# Oh, my fucking gawd does insomnia suck **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 18, 2020, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378 "2020-08-18T06:25:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**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:** [August 20, 2020, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/42 "2020-08-20T22:06:01Z")
Assuming one gets it. I’m worried I’m going to be 102 and still have periods. ---
**Author:** ![BippityBoppityBoo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bippityboppityboo/32/5745_2.png) [@BippityBoppityBoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BippityBoppityBoo)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2020, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/43 "2020-08-20T22:54:43Z")
That’s one way to get into the Book of Records. Gotta be an easier way though. My sympathy. I cringe thinking about 42 years and still going on. Mother Nature blew it with this plan. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2020, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/44 "2020-08-20T23:01:47Z")
I had just about exactly 42 years of menstruating. I hope to now enjoy an equal number without menstruating. ---
**Author:** ![River\_Hippie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/river_hippie/32/26_2.png) [@River\_Hippie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/River_Hippie)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2020, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/45 "2020-08-21T00:02:04Z")
It’s something I’ve suffered from almost all my life. My version is being super tired, sinking into bed, falling asleep immediately and waking up about 1-3 hours later, not just wide awake but with a feeling that I just want to climb out of my skin and run laps around the house or something. Problem is that if I get out of bed and do anything at all it makes things worse. Then shortly before I have to get up and go to work I fall into a really heavy sleep with vivid dreams and then the alarm goes off. My theory is that I am a nocturnal person and I have been fighting my natural sleep cycle my whole life by having jobs that require getting up early. If freed from the job mandated sleep patterns I gravitate to sleeping until noon and then staying awake until almost dawn. ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2020, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/46 "2020-08-21T02:51:47Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > My recent “lecture series” is on number systems in math, but previously I’ve done ones on Calculus, rocket engines, and various programming topics. Anything on audiobook? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![BippityBoppityBoo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bippityboppityboo/32/5745_2.png) [@BippityBoppityBoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BippityBoppityBoo)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2020, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/47 "2020-08-21T02:54:35Z")
Link to a long, looping YouTube of yours would work. Get right on that, whouldja? Another 🥱 ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2020, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/48 "2020-08-21T03:14:43Z")
I am 99.8% certain these lectures make _way_ more sense in my head than they do out loud. I also don’t get through more than about 5 minutes at a time due to their effectiveness. ---
**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:** [August 21, 2020, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/49 "2020-08-21T09:13:17Z")
I have been lecturing myself on things in my head, hit a sticking point, and had to go look something up on the computer, or my phone-- another reason I need distraction from this activity, which for me is a compulsion. My brain fills time. It’s like that guy at the party who can’t handle a lull in the conversation, so he might start yammering on about his toe fungus, why he hates his father’s girlfriend, or how he knows that aliens for sure have landed on earth. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2020, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/50 "2020-08-22T16:26:11Z")
> [@BippityBoppityBoo](#): > > Link to a long, looping YouTube of yours would work. Get right on that, whouldja? > > Another The Hu have a couple videos on youtube someone posted that are 10 hour repeats of one of their songs [um Wolf Totem and I can’t remember the other.] Been known to fall asleep to them. Youtube also has isochronic and binaural 10 hour sleep videos that black the screen. Love them. I have an issue with the babbling brook/rainstorm nature sound versions in that I start hearing voices and I end up awake listening to them in paranoia especially if mrAru isn’t around, because I start worrying that the freaking arsonist is outside the barn getting ready to torch it. I could crutch my way out of our house because it was a small one story, but I would never make it out of the barn alive. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2020, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/51 "2020-08-22T20:58:32Z")
