I hate insomnia … I just passed over the “if I fall asleep right now I can get X hours of sleep” time barrier … now my total expected sleep is less than 30 minutes … hmmm … wonder if I am going to get that??
Coises!!
Yeah, I hear you. There’s nothing like being ready to sleep and not able to–then compounding it with the additional pressure of doing math in your head. I’m always doing that ‘if I fall asleep now…’ stuff. It never does anything but remind me how little sleep I’ll get. I’ve developed some fairly successful ways of tricking myself into sleeping.
Shall I put on a pot of coffee? 
You think insomnia sucks? ?
Well, it does, actually. I don’t suffer from it anymore, since I quit smoking. Now I have sleep apnea. It suck too.
Oh boy, can I relate. I’ve been surviving on two to three hours of sleep a night, every night, for at least a couple of years now. I cannot fall asleep before 4 a.m. anymore, and I have to get back up at 7:30 to get the kids off to school. I work evenings (8 p.m. to 2 a.m.), so I could very easily go back to bed after the kids leave for school and sleep for a few hours. But it never works that way. I will lay down, but I almost never fall asleep. When I do manage to actually fall asleep, I almost always wake back up within an hour or so.
What truly works is having a small infant, who wakes up every 2 hours.
After a month or so of this, (and you may have to borrow one), you will find yourself falling asleep as soon as you lie down.
Wow, and I thought my jet lag was bad.
If your having insomnia a lot, here are some things you can do to help:
- If you don’t give up caffeine completely, then at least don’t drink it for a several hours before going to bed.
- Try to get some physical activity in during the evening.
- Don’t spend more than 15 minutes trying to get to sleep. If you know you’ve been in bed more than 15 minutes, get up and do something for a while.
Finally(this has worked the best for me)
4. When you go to bed, tell yourself that if you can’t go to sleep, you are going to get up and do a chore that you don’t really want to do, preferably something physical like laundry or other cleaning. Make sure you do it, if you can’t get to sleep!
I listen to a tape of our monthly development meeting. It could put a skydiver to sleep.
I found that the antihistamine Benadryl puts me straight to sleep (although it doesn’t do diddly insofar as fighting allergic reactions for me). One capsule before bed and I sleep straight through, 8 hours. Not very groggy the next morning, either.
Another trick: Throw off the bedclothes and let yourself get good and chilly. Put them back on and the warmth of them might put you to sleep.
And finally: Lay off the caffeine, already! Try never drinking it at work. I’ve always subscribed to the theory they pump it full of extra caffeine to hyper you out and get more work out of you.
No, it doesn’t. Insomnia is a bad thing. If insomnia sucked, I would be a happy, bleary-eyed fool.
I used to have terrible insomnia. I found that cutting out caffeine after 3pm, and not letting myself stay in bed awake for more than 15 minutes helped some, but I’d still be doing the “hours left to sleep” calculation pretty frequently.
Then I got some melatonin. It rocks. Problem solved.
<bad sciencey explanation>
My (probably poor) understanding of the situation is this: your brain produces melatonin every 24 hours as part of the whole cicadian rhythm thing. The melatonin levels in your brain fluctuate constantly over a 24-hour period, peaking an hour or two after you fall asleep at your normal bedtime. That’s what tells your brain it’s time for bed, and why you get so messed up by jet lag. (Melatonin was first marketed primarily for jet lag.)
</bad sciencey explanation>
So it’s not really a sleeping pill. It just makes you feel naturally sleepy at bedtime. On an evening you think you might not fall asleep when you want to, you take it about 30 minutes before your desired bedtime. You can’t really use it once you’re lying awake at 3am. By then it’s too late. So if you’re a sporadic insomniac, it’s less helpful. I tend to have periods of insomnia, so it’s great for me.
They sell it at GNC and probably other places. Typical dosage is 1-2 mg. (They’ve done clinical trials of up to 500 mg, with no adverse effects, so you can take two without much fear.)
