I haven't been able to sleep for more than 5 hours straight for the last few months. Prescribed sleeping pills are not working. Time-release Melatonin does not seem to be working
( Read more... )
what I do when I really, absolutely must reset my sleep scedule is stay up. example: after class on friday, stay up the night and the next day (without ANY naps!), and go to bed that night at your normal time. you should be able to get a decent night's sleep.
also, you can try leaving the window open a crack. I've found that the warmth of the bed (to the relative cold of the room) makes me not want to get up and thus I sleep longer and deeper if I do this.
a third possibility is that your bio-clock may simply not be set to what most people consider "normal". there are alot of people like this at UPS, and I've heard many different methods of sleeping. if the problem is that you can't get more than 5 hours of sleep at a time, you might try doing something similar to what I'm doing this quarter: go to bed sometime late, get up, get ready, and go to school, come home and take a nap until you're not tired anymore, then get up at night, do whatever you need to do at home that day (probibly homework, etc), and go to bed to get up the next day for school. the most important part when messing with bio-clock is to make it as natural feeling as possible.
and as for the drugs, you are probibly pretty drug-resistant at this point, so it's not much of a suprise to me that they would have little effect on you. as for me, they'd probibly drop me like a 10 cent whore.
1) Tried the stay up thing (with no naps), and it doesn't work. I just get a second wind and end up going to sleep at the normal (unhealthy?) bedtime of 1-2 AM. It's also not bedtime *per se* that I'm worried about - it's totaly amount of sleep. As an experiment, I've gone to sleep at 2 and woke up at 7, and gone to sleep at 1 and woke up at 6. These are repeatable results.
Of course, I can always *go back to sleep* afterwards, but that normally leaves me feeling sleepy and tired throughout the rest of the day which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid...
2) My window normally *is* open, and at this time of year, I use a heated blanket, so the bed is *always* warmer than the rest of the room. Doesn't seem to affect sleep time, but I think it certainly helps me get to sleep faster.
3) The bio-clock thing is what I'll be trying to mess around with in chronotherapy; Google/Wikipedia it if you want the juicy details. Mid-day naps are not an option for me, because I must be awake from essentially 10 AM to 4 PM for my classes. I tend to fall alseep in class (uncontrollably - as in, my eyes close themselves despite my fighting), which is part of the problem.
4) I may or may not get lucky (yay, sex metaphors) with the drugs; I seemed to be doing pretty good this morning, actually, until my dad woke me up (I may have actually gotten *SIX* hours of continuous sleep! YAY PROGRESS!). Let's just say I took 1 sleeping med X, 1 sleeping med Y, and 3 Melatonin pills (all safe dosages, all non-interacting)... and it still took me 2 hours to go to sleep, and even then, it was because *I* chose to get in bed at that time (they're supposed to knock you out in 30 minutes!). JOY :P
Also, I've got 10 cents here... and I was thinking... :D
example: after class on friday, stay up the night and the next day (without ANY naps!), and go to bed that night at your normal time. you should be able to get a decent night's sleep.
also, you can try leaving the window open a crack. I've found that the warmth of the bed (to the relative cold of the room) makes me not want to get up and thus I sleep longer and deeper if I do this.
a third possibility is that your bio-clock may simply not be set to what most people consider "normal". there are alot of people like this at UPS, and I've heard many different methods of sleeping. if the problem is that you can't get more than 5 hours of sleep at a time, you might try doing something similar to what I'm doing this quarter: go to bed sometime late, get up, get ready, and go to school, come home and take a nap until you're not tired anymore, then get up at night, do whatever you need to do at home that day (probibly homework, etc), and go to bed to get up the next day for school. the most important part when messing with bio-clock is to make it as natural feeling as possible.
and as for the drugs, you are probibly pretty drug-resistant at this point, so it's not much of a suprise to me that they would have little effect on you. as for me, they'd probibly drop me like a 10 cent whore.
Reply
Of course, I can always *go back to sleep* afterwards, but that normally leaves me feeling sleepy and tired throughout the rest of the day which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid...
2) My window normally *is* open, and at this time of year, I use a heated blanket, so the bed is *always* warmer than the rest of the room. Doesn't seem to affect sleep time, but I think it certainly helps me get to sleep faster.
3) The bio-clock thing is what I'll be trying to mess around with in chronotherapy; Google/Wikipedia it if you want the juicy details. Mid-day naps are not an option for me, because I must be awake from essentially 10 AM to 4 PM for my classes. I tend to fall alseep in class (uncontrollably - as in, my eyes close themselves despite my fighting), which is part of the problem.
4) I may or may not get lucky (yay, sex metaphors) with the drugs; I seemed to be doing pretty good this morning, actually, until my dad woke me up (I may have actually gotten *SIX* hours of continuous sleep! YAY PROGRESS!). Let's just say I took 1 sleeping med X, 1 sleeping med Y, and 3 Melatonin pills (all safe dosages, all non-interacting)... and it still took me 2 hours to go to sleep, and even then, it was because *I* chose to get in bed at that time (they're supposed to knock you out in 30 minutes!). JOY :P
Also, I've got 10 cents here... and I was thinking... :D
Reply
go to bed at 4AM, get up at 9, go to school, get home at 5PM, sleep till 10.
on the other hand, if you're satisfied with your progress, that's fine too.
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment