These days I’m going to bed at around 10 or 11. And I get up at about 3 or 4. I’m not even sleeping all that time either…a lot of it is tossing and turning. This is not going well with my 10-plus-hour work days.
Before you ask, I have tried the following:
–melatonin
–no computer/phone half an hour before bed
–no caffeine after 7
–different pillows/mattresses etc (even different rooms)
–sleeping on the couch (I did that as a teenager)
–exercise before bed
–no booze before bed
–one drink before bed
And yet I’m still up at 3 or 4, usually off to play Football Manager (the ultimate sawing-logs game) or Oblivion or some other soporific activity. I can’t get back to sleep, even if I try.
I have a strong sense some of it might be medication-related. I’m taking Abilify, which I’ve heard has some insomniacal side effects. But I prefer those to the alternative, as I’ve decided I’d like to live after all.
So what am I not doing here? It’s getting tiresome (pun intended) to only be able to “sleep in” until 4. Even on a recent trip I couldn’t sleep more than five hours in a night, which led to awe-inspiring headaches when mixed with the jet lag. I’m crashing at work around 3 pm (8 hours into the day), when I still have to do 2 or 3 more, so it is affecting my work. I don’t want to say I’m hallucinating, but I’m getting extremely forgetful, misplacing car keys or not sending out finished work, that sort of thing.
I feel for you and have been batttling the same thing for almost two years now. I fall asleep about 9:30 each night and am lucky to sleep until 1:30 on a good night, 5 hours feels like heaven. After struggling with this and trying everything as you have I hit on something. I quit a hobby I have been addicted to for the past 17 years or so. I tied up a bunch of loose ends in my life that were all very minor but slightly nagging. I have an event comming up at the end of august that will be my final event in flight shooting and I will be 100% retired from the sport. The past two weeks I have had a marked improvement from an average of 3 hours to an average of 5 hours, I consider 6 to be normal and I feel pretty good with 5.
The bolded are still counterproductive to good sleep hygiene.
I assume you mean no coffee after 7 PM, not AM? If so, you need to cut it out after about noon to get it out of your system. I’d even go so far as to suggest trying to cut it out, but the withdrawals might make your headaches worse.
I have been told (by my doctor and psychologist), that you aren’t supposed to use the computer/iPad/etc. for a couple of hours before bed. Can you cut it all out an hour before, including TV, and just read a book in bed instead?
Exercise works for some, not for others. I can’t exercise after about 5 pm or I can’t sleep.
I can relate. I have had sleep issues for about 20 years now, and have tried many of these things I’m suggesting. I still take melatonin and a sleeping pill (Nytol) nightly and get a decent sleep about 80% of the time. But then I’ll have two or three days in a row of no sleep, despite the sleep hygiene and sleeping pills.
If you suspect it’s medication related, and even if not, you need to talk to your doctor. Could you have sleep apnea?
When you get up in the middle of the night, try not getting on the computer. Electronic stimulation is counterproductive to sleep hygiene (can’t you tell I’m a fellow insomniac!)
Indeed. I can’t sleep if I have caffeine after noon. If the OP means he has his last Diet Coke/coffee/tea/whatever at 6:30 PM, then I think we’ve pinpointed his problem right there.
I also agree with the other posters who suggest avoiding electronics in the evening. As I understand it, electronic screens – e.g. computer screens and TV’s – produce shorter wavelengths of light (violet/blue) that our brain does not expect to see in the evening and associates with bright daylight. So when you play Oblivion at 4 AM, the monitor is telling some deep reptilian part of your brain that it’s noon. Likewise with infomercials on TV. Instead, try reading with incandescent light in the hour before bed.
If you’re really getting concerned, of course, your doctor should have some excellent advice.
There might be some practical solutions to help with the tiredness at work, separate from improving the nights. Eating lower carb and higher protein I find can help avoid the 3 pm crashes.
Are you somewhere at work where you could have more of a rest at lunchtime? From my experience with sleepless nights when I had young kids, tiny naps seem to make the crappy nights sleep much more tolerable.
It was suggested to me to try guided meditations for some health problems I was having - turns out I always fall asleep through them, but then I wake up as they end - so it’s actually a good way for me to have a self-limiting nap. Something like that might help at lunchtime, and/or might help you get back to sleep in the night, rather than moving to a more stimulating activity.
If anything like this does help to make the day better, I wonder also if moving your bedtime slightly later might circumvent the 3 or 4 am wakening.
When do you take the Abilify? It may be that taking it in the morning would help.