It rocks for jet lag, too. Start taking it a couple days before you switch time zones, at your bedtime in the new time zone.
Love it love it love it!
Stuff I do to get to sleep:
- I landscape in my head. (Let’s see… I’m gonna put these plants over here and dig up that bed… then lay some stepping stones…)
- For whatever reason my brain will NOT turn off, I try to avoid thinking about work. (Ooops! That’s work! Stop! Think about something else!)
- Try to count to 1,000. It’s more difficult than it sounds.
- Think up ways to spend $1 million – assuming nobody voted you off the island!
- Drink chocolate milk. Plain milk works too, but I like chocolate better for those late night treats!
- If all else fails, take Tylenol PM. Unless I’ve been up all night and have to be at work in an hour. Then I just suffer.
Lifelong insomiac here. My mother says she would check on me in my crib and I’d be lying there awake. When I was older, I would get out of bed and play with my older sibling’s toys (they wouldn’t let me in the daytime).
I still have problems, especially with menopause’s night sweats.
Ever fall asleep and have a dream that you are in bed trying to fall asleep. INSOMIA DOUBLED!
Thanks for all the advice. I do know why I have insomnia (which is nicer than not knowing).
Stress sometimes causes it for me. I have a long history of caffiene worship and caffiene intake does not cause insomnia for me, thankfully.
I did manage to get some sleep there … by blowing off half my day though! Still, sleep is sleep.
For me it’s not the insomnia itself that sucks; it’s the “Hm, will it be tonight that I can’t fall asleep? Or maybe it’ll skip over me til Friday night” that blows.
I used to keep a bottle of sleeping pills lying around for when I needed them, but it turned out that I didn’t know I needed them til it was too late to take them without a hangover the next morning, so I stopped.
I did come across a nifty little prescription remedy called Ambien - half a pill (2.5 mg) puts me out like a light and keeps me that way for 7 1/2 to 8 hours, then wakes me up again. I probably take half a pill every Sunday night for 3 weeks out of four, and sometimes on Tuesdays as well, and it knocks my brain back into a sleep schedule for the rest of the week.
Yah … about three weeks ago, insomnia hit me so hard, I got less than 4 hours over a one week period! That was about the only time I considered going the sleeping pill route as I was starting to hallucinate and such. However my body is so sensitive to drugs I fear that a sleeping pill would fuck me hard and long (in a bad way that is). Last time I took a sleeping pill was back in 1994 when I was in so much pain I could not sleep. My then girlfriend (now wife) gave me a half of a sleeping pill. Knocked me out for 15 hours and kept me groggy and dopey for 3 or 4 days afterwards. Aspirin messes me up.
Yes. The shit works, and no grogginess.
Benadryl works better than anything I’ve ever used, but I prefer melatonin because it’s a chemical naturally produced by the body.
That, and benadryl makes me into a drooling retard for 4-6 hours.
I usually recommend Valerian root, because it doesn’t make you feel drugged like, well, drugs will.
It does reek, though. Plug your nose and swallow. Oh, and when I took it I had such sweet dreams!
Ahhh, those Valerian root dreams…
Please pardon my lack of knowledge on the subject, but what are the main drawbacks to insomnia? I can only guess extreme fatigue and decreased mental functioning.
For several years now, I’ve lived on 4-5 hours of sleep each night, and a little more on weekends. I only wish I didn’t have to sleep at all. Mostly, I endure periods of exhaustion, and occasional muscle pain. Yet I choose to live this way.
My only trouble is not being able to wake up on my own. I’m lucky to have Mrs. Tonk to get me out of bed each morning, and that is not an easy task for her.
Chronis insomniac since puberty hit checking in here.
I feel good on 7 hours of sleep (or more). I feel like shit when I get 4. Yeah, the problem is that you can’t function well the next day.
My insomnia has been a lot worse lately, but I have been very stressed due to some health problems, and I think it’s a big factor. One of the thing that helps my insomnia is falling asleep to music - it’s easier to turn my mind off.