No idea if this is any help at all,but I hav red an Amazon Echo on the nightstand, and unlocked muted free music. I set it to a reasonable volume then tell Alexa to shuffle songs from, well, pretty much anybody (Nat Cole, Torme, Stan Freberg, James Taylor, to name a few). I usually make it through two or three tracks, and then I’m asleep. ---
**Author:** ![BippityBoppityBoo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bippityboppityboo/32/5745_2.png) [@BippityBoppityBoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BippityBoppityBoo)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2020, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/52 "2020-08-22T21:04:03Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > Youtube also has isochronic and binaural 10 hour sleep videos that black the screen Thanks for the lead. Will look into these. I have same issue with babbling brook/sea shore ‘white noise’-ends up being worse than nothing. PTSD is an ugly thing when it is filling in the blanks in the middle of the night. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2020, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/53 "2020-08-22T23:12:41Z")
I had a couple months of almost no sleep. where I had to keep reminding myself “Don’t make any major decisions while sleep-deprived…” (that’s why I’m still here). A sleep study and a CPAP helped (though even after 2 years, I’ve never gotten used to it). Tried different pills, now I take Trazodone (my new best friend) before bed. But what’s helped the most is… audiobooks. Seriously. It started when I’d wake up and my brain would start riffing on negative stuff. But I’d slip in some earbuds, and let a melodious reader totally distract me from my own life. Last night, it was a John Grisham novel (they’re all read by Michael Beck, with a honeyed southern accent. British mysteries work, too, as long as there’s no yelling:). And what’s handy is that it keeps me from worrying or getting mad because I’m not sleeping. I can think “Hey, I’m awake, but I’m listening to a book, so it’s not wasted time.” And unlike a book or TV show, I’m still lying down with my eyes closed. So it’s easier to drift off. And even if I don’t, it’s so restful that two hours of that seems to equal an hour and a half of sleep. Works so well that I’ve started falling asleep to a book as well. Set the iPhone timer to “in 30 minutes, stop playing”, and it keeps me from over-thinking as I’m trying to _get_ to sleep as well. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2020, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/54 "2020-08-22T23:59:49Z")
> [@BippityBoppityBoo](#): > > Thanks for the lead. Will look into these. I have same issue with babbling brook/sea shore ‘white noise’-ends up being worse than nothing. PTSD is an ugly thing when it is filling in the blanks in the middle of the night. Several of them are excellent, they have non-music, nothing particularly recognizable as a particular piece, but pleasing sort of doodling around in a vaguely new ageyy sort of way. They also have celtic nonvocal music playlists that also work as background sleep music. I hate putting on a playlist with words or something recognizable because my mind then wants to sing along. _sigh_ I think the nature sound ones are the worst, there was one with little chirpy birds that was supposed to be meadows or woodlands or something, that one made me hear the almost voices the worst, I ended up waking mrAru to do a circuit around the outside of the barn making sure there was nobody out there. TO be honest, I adore living rural, it is so quiet and peaceful but if I had to live without mrAru, I think my paranoia would have me living in an apartment building at least 4 floors up [nobody can see in easily while just passing by] no balcony [more difficult to break in] and with a metal security door that has at least one deadbolt that is not keyed from the outside [can’t be picked open] and a judas hole with a [little cover](https://www.itstactical.com/intellicom/physical-security/reverse-peephole-security-protecting-your-privacy-with-peephole-covers/) [so people can’t peek in with that [viewer](https://www.amazon.com/Shomer-Tec-SHPR-Reverse-Peephole-Viewer/dp/B00ABV7LJQ)] ---
**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:** [August 23, 2020, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/55 "2020-08-23T00:37:13Z")
Actually, I have a white noise machine that under normal circumstances, which is to say, when my insomnia is only cranked up to about a 6, and the medication controls it well, helps a lot. It’s just been cranked up to a 9 or so lately. So, right now, I’ve got white noise, a couple of body pillows, I’m taking a little extra melatonin (yes, my doctor knows), I have separate AC for the room where I’m sleeping, and I’m sleeping by myself now (DH volunteered, but he hates the extra AC-- it’s just as well-- he snores, and is a big guy who generates a lot of heat). I’m also being really careful about my bedtime snack, and checking my blood sugar right before bed, so it doesn’t drop too far while I’m sleeping. Anything that wakes me up means I’m not going to be able to get back to sleep without more medication-- and lately even that hasn’t been working. Everything helps just a little. When you add it all together, I’m cranked back down to maybe a 7. I was happily getting a solid 6-7 hours of sleep