Also, no caffeine after 2 pm. (Painful, I know)
Push any electronic screen time back a little earlier from lights out. I’ve heard that any, whether cell phone, tv, ereader, or PC, can disrupt sleep.
Exercise before bed can also disrupt sleep, although it’s different for different people. Try moving it earlier in the evening. I think the theory is that it ups the metabolism and can make it hard to sleep.
Also try a hot shower or bath before bed. A core temperature drop before bed helps signal the body to sleep.
dark room.
Cool room.
White noise may help.
I think the biggest difference for me was adjusting my medications to make sure that the ones that had the potential to disrupt sleep we’re moved to AM doses. Also watching caffeine. (In case you can’t tell, I had some insomnia issues myself.)
If adjusting things yourself isn’t working, talk to your dr. They can help you figure out what to tweak. I had no idea one of my migraine meds was screwing me up. And when it’s messing up work/life in general, it’s time to get it fixed.
I agree with most of what the other folks said, but here is my two cents:
Unfortunately, with sleep the more we think about it, the more trouble we have with actually falling asleep. Speaking for myself, there are many days when I wake up unrefreshed, even though I follow the advice I am giving you. In addition, to not using your computer, I would not think about anything “heavy” for two hours before bedtime, such as taxes, money, work, etc. The brain needs time to unwind from the day. Alcohol is notorious for causing disrupted “broken” sleep. Please avoid all alcohol. Finish caffeine by noon, as was stated in another post. In addition, try to have an early dinner, as digestion of food requires energy which can keep one awake, if a meal if eaten within several hours of bedtime. Chocolate contains caffeine, which is a concern for sleeping issues. Take vitamins in the morning, if you do indeed take them. Also, do not look at the clock in the night, as that stimulates the brain. I do not recommend drinking any liquid several hours or more before bedtime, as then one has to get up often to use the bathroom. Lastly, try to think of something relaxing when you initially get in the bed for the evening, such as the beach, ocean, etc.; then if you think of this every evening after getting in bed, your brain will associate this with sleep.
Personally, I find I’m my own worst enemy when trying to sleep. It’s easy to let your mind become consumed with the task of falling asleep once you start to feel like you’ve been lying there awake for too long. That really doesn’t seem to help. I tend to find I sleep best when sleep creeps up on me.
It probably is the Abilify. The only way I could go to sleep while taking it was to take Klonopin right before I went to bed. I did this for about two years and nothing bad happened to me. But I still wouldn’t advise it as a long-term strategy unless Abilify is your miracle drug. It wasn’t mine, so I stopped taking it (and everything else as well).
If it is abilify related, I don’t know what could help. I have had insomnia due to medication before, and all the lifestyle changes in the world (at least for me) didn’t fix it.
Have you considered a different antipsychotic? There are a lot of first and second generation to try if the abilify side effects become so serious you can’t work.
Another thing you try is talking to your doctor and asking if some anti-narcolepsy meds might be warranted (modafinil or something similar). If the 3pm crashes become so serious you think your job is at risk then that is something to consider. I have no idea how that would interact with your meds or your other health conditions though, but it is something to talk about with your physician.
Other than that, just google ‘abilify insomnia’ and see what, if anything, other abilify users have found that worked for them.
When I tried 5mg abilify I ended up sleeping 12 hours a day. I guess everyone is different.
My understanding is that blue light around 460nm is what can trigger the wake up centers in your brain. You can be exposed to light, just so long as you block the wavelengths around the blue spectrum and it will probably not make insomnia worse. If you are going to watch TV, wear a pair of amber goggles to block out the blue wavelength of light.
Um…yeah, doing this too. Abilify is helping in the sense that I’m not feeling quite so hopeless as I was before I was taking it, and it’s definitely better than the seroquil, which made me sleep for 12 plus hours a day, which is a bit tricky when you’re combining that with 10 hour work days. I would go home, eat, sleep, get up, work, go home, etc.
My goodness, my wife just suggested that to me. I installed it on my computer yesterday. Here’s hoping it helps. It does make this board look funny at night, palette-swapping out much of its blue for a dark pink.
I should mention one other thing–this is a pretty new problem for me. I’ve had insomnia in the past, but never insomnia where I’ve just woken up night after night unable to get back to sleep. And never insomnia when I just don’t want to go back to bed because I know I won’t sleep. This is only about a month in. I’m thinking monstro might be right, because it’s coincided with my Abilify prescription. That said, many of the suggestions in this thread are good, and I’m going to start trying them.