Insomnia

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I've been taking tylenol pm...seems to help me sleep....I'm just worried about becoming too dependent on it.

I may need to take something, too. Last night wasn't as bad as the night before, but I still woke up a lot.
 
Yeah..if it's not having to me several times a night it's heartburn....But I've found that the tylenol, even just one pill smoothes everything out and I've been sleeping the whole night THEN like I was in my twenties I have to pee like a racehorse...

It sucks, My dad could sleep through a bomb going off, while my mom STILL gets only a couple hours of sleep.

I inherited my height from my dad, and the insomnia from mom...sheesh...
 
Was it a dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun-god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?
 
That sounds more like the dreams I had when I was on the nicotene patch. Just really outlandish, and so vivid I swore they were real.

I actually stayed on the patch for a month or two longer than I needed, just because of the dreams. :drunk:
 
OP:

Are you eating before bed? Or how much sugar and/or caffeine are you having in the hours before bed time?

I found that I was having too much sugar just before bed which keeps me from sleeping well. Wife discovered that one and things have been much better since.

Just a thought but I wonder how much unfermentable sugars you are having before bed time. Could be an issue.
 
OP:

Are you eating before bed? Or how much sugar and/or caffeine are you having in the hours before bed time?

I found that I was having too much sugar just before bed which keeps me from sleeping well. Wife discovered that one and things have been much better since.

Just a thought but I wonder how much unfermentable sugars you are having before bed time. Could be an issue.

i don't eat before sleep.
Caffiene free since 2001. Don't do sugars other than a homebrew now and then.

I think it is nerves and stress. The last few weeks have been horrible.
 
I've been taking tylenol pm...seems to help me sleep....I'm just worried about becoming too dependent on it.

I think I need a doctor to prescribe a month all expenses paid trip to the breweries of Europe.

That'd fix it. :tank:
 
Try doing crossword puzzles when you hit the sack. It takes you mind off other things. Once I get to the harder clues and start going through the alphabet to see which letter works I start drifting off.
 
You're posting this in the morning? Must be a night worker. How about black out curtains? The brain is hard wired to get sleepy when it gets dark. Sometimes I leave the TV on real low on some really boring chanel. HGTV, history, you know. Boring.
 
5:46 AM isn't exactly the realm of when night workers sleep IowaHarry. Pacific time out here, you know.
 
I first tried melatonin when it first became in vogue...a decade or more ago...It caused the freakiest dreams, and worst sleep ever.

very true. I used to take it -- built up a tolerance and had to take more than recommended. I would fall into the deepest sleep, have the craziest, weirdest dreams, feel like I slept for a year, wake up tired, and see that I had been asleep for 5 minutes. scary OTC medication in my opinion.

homebrew is much better :mug:
 
I went on ambien a couple of different times. Those were some effed up dreams...

I can relate to the insomnia. Just last night I fell asleep around 10 and woke up around 2:30. I couldn't fall back asleep until almost 7... not cool...
 
Was it a dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun-god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?

Real Genius FTW!!! Love that movie.

I've been taking melatonin nightly for about 14 years now and it changed my life. I was fired from four different jobs for oversleeping before I started taking it. One job, I didn't have to be there until 4pm and I managed to oversleep and show up late several times.

My problem was that it would take me hours to fall asleep, and once asleep I wouldn't wake up for anything. I could be asleep for 12 hours and still wouldn't her my alarm go off in the morning. I even bought the loudest alarm clock I could find. It sounded like a garbage truck backing up through my bedroom. No dice.

The issue was that even when I fell asleep, it took hours for me to transition into deep sleep. So unless I slept for 14-16 hours, I didn't get any rest.

Melatonin not only let me fall asleep, but it put me into deep restfull sleep quicker. It literally changed my life. I take 9 mg about an hour before I plan on turning out the light, walk the dog, get ready for bed, read for a bit and then when I want to sleep it's like throwing a switch and I'm OUT!

I can't recommend it more. It's done wonders for me.

And the reports of it causing you to grow breasts are mostly overblown.

;)
 
I'm an insomniac as well. I'm awake from 2-5am or so almost every night. I've stopped fighting it and stopped taking drugs and now I accept it. I get up and use that time to read or write or even work, then go back to bed. Every 8 or 10 days I get so tired that I crash and sleep all night long for a night or two, then the cycle starts all over again. That time in the middle of the night is often the only time I ever have to myself, so I actually look forward to it.
 
do you use tobacco? Since I quit chewing a couple years ago, I noticed an increase in regular sleep

I used to smoke a pack a day towards the end of college. Now I only smoke on the weekends when I'm drinking...

I know for sure that I don't sleep well because of stress mostly... I just can't turn my brain off a lot...
 
I use to have terrible insomnia. I look back on it and it was mostly stress and anxiety induced. I'd work for 16 hours straight on school projects. I'd try to go to sleep and it just wouldn't happen, and once I finally got to sleep I'd dream of doing my projects. Dreaming of doing autocad and phototshop is about the worst thing ever. I graduated and started working and my insomnia has almost completely gone away. I find myself reading and enjoying a beer every night before bed to clear my mind and relax. I fall asleep within 10-15 minutes now.

Melatonin never worked for me, and in my worst spells of insomnia benadryl did nothing. I went to the health center one day looking to get something stronger and the doc denied me saying he sees students coming in all the time who want ambien to either sell or abuse. Wtf? My health and sanity were put at stake because other people abused medicine that would benefit me. I'm still bitter about that, but it was probably for the best. I've learned to control stress and anxiety without the help of medication.
 
I take 9 mg about an hour before I plan on turning out the light, walk the dog, get ready for bed, read for a bit and then when I want to sleep it's like throwing a switch and I'm OUT!