for over two years (and maybe a extra in the late morning). Then, I went to getting 3 to 4 hours a night, and feeling like I was moving through sand all the time. Now, I’m getting about 6 hours again, but it’s not usually consecutive. I’m just hoping at some point it calms down and I can put away some of the extra measures-- and sleep with my husband again. But like I said before, I’ve had sleep issues since I was about 16. One really weird thing is that every so often, maybe every 20 months or so, I will have a workweek of hypersomnia. Seriously, 3-6 days when I _cannot_ get out of bed. I sleep from like, 10pm to 2 or 3pm the next day. I had a 4-day episode of that before this recent super-insomnia started. Caffeine doesn’t help. My doctor really wants a sleep study during a hypersomnia episode, but they are unpredictable, and sleep studies have to be scheduled pretty far in advance, not to mention that getting myself to the clinic during an episode is dicey. ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2020, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/56 "2020-08-23T01:42:41Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > I am 99.8% certain these lectures make _way_ more sense in my head than they do out loud. I also don’t get through more than about 5 minutes at a time due to their effectiveness. Uh say what? _5 minutes?!?_ (in cheese shop voice) Fetch hither the DSA (Dr.Strangelove Audiobook) on Leibniz being calculus’s inventor and _NOT_ Sir Isaac Newton, or the other one, on how much of a weenie Jack Parsons was. 🙃 > [@kaylasdad99](#): > > (Nat Cole, Torme, Stan Freberg, James Taylor, to name a few). I usually make it through two or three tracks, and then I’m asleep. I’ve posted this several times before, usually in CS, but goddammit Ima gonna throw down again the ole [Perry Como](https://youtu.be/zj5A7W-0zPY?t=36) > [@aruvqan](#): > > I have an issue with the babbling brook/rainstorm nature sound versions in that I start hearing voices and I end up awake listening to them in paranoia especially if mrAru isn’t around > [@BippityBoppityBoo](#): > > I have same issue with babbling brook/sea shore ‘white noise’-ends up being worse than nothing. Interesting - that effect is about the only one on all the different white noise machines I have that performs even ‘half o.k.’ for me. Frequencies are what keep me up, and there’s a brutal one from the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station across the Strait from us that I’d like to drop a Cone of Silence over. Whatever dear lord abomination they’re working on, over there… ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2020, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/57 "2020-08-23T01:52:57Z")
> [@Guest-starring\_Id](#): > > Uh say what? _5 minutes?!?_ > (in cheese shop voice) Fetch hither the DSA (Dr.Strangelove Audiobook) on Leibniz being calculus’s inventor and _NOT_ Sir Isaac Newton, or the other one, on how much of a weenie Jack Parsons was. I’m just doing tiny bits at a time! I’m not even partly through second-quarter calc. In fact I’m currently stuck trying do ∫x2sin(x) dx using integration by parts and I can’t actually finish it before dozing off. Which is actually a good thing because there are only so many topics I can do a high school/undergrad lecture on and I’d run out of material if I went on for hours. ---
**Author:** ![BippityBoppityBoo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bippityboppityboo/32/5745_2.png) [@BippityBoppityBoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BippityBoppityBoo)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2020, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/58 "2020-08-23T02:18:21Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > I’m just doing tiny bits at a time! I’m not even partly through second-quarter calc. In fact I’m currently stuck trying do ∫x2sin(x) dx using integration by parts and I can’t actually finish it before dozing off. Show off. You just had to say this, didn’t you? I’m still working on long division word problems. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2020, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/59 "2020-08-23T04:36:53Z")
What a great idea. Tell your brain “You’re going to do calculus!” Brain: "No I’m _not…z…z…z…z…z…z…_ … A friend falls asleep to the BBC Radio World Service streaming audio. Same concept. (Brain: "No I’m _not_ going to listen to Owen Bennett-Jones drone on about the railroads in Belarus _…z…z…z…z…z…z… )_ ---
**Author:** ![LegendsofClear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/77aa72/32.png) [@LegendsofClear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LegendsofClear)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2020, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/60 "2020-08-23T05:50:17Z")
Stop your fucking whining! ---
**Author:** ![BippityBoppityBoo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bippityboppityboo/32/5745_2.png) [@BippityBoppityBoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BippityBoppityBoo)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2020, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/oh-my-fucking-gawd-does-insomnia-suck/918378/61 "2020-08-23T06:20:00Z")
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