friend should really make an exception and use chemicals as needed to at least get some activity recorded in a sleep test. > > . You seem to have missed the point that chemicals don’t help for more than a few days. Admittedly, she hasn’t tried IV propofol on a regular basis (that I know of), but that comes with this pesky side effect where breathing becomes optional. ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/36 "2015-04-18T05:58:59Z")
If sleep science is going to have a chance, at least give them a sample of one’s screwed-up sleep. Maybe they can find something which will work long-term, maybe they can’t; the poin tis to give it a chance. I’ll be the first to admit that I view sleep like a mama bear views its cub - I am going to get at least some REM or die trying. The concept of accepting psychoses without trying is entiely foreign to me. If there is a pill which will work for 5 days worth of testing, who knows? Maybe this is a case of reverse action - these drugs are playing with the brain, and some brains are wired very differently than most. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2015, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/37 "2015-04-18T12:11:49Z")
> [@usedtobe](#): > > If sleep science is going to have a chance, at least give them a sample of one’s screwed-up sleep. > Maybe they can find something which will work long-term, maybe they can’t; the poin tis to give it a chance. > > I’ll be the first to admit that I view sleep like a mama bear views its cub - I am going to get at least some REM or die trying. The concept of accepting psychoses without trying is entiely foreign to me. > > If there is a pill which will work for 5 days worth of testing, who knows? > > Maybe this is a case of reverse action - these drugs are playing with the brain, and some brains are wired very differently than most. Ah, I see what you’re saying. All I can say is that she’s been through dozens of them without helpful results. I’m sure if they could dope her up and get meaningful data, they would have done that already. ---
**Author:** ![Insomniac\_abhi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/76d3ee/32.png) [@Insomniac\_abhi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Insomniac_abhi)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/38 "2017-10-09T14:05:44Z")
Intense execise in the early evening and sleep restriction therapy would definitely help but one should determine the actual amount of exercise needed for oneself. Exercise in combination with cbt and sleep restriction along with the sleeping aids will be necessary for treating severe insomnia. one should do all of this for atleast 4 weeks to See any change. It’s a lot of hard work but i think it’s completely worth it. I am recovering from insomnia and I wish everyone will. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/39 "2017-10-09T14:17:00Z")
I’ve heard zombies don’t sleep. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2017, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524/40 "2017-10-09T14:22:38Z")
I’m often insomniac, but if I have the discipline to stop coffee, stop the SDMB (:)), and relax via book or movie, I do get sleepy. Especially if I take a small dose of Valium or one of its close relatives. I knew an OCD patient who took Valium™ AND™ Tuinol (barbituate) AND ten times the normal dose of Atarax™ :eek: and even then could barely sleep. > [@JustinC](#): > > No one has mentioned marijuana, yet. It sends me to sleep fairly quickly … Sweet Lady Jane excites me and keeps me awake. (Recently I learned that this excitement makes the sweet lady contraindicated for heart patients. ☹ ) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-people-survive-severe-insomnia/717524.md?page=3)