Holy jesus on a pogostick NINE mg of melatonin? If I take 1.5 mg I get sleepy, and one 3 mg tablet knocks my ass out for 10 hours. Melatonin isn't for everyone. It affects about 50% of the population, the other half it does little to nothing. I take it when I can't get to sleep after work since I work the crappy night shift and have to sleep during the day.
 
I like melatonin a lot. Sometimes I have trouble getting asleep. I just take one non time release 3mg, then lay day and I'm out in 15 minutes. You have some ****ed up dreams for about 10 minutes, but that's it.

It really isn't meant to be taken every night though. You are supposed to take it for a few days to set your sleep cycle and then nature should take over. It's great for jet lag, getting back into the swing of things after a few late nights, or just changing up your schedule.
 
Grrr....note the time stamp...I've been up for an hour,,,I finally decided to get up...

I hate this crap....

I hear yuh. The only things that seem to be guaranteed to work are the same things that make me drowsy or brain dead feeling for 12 hours once I do wake up.

I've been taking ashwagandha lately, seems to help, but not always.

Melatonin seems to stop working on me after a few days and it don't always work for me.
 
It really isn't meant to be taken every night though. You are supposed to take it for a few days to set your sleep cycle and then nature should take over. It's great for jet lag, getting back into the swing of things after a few late nights, or just changing up your schedule.

I agree. That should be true for a lot of sleep aids and other drugs like them.

The University I work at froze all of the budgets a few months ago (I still can't understand why, as it costs almost 50 grand to go there...) and, because I'm the low man on the totem pole, I have to have office hours from 5pm to 1am Monday through Friday. So, because I just moved to Chicago last summer, I don't have a lot friends and I barely have real human interaction (except the girlfriend...) all week until friday night/saturday morning.

This definitely attributes to my inability to sleep...
 
Try drinking something with a higher ABV & boinking your woman before sleeping. I find it works much better than melatonin. Regards, GF.
 
my insomnia goes off and on depending on stress levels. i was getting less than two hours of broken sleep a night. it took six months of expirementing with different things before the doc would give me a sleeping pill scrip. god i love ambien. just before i got the pills i had gotten to the point of hallucinations, lack of concentration, terrible short term memory. once i was able to get myself back into a normal sleep paturn i took myself off of em and only use them as needed. god those first nights of actual sleep were priceless.
if you try ambien i recomend trying the regular stuff first the ambien cr gives bad bad headaches
 
Not sure if marijuana is an option, but I am sure it would help. Both on the getting your mind off of things side and the staying asleep part.
 
lol that is what i used before i turned 18. it most definately works very well. and helps a lot with the stress and keeping you focused. i see some of my friends taking prescription medications for stress and they walk around like zombies. depending on the state he is in he may be able to get a med card for it.
 
lol that is what i used before i turned 18. it most definately works very well. and helps a lot with the stress and keeping you focused. i see some of my friends taking prescription medications for stress and they walk around like zombies. depending on the state he is in he may be able to get a med card for it.

Ha, one of my roommates used to do the weirdest sh** while on ambien. The other roommate who shared a room with him would sleep with a baseball bat just in case it got too weird...

I used to use a one-hitter at night to help me sleep, maybe I should bring that back...
 
i try not to go too many nights on ambien in a row to prevent that. and a nice tall glass of bookers on top of it you wont be gettin up. though id rather sleep walk then go back to having hallucinations while driving down the freeway in a rather large vehicle.
 
Ha, one of my roommates used to do the weirdest sh** while on ambien. The other roommate who shared a room with him would sleep with a baseball bat just in case it got too weird...

When my dad was in the hospital dying 2 years ago, my 82 year old mom was staying at my sister's. Her doctor had prescribed an Ambien for her during this time.

Evidently one morning at my sister's, my mom proceeds to tell my sister about this intense dream she had, where she was making "ensalada" (the Spanish version of Slasa.) In the dream, she had skewered tomatoes on forks and was roasting them over one of the burners on my sister's gas range. And was chopping up the onions and garlic and stuff and putting it together in a tupperware container...But with my mom's arthirtis she couldn't get the container into the drawer in my sister's fridge...

As my mom is telling this story my sister is making breakfast and she goes into the fridge and notices that there is a tupperware half way jammed into the drawer of the vegetable crisper....

Full of roasted tomato salsa....
 
When my dad was in the hospital dying 2 years ago, my 82 year old mom was staying at my sister's. Her doctor had prescribed an Ambien for her during this time.

Evidently one morning at my sister's, my mom proceeds to tell my sister about this intense dream she had, where she was making "ensalada" (the Spanish version of Slasa.) In the dream, she had skewered tomatoes on forks and was roasting them over one of the burners on my sister's gas range. And was chopping up the onions and garlic and stuff and putting it together in a tupperware container...But with my mom's arthirtis she couldn't get the container into the drawer in my sister's fridge...

As my mom is telling this story my sister is making breakfast and she goes into the fridge and notices that there is a tupperware half way jammed into the drawer of the vegetable crisper....

Full of roasted tomato salsa....

I have never had insomnia, so maybe I shouldn't talk, but I think I would rather not sleep than have stuff like that happen. That is some crazy sheet.
 
The longest I went with no sleep whatsoever was 4 days, 3 nights. Usually if I had a bad bout with it I'd at least pull a couple hours here and there, but that one really sucked.
 
I have never had insomnia, so maybe I shouldn't talk, but I think I would rather not sleep than have stuff like that happen. That is some crazy sheet.

Hell yea sleepwalking is the shiznit. I used to sleepwalk a lot when I was a kid. I'd end up in all kinds of places in the morning. One time it was in the bathroom, as if I'd had a rough night of drinking. Fun times, fun times. I've had crazy dreams on melatonin too, but at least it's dreams!
 
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