Does it matter what time of day you drink alcohol? I know that I get insomnia if I am not sober at least 5-6 hours before I go to bed. So on days when I do do my drinking I have to do it in the morning, so I am sober by the afternoon. In college when I would try to drink at night I’d have serious trouble sleeping.
What works best for me is to just go ahead and skip a night’s sleep,
holding out until 5-7pm the next day. Then I sleep 10-12hrs for 2-3 nights,
and within a week or so am back on more normal sleep schedule.
Unfortunately even when I do not have bad insomnia I can rarely
get to sleep in less than an hour, and two hrs is not unusual.
Agreed on the exercise and lack of caffeine, coupled with earplugs and (if necessary) either an eye covering or light-blocking window curtains.
However, the thing that’s worked for me most – to the point where I’m getting to bed faster than ever before (and I too am a lifelong insomniac)? Elavil, which is an old school tricyclic anti-depression med. I was put on it for a combo of depression/anxiety, and I take 50mg before I go to sleep every night. And for the first time, ever, I fall asleep like a SHOT. Like, I’ve woken up in the morning with my light still on, because I was reading/listening to music before I went to bed (yeah, it’s a no-no) and fell asleep so quickly I didn’t have time to shut the light.
This is heaven for me, because it’s usually the long hour or two from “lights out” till I finally transition to a not-very-deep sleep that lets my over-active anxiety go into overdrive. Now there seems to be none of that transition for me–I’m awake (but sleepy) one moment, asleep the next. (I’m not saying, btw, that the medication is so strong that I’d fall asleep in the middle of doing something or having a conversation; but if I’m lying in bed, feeling sleepy, I will fall asleep, and damn fast.)
I’m also not suggesting anyone start taking Elavil if you don’t have an underlying medical reason to take it. (Usual reasons are depression and panic disorder, as is the case for me.) But I’m just saying, sometimes there are unexpected benefits from meds.
Yep–the Seroquel was like that for me. It’s for my bipolar disorder, but it was the tipping point that allowed me to finally fall asleep, too.
One nice thing to remember–certified by scientific (no cite here) papers and my doctors – is that even when you are lying in bed staring at the ceiling, you are getting some sleep-like effects, so you can try to break “I can’t sleep, I’ll be miserable in the A.M, and see, I’m still not asleep” loop of anxiety.
It helps accepting into it sometimes.
Also, besides screwing around with ant-anxiety medications or Seroquel (
:eek::eek:) just pop a Benadryl or two. They have the same chemical as any of the fancy over the counter “sleep aids.” Just remember not to operate any heavy machinery.
I’ve taken up to five Benadryl at a time without having them make me even slightly drowsy.
For those of you who wake up in the night and fall back asleep, do you notice anything different about your dreams? I sometimes wake up at 3 and it takes 1-2 hours to fall back asleep. But when I do go back to sleep, I sleep very heavily and have a lot of dreams. If I sleep the night through, I can’t remember any dreams.
I heard something recently on NPR and it’s been working for me. Lie on your back with your arms folded over your chest. You should have your right hand on your left chest and your left hand on your right chest. Close your eyes and move them slowly back and forth. When your eyes move to the left, tap your right hand on your left chest. When your eyes move to the right, tap your left hand on your right chest. Something about the criss-cross between left and right helps you get sleepy.
Another way is to start at 300 and count backwards by 3.
I can speak from personal experience on this. I had insomnia problems a few years ago that lasted 1-2 years. My doctor first put me on Ambien. Worked great for the first month. Second month, not so much. When I took two pills, it worked just as well as the first month, but I said to myself “that’s the path to addiction”. So, when I went to see my doctor at the end of the second month, I described the problem and said “this stuff ain’t gonna work, long-term”. He put me on Restoril. Same pattern, good first month, starting to be useless the second. So, on the 4th month, when I went to see him again, we tried switching back to Ambien again. Worked like a charm, again. From that point, until I stopped having the sleep problem, it was 2 months of Ambien, 2 months of Restoril, repeat until I didn’t need them anymore.
There was an underlying medical issue, which was also being treated, but what I was taking for that is irrelevant to the OP’s question. And it was several years ago. I just mention it to forestall “you should get checked for [fill-in-the-blank]” responses.
Fortunately I’ve been pretty stable on 60mg of temazepam (Restoril) for many years now without needing to increase the dose. That said, I do need to supplement it with other medications–it doesn’t work on its own (and never has). My insomnia is pretty damned persistent, though, and I have the double down side of having a very efficient metabolism (I’ve always needed to take a higher dose of any given oral medication to get the normal effect) and having malabsorption (due to surgery) which means that of any given dose of an oral medication that I take, I only absorb x percent of it–the rest goes right through me.
That’s the best and most insane idea I’ve ever heard. I’d have to practice this for a long time to remember all that. In case it isn’t clear, I don’t do jazzercize, though, so maybe coordination is an issue for me in a way that would make lithe aerobics instructors laugh.
I can’t believe that nobody’s mentioned propofol yet. You guys are all a bunch of weenies. :rolleyes:
I too, have had an issue with morpheus since childhood. It takes a long time to fall asleep, then I awaken every two hours.
At least, that was the case until I was diagnosed with ADHD a couple months ago. I’m now taking Adderall. For normal people, it’s a stimulant. It keeps them awake. For me, it shuts down the party in my mind and allows me to sleep all night. To me, it’s a wonder drug.
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Moved to IMHO.
[/moderating]
could you explain? i can’t imagine, for example, farmers having insomnia. is it a health issue as a result of a sedentary, yet stressful lifestyle? are people taking drugs for this in lieu of exercise / a healthy lifestyle? generally speaking of course.
Hmmm…makes me wonder. About three years ago I started using pseudo on an intermittent basis to treat seasonal rhinitis. I immediately noticed that I not only felt more on top of things when I took it, I slept better as well. I’ve always had a subjective feeling in the back of my mind that if my rhinitis were to magically disappear tomorrow, I would still keep taking the pseudo. When I Googled it, I found that a lot of people with undiagnosed ADHD self-medicate with pseudo. How do I go about finding out if I have ADHD—go see a shrink or just a GP?
See a psychiatrist. You may need a referral from your pcp.
When I was in college, I used to stay up for 30 hours at a time, then sleep for 12. I ended up hating my bed because it was tiny, hard as a rock (standard-issue dorm furniture), plus I had two roommates to share the bedroom with and couldn’t sleep comfortably (which is to say, topless). Also, we didn’t have air conditioning in the muggy Midwest, ugh. So I slept on a futon in the living room for a long time and developed a really strong aversion to my bed (and beds in general). Even now, having a big comfortable queen bed in a bedroom to myself, my biggest problem is still making myself lie down.
It helped a lot when I stopped looking at a clock. The number of hours of sleep I wasn’t able to get have been a big source of anxiety for me in the past. Looking at a clock every 5 minutes ensured that my already-shitty amount of sleep got even shittier. So, don’t do that!
2 Benadryl helps me get sleepy enough to get in bed, but I don’t like to do that often. Only after a few days of horrible sleep in a row.
[quote=“Namkcalb, post:3, topic:604433”]
[li]Install this on your computer. It reduces the amount of melatonin-supressing blue light your computer emits in the evening.[/li][/QUOTE]
I love you for this.
The plurality opinions of the late Justice Lewis Powell.
I have chronic insom. I use weed. Works better than anything I have ever tried and after two sleep studies I have tried them all.
Truth.