Happens at least three times a year, summer being one of those times. I can always tell when it’s about to start. My eyes start opening a little earlier every morning. At night I look at the clock and it’s gone from being 8:30 to 1am.
Mr. Maureen is sympathetic, but getting a little exasperated. He’s one of those annoying people who can sleep anywhere within the space of 5 minutes. He thinks I’m just not trying hard enough to sleep.
Even with all the channels on cable (and of course, we have them all), there’s nothing on at 3:15 am. So, I lurk around here for a while. Am now sitting here at a quarter to nine, staring at my toenails, waiting for the Fed Ex guy to deliver Harry Potter. At least I’ll have something to read…
Any suggestions for time spent usefully during insomnia? I can’t be the only dopester who suffers from this.
I have an attack of insomnia every once in a while, and I’ve found that it’s best to get out of bed until I’m sleepy. There’s nothing worse than lying in bed in the dark trying to make myself sleep.
A couple of Benadryl works wonders for me. It doesn’t knock me out, but after a half hour or so, I find myself yawning. It’s not habit forming and seems to be as benign as a drug can be.
Oops, this will teach me to read the list line of the OP.
Watching bad late night TV or playing solitaire, if I don’t want to do anything constructive. Anything more interesting will make stay awake even longer.
My sleep cycle gets out of whack every once in a while for no apparent reason. I’ve found it helps if I don’t look at the clock when I wake up. I can usually just roll over and drop off again.
But I have seen my share of gawd-awful infomercials at 4AM. I wish I had a magical solution to share, but I don’t. <yawn>
I read James Thurber stories until I’m tired. I’ve read them all before (and love them), so it’s pleasant but not gripping enough to keep me from getting drowsy.
And yeah, don’t look at the clock. Turn it to the wall if you have to.
I don’t have cable, so I’m stuck with the Big 4. At 3 reruns of Conan come on ( I didn’t realize how bad this is until I just typed it). I often turn it on at 3:30 if I’m really bored, or at 3:50 to watch the last act, usually a music act. Have seen some interesting things then. At 4 the business shows come on here, so I watch them and follow the market that way.
Other things are of course the radio or reading. BBC is played on the NPR station here all night long. Sometimes I’ll get up and have a bowl of cereal, hoping the milk will help put me to sleep.
At 5 I get my butt out of bed and get to the gym. Traffic is marvelous at 5am.
Then again, you’ve got someone lying next to you, I’m sure you can think up something to do…
I’m self-employed, so I just sit at my computer and get some work done. It makes me feel like at least the time isn’t totally wasted. I do the same thing when I’m sick; I can prop myself up in my PJs and not worry about combing my hair.
Put on some gym shoes and juice up the tread mill! Excercise is rumored to help straighten out the sleep cycle. (No, there’s no proof that it works, but at least it’s good for the heart!)
I had really bad insomnia for about a year. I would be totally exhausted during the day, can’t tell you how many times I nearly fell asleep driving home from work at 4PM. But I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep till between 11 and 12, and then I’d be up anywhere between 2:30 and 4. (Alarm was set for 6.)
I called my doctor’s office once when my fiance found me collapsed in the living room - I’d fallen and just didn’t have the energy to get up. They told me to see how I felt in the morning, then sent me to the emergency room, where the doctor was most unsympathetic and unhelpful:
Doctor: It’s not my problem that you’re tired.
Me: But I’m tired because I can’t sleep!
Doctor: So go see your regular doctor.
Me: I called, and they told me to come here!
Doctor: So? It’s not my problem.
Eventually, I did get an appointment with my doctor, who put me on Trazodone. It’s actually an antidepressant, but in high enough doses to work that way - let’s just say she explained it to me as, “Of course you wouldn’t be depressed anymore, you’d be unconscious.” It’s used in smaller doses to treat insomnia. I was on it for about a year and have been sleeping fine the last six months without it, although I had off-and-on insomnia most of my life before.
One caveat though: for me at least, it sometimes worked very fast. It has to be taken with food, and I can recall at least one occasion where I took it with dinner and barely stayed awake through dessert. Usually it took anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. I didn’t mind a bit, seeing how exhausted I was up till then, except for the bit where I never got to watch any hockey games past the first period. (I eventually started taking it later with a light snack if I wanted to stay up.) As far as I know it’s not addictive and the possible side effects were no worse than with any OTC med. I was able to get off it once my body adjusted to getting a full night’s sleep.
I’ve always read that you’re supposed to get out of bed, to go do something for a little while til you’re tired. Then go back to bed. Plus, you might be productive, which is always a bonus. The same experts espousing this advice support only using your bed to sleep in, etc.-- not to study in or hang out on because it interferes with your “This is my bed, I’m going to sleep” mindset when you need it most.
I keep a couple of books on the nightstand. I read before going to sleep for the night and then if I’m having a particularly hard time staying asleep, I’ll sit up and read some more until I get sleepy again.
Otherwise, I’ll go watch an old movie, put on a DVD, surf the 'net - anything I can do that’s relatively mindless and will let me relax and turn off my racing mind, or at least throttle it back a bit.
I’ve been having a sever bout lately - in bed at 10:00 PM, I fall almost immediately asleep only to wake up again at 12:30 and not be able to get back to sleep until around 5:00 or so. It’s sheer hell at about 3:30 PM when the afternoon is winding down, let me tell you.
I get it more and more over the past few years, but have always had difficulty falling asleep on a regular sleep cycle.
I work nights and get home anywhere from 3am to 4am, usually can’t fall asleep before 6 or 7 in the morning. I try to use the time to buy my groceries at Wal-e-world (no crowds and crying kids, just shelf stockers who give you dirty looks for messing up their shelves, and the fun of dodging the gas powered floor buffers), read, surf the web, do dishes, read the SDMB (if it’s not too picky during the maintence time), watch early morning news or rarely a treat of an old movie on AMC (since they suck now). I so miss the pre-infomerical days when more channels played cool reruns and more movies, used to I could count on A&E to have something worth watching quite often when they still had their 3 am movie.
It’s hard being a night owl and an insomniac. When you talk about saying things like, “It’s 11am, I should have been asleep hours ago,” regular dayshifters just don’t understand.
I wish I had a magical solution to share, but I don’t. <yawn>