Well, once again I am having trouble sleeping, and I don’t know why. I have been in a good mood all evening- except for getting stiffed by my work appointment, %&^&^$ people, why make an apointment if you’re not gonna keep it! I feel tired, lie down, and…don’t sleep. Or sleep fitfully. I suppose I could get drunk, but I have no real desire to do that. So, peoples, I throw it out to you- What is the best method you’ve found to help you sleep? Non-chemical is prefered, I’m no junkie!
I beat insomnia by “beating it” until I’m too tired and then I’m asleep.
Y’know, Dave, I was just sitting here wondering the same thing. 
A few bottles of Guinness “Extra Stout” does it for me.
But you’re still “up” all night…
I stay up a long time, and that makes me sleepy and I fall right to sleep. Works every time. 8^)
Seriously, one thing I have found that works is imagining playing video games. I guess that works because I often dream about whatever games I have been playing lately. One that really worked well for me is ‘Beatle Adventure Racing’ on the N64 - I played that game so much for a time that I know all the tracks by heart, and I find the peaceful backgrounds and the motion of driving over the rolling hills very relaxing. I don’t even have the game anymore but I still use memories of it occasionally to go to sleep.
Another good thing about this is it often gets me past points where I am stuck in a game. I will often go to sleep thinking about a game I have been playing, and it will fade into a lucid dream of playing the game, and I will see the solution to whatever problem I had.
I beat it the old fashioned way. A bottle of NoDoz and a 2 liter of my beverage of choice. I usually don’t get to sleep for a day or two that way and talk about energy! Thats what I’m doin’ right now and well I feel like going out and running a marathon if it weren’t snowing profusely outside.
I keep telling people this and nobody believes me.
Journaling. Sometimes called ‘stream of consciousness’ writing. Take a pen and a pad of paper and write. Whatever random thoughts may be there. Even if it’s something like ‘I’m pissed off because because I can’t sleep’ or ‘There’s nothing in my brain at the moment’.
15-20 minutes of that and you will fall asleep. Give it a try.
Depends. If the insomnia is an occasional thing - it hits once in awhile, but you catch up on your sleep in between - then there are lots of good ways to deal with it. (When I last had problems going to sleep at night, an eon ago, flogging the dog worked for me, so chalk up a second vote for that method. :))
I also used to be able to deal with mild insomnia by imagining peaceful, innocuous scenes - a meadow in summer, or some such - to keep my mind from chattering at me. Badtz Maru’s bit with the video games reminded me of this.
And spooje’s suggestion about journaling has a lot to be said for it. Particularly if the problem is that you’re tired, but your mind won’t shut up, journaling lets it have its say. You get the thoughts out, you get tired of them, you go to sleep.
But if we’re talking about insomnia that keeps on happening, night after night, so you’re walking around hollow-eyed during the day for months on end, with it getting harder to get to sleep even as you get more wiped out - drugs are good for breaking the cycle. And knowing you can reach for them when things get bad enough, is itself a big help.
Television. Lots and lots of television. Xanax helps too
Robin
Lack of sleep hasn’t killed me yet… but not for lack of opportunity…
Alcohol doesn’t work, you wake up again shortly after you doze off. The only sure fire method I have ever found that works is cannibis, of course there are certain unfortunate legal complications… (and on a related note, I find it hard to believe people smoke pot for fun, a couple of tokes and bagkitty wants to find a corner to go to sleep in, well, nine times out of ten… the tenth time I fixate on my genitals, but masturbation has already been suggested, so I will move on…)
A couple of hints… easier to sleep in a cool room than a warm one, do not have a clock visible from the bed (or you spend hours doing little math equations trying to figure out how much sleep you can get if you go to sleep 13 minutes from the last time you looked at the clock), try wearing socks to bed (sounds weird I know, but it is impossible to sleep with cold feet).
Ultimately very little works, and you will enter bagkitty space, where you realize you aren’t really going to get any worthwhile sleep yet again, and spend the remaining hours contemplating how people are going to deal with bagkitty in bitch on wheels mode… Not enough sleep makes bagkitty really, really cranky.
“SSShhh! He’s got insomnia and he’s trying to sleep it off!”
– Chico Marx’s character in “A Night at the Opera”
I read, lying in bed with low light. That often does the trick. Also, I find it’s a bad idea to eat or drink too much of anything shortly before going to bed. Sometimes a bath before bed helps, too.
Several months ago, I did get a scrip for sleeping pills (Ativan). I’ve only taken them twice, and I do find that I get a great night’s sleep and no hungover feel at all. I wouldn’t rule out “chemicals.” Everything you eat or drink is “chemicals” in some form. And if lack of sleep is really affecting your mood & performance, an occasional pill is going to do you more good than harm.
Carina,
I have nothing against occasional chemical intervention, I just don’t want it to become a regular thing. And I’m with Bagkitty here, couple of hits of pot and I’m coping some zzzzs. That might work, but not yet. What made last night so unusual is that nothing was bothering me. I’ve had sleepless nights when things are going wrong, but right now work is fine ( just got transfered to a better division, in fact-whoohoo!) My relationship with my ex-wife is stable, so I had nothing to worry about. Weird. We’ll see how tonight goes. It was probobly a one time thing.
For those once-in-a-while bouts of insomnia:
First I make certain that sleeping conditions are optimal, for me this means the bedding is straightened, I have the right pillow, the hall light isn’t shining into the bedroom, it’s not too hot or too cold, etc.
I also do what bagkitty does, and turn the alarm clock around so I cannot see it.
Then I count backwards from 100. The trick is not to think about anything else, like tomorrow’s appointments or what I need to do around the house. If that “mental chatter” starts up, I have to stop counting and go back to 100 and begin again.
If I really, really can’t sleep, I turn around in bed so that my head is where my feet usually are. For some reason this works for me without fail, but I try to keep it as a last resort. I have the impression that if I did it often, it wouldn’t be as effective. Sadly this is not so practical if you share a bed with someone, who wants to sleep with their head next to someone’s feet?