I am also a insomniac but lately I found a few things that help.
Some sound corny but it has worked for me...
Avoid taking drugs that help you sleep as you will rely on it more than solving the real issues.
I read a handful of insomniac books and here is what's helped, with a few that I thought up of which works.

1) Get some exercise after work but not before you sleep. I find having to move
heavy items, packing, running around all day make me sleep better. When I stay home all day during
the weekend for example, I don't move much and find I don't sleep as well.
2) Don't drink alcohol after dinner time or caffeine after 3pm. Avoid heavy foods with high sugar.
3) Take up meditation or have 1 hour of non interruption, where you just relax your mind
4) Write down stuff that is in your head that is making you anxious like stuff you still need doing, bad day at the office
Focus on solutions rather than continuing to fight something that is after the fact, or in your mind only.
5) Make love or just spend valuable focused time with someone you love.
6) Read a book, but only something that will make you feel relaxed. Avoid thrillers, things that make you anxious.
7) Tell your wife you want a facial, its not very manly, but its very meditative and relaxing.
If you can sleep in a room with ventilation and no noise (in Hong Kong this is hard to get)
9) Thank everything you have, your partner, family etc. and everyone you met today before you doze off.
10) I heard native indians drink lots of water to get a deeper sleep (I tried and sometimes its good). If you have to pee a lot then avoid liquids 1 hour before you go to bed.

Hope this helps, let me know which ones work for you...

Yup, but its down to the reason you've given. No drug company can market it exclusively so theres no clincial trials trying to prove its effects, and when it is in a trial it would be used against a companies product, where unsurprisingly it looks to not do much....cynical?



Is that marketed for aiding sleep, over here its purely sold for hay-fever/allergy symptoms with the drowsiness as a side effect. I can't tell you how many times i've refused sales to parents who buy it purely to get their kids to sleep at night (after filling them up with fizzy drinks)...We have products that contain diphenhydramine but are purely marketed as sleep aids (Nytol), they can get pretty addictive though.

I wouldn't necessarily say they were better than prescription meds. The problem is long-term prescribing and over use. The newere generations don't have much of a hangover effect. But you're not actually curing the cause of the insomnia.

It's not directly marketed for sleep but I know a lot of people who use it for it. You also would not believe how many parents give children's benydryl to "help" their kids sleep on airplanes or long rides. Our pediatrician is very against that and I don't blame him. A lot of times plane rides are a pain but the idea of drugging my toddler is just unthinkable.

i've been drinking Nyquil lately and love that warm feeling as i drift off into sleepy land. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

slightly groggy in the morning but that's what that four cups of coffee are for.

I occasionally suffer from insomnia, a lifelong problem that for some reason seems to be diminishing, not increasing as I age. I used to find that some chamomile tea with a few drops of tincture of kava, valerian, or melotonin would help me get to sleep very effectively. However, if you drink tea before going to bed, chances are you'll have to pee in the middle of the night, so "your mileage may vary." Also, some herbal sleep aids work well at first, but then cause the user to wake up suddenly a few hours after falling asleep.

I wonder if it's possible that you have a sleep apnea problem and don't know it? Do you ever wake up suddenly, gasping for breath? Even if not, some of what you describe are "classic" sleep apnea symptoms. This is something that can be tested for with a "sleep study" that your doctor can easily prescribe if they deem it to be a likely problem. Hope I'm not being alarmist but the bit about being tired during the day is a possible indicator.

Someone said something about pot and whiskey. While those are common things that people use to become un-wired, if you go to sleep frequently drunk or stoned or both, you're messing with your serotonin balance and sleep/dream cycles. May not be the biggest deal in the world, but part of getting enough sleep is getting enough quality sleep.

Fist of Fury?

I'm 43 and sleep like a baby. I wake up crying every hour with piss and shit in my pants.

I usually come home and drink a couple beers and I fall asleep like a baby. Coors Light seems to work best.

That made me LOL. I had to tell it to my wife...hilarious.

I woke up around 3am this morning and could fall back to sleep so
I decided to try counting kaijus instead of sheeps and it worked

Kicking this thread up since I have a question connected to this as a 42 year toy geezer with some interesting sleep issues as of late.

