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09 July 2007
I can't sleep I've been falling asleep later and later for about a week. This does not bode well.
You could try and read something...only not anything too interesting. I was reading an interesting book last night and didn't go to sleep until 4:30 AM. And now it's 10 AM and a new day has started.
I could make a recording of my voice and send it to you - that would make you either drop off instantly or slash your wrists. Either way, it will solve the problem.
Reading and/or listening to music usually helps for me. Reading is the most effective.
I found that the two things that helped me the most, believe it or not, were drinking hot milk with vanilla syrup in it (when the weather isn't too hot) and I got a diffuser and would put lavender oil in it. Lavender really puts me to sleep.
The same thing happened to me last week, sigh.
I sort of oscillate between my manic and depressed phases and that's what determines my sleep cycles. If I'm in a stellar mood, I won't be able to sleep all night, maybe a couple of hours (three tops) during the day, but when I'm depressed, I'll sleep the whole night, and day (waking up at 1 or 2 in the afternoon).
I know this doesn't help you much, but I know how you feel.
I'm a huge insomniac. It sucks the most. Especially in the summer when it's too hot to take a nice, relaxing lavender bath.
You may be in a pattern of "learned sleeplessness" which is when you don't sleep well for a spell and your body decides to accept that new rhythm. It helps to shock yourself out of it by knocking yourself out for a couple nights in a row. Chug some Nyquil. Take a Benadryl. Tylenol PM. Ambien. Whatever. Just break the cycle.
Do you read in bed? Sometimes one can read enough in bed that the mind and body confuses the sleeping platform for a reading platform, and gears itself for low-level physical and high-level mental activity at bedtime. If you read before bed, do it in a chair or a couch (or hanging from the fire escape, if that floats yer boat), but never in bed. This can help.
Ambien works, but you might wake up to find elaborate toothpick sculptures on your kitchen floor, or friends who act a little strange after receiving seemingly lucid but weird telephone calls from you.
Rozerem is supposedly harmless, but it's more of a gentle nudge than a plunge into sleep.
Sometimes one can read enough in bed that the mind and body confuses the sleeping platform for a reading platform
This is certainly not my problem. I should know better, but every once in a while, I'll take whatever I'm reading to the bedroom, lie down, and try to read. Without fail, I will then wake up in two hours, fully clothed, with the bedroom light on, and the book folded awkwardly underneath my arm.
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