Insomnia

[Dravyk]

Originally posted by *KK*@Feb 3 2005, 03:36 PM
What starts out innocently enough, going to bed at 1 instead of midnight very rapidly becomes going to bed at 6 am and still having to drag my ass out of it around 9 or so at the latest most mornings. It doesn't take but a few days to get totally out of whack, and then to make it worse I do something like I did yesterday evening and allow myself to fall asleep on the couch for a couple hours around dinner time. (OK, dinner time for most people, my schedule right now is that there isn't one at all).

I don't do pills, so every once in a while when I'm like this, I just have to try and stay up straight through one night to try to get myself beat enough that I'll hit the pillow around 11 pm and actually get to sleep the next night.

Been there and done that. Frequently. Usually ends up one night goes longer, it's 4am, next day it's 7am, etc.

Likewise I was (and still am, actually) never fond of pills. If I can do it without meds, I will.

The things you described, I've tried. Let me just go straight out and stay up until I catch up. Usually though that just knocks me out around 3 in the afternoon and makes matter worse.

From my olden days of working the graveyard or lobster shift in Manhatten, I would often "turn myself around" on the weekends. NYC or not, it's a bitch staying up all night long on the weekends and not seeing daylight, so I used to so the "Saturday Night" switch, and make Sunday and Monday "normal days".

The way to do that is we all have a midday lows. Anyone who is used to or remembers the old 9-to-5 workdays recalls how you get that after lunch, 2:30-3:30 "low". That cycle works no matter when you get up and go to sleep there is a natural "low" that hits you. If you were to give in to that low, you can sleep. That's how I'd do the weekend switch overs.

Of course I also had to go start my work week off late Monday night, so that always sucked.

Anyhow, those old tricks don't work that well anymore when I get my schedule blowned out. Guess my body got used to the "sleep tricks" a bit too much.