So, from last August 2009 to the end of May 2010 I was working a real intense schedule. Most intense in years. June rolls around and folks break for vacation and I use the month to catch up on sleep. And boy did that help! Feel more rested, calmer, better, etc.

But lately I decided I want to adjust my sleep schedule back to normal. So I took the Melatonin route: One 3mg chewable pill 1 hour before I want to sleep.

Okay, so it worked right away with a day and my sleep got back to normal. But here is the weird thing: For about 3-4 days after I take the pill I feel a weird hazish-like "hangover." I won't say it made me depressed, because I wasn't exactly that way. A wee bit queasy but not in a nauseous way. But I definitely felt "off." Then that feeling went away.

So my thinking is it's summer, I'm going out, getting sunlight so I am getting normal/natural Melatonin that route. Could taking this pill while my body is in a normal cycle just push my Melatonin levels up to a point where I feel ill?

Also kind of related, I'm no heavy drinker by a long shot. But the one or two days a week I touch a glass or two of wine or beer, a day or so later I genuinely feel a wee bit depressed. WTF? I'm living the life of a monk here and I get this?

I'm chalking it all up to age and adjusting and being able to understand your body/feelings better but still. Can anyone else relate or have similar experiences?

Iv have insomnia for 8 years now. I know how ya feel. I got to bed @ 12-3 and then 4-6 everyday. I work in a high stress job. To tell ya the truth. I use herbal medication (cannabis) and it helps really well. but I really think you have to got to the root of the problem. Find out whats on your mind?

OPEN YOUR MIND!!

Exercise at night will definitely keep you up. Move it to the morning and amp it up to see if that helps.

Lixx, a lot of people here have weighed in with some good things to try, but this is the part of your original post that sticks with me:


A couple of years ago I went through a really rough bout of insomnia. Bad breakup, stress at work, and other stuff was being dog-piled on my psyche and this "wobble" with my sleep pattern started to get out of control. The fact that my sleep time (the last refuge of any human being from the stresses of their daily life) was being affected was a hard thing to handle, and I got into the cycle that you're in: the last conscious thought on my mind when I got into bed was, "I hope I'll stay asleep."

Of course, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because then in four hours or so you're awake again and you're agonizing over it because your worst fear came to pass. You were afraid the Insomnia Monster was going to get you and sure enough, it did. There's a name for this specific type of insomnia but I can't find it right now.

Of course, it's worthwhile to practice good "sleep discipline" and do all of these things, many of which people in the thread have suggested but it's worth reiterating:

- Establish a regular sleeping and waking time and stick to it.

- Eat right and exercise, but don't eat or exercise too close to bedtime.

- Cut out caffeine. If you can't do this completely, make sure you don't drink any past noon.

- Don't nap.

- Make sure your bed is in a comfortable, dark, quiet place and use it only for sleeping and fucking, not watching TV, reading, or playing video games.

- Stop using the computer and TV a couple of hours before bed time, your brain gets fooled by the bright screen and thinks that it's daytime, screwing with your internal clock.

You may want to look at your life and try identifying the problems that aren't your insomnia, because those are most likely the real issues beneath the surface that are affecting your sleep. Therapy, hypnosis, meditation, self help books, these are all worthwhile things to look into. Whatever works will get you to the point where you're not thinking about your problems (consciously or unconsciously) and you can just live. And part of living is sleeping.

Nowadays I sleep like a rock for 7 to 9 hours, even when I break the rules listed above. I'd say part of it is the result of dealing with the issues in my waking life, but most of it was disabusing myself of this notion that "there's something wrong with me because I have a problem sleeping." Either I don't believe this any more or I simply forgot it.

My guess is that you'll most likely end up in the same place sooner than you think. Just give it some time and patience.

Sweet dreams...

For sure, age is the only real adversary to be concerned with. We as a society are not conditioned to accept or understand aging, and it will always come as a shock.

As for sleeping, don't under estimate the power of a nap. So many of the solutions offered here strike me as fairly regimented, when the answer could mean breaking away from routine.