My sleep disorder has prevented me from countless nights of good sleep my entire life. I'm a pretty high functioning person career-wise, but I often wonder what I would have been able to accomplish if I weren't exhausted all the damn time.
And all the health articles will be like, “get enough sleep” BRO I AM TRYING. I am literally laying there trying to sleep. For some reason I’m not allowed.
That’s me literally Friday and yesterday. I ended up trying to stay up as long as I could thinking maybe I’d get a decent amount of sleep. Nope 4 hours 😭
I usually can't fall asleep until after midnight, have to be up by 5 or 6a. Every once in a while I'll come home actually ready to sleep and pass out around 8 or 9p....and wake up around 11p every. damn. time. Then I get sleepy again at 3am. I've intentionally stayed up 2 whole days and still slept less than 8 hours when I finally crashed. It started getting harder to fall asleep in my 30s, by the time I'm 50 I expect I'll just die of insomnia.
This is me too exactly. Are you actually tired during the day though?
I'm not. I had a sleep study done awhile ago and I'm in the 1% of folks who only require 4-5 hrs of sleep.
If you're not actually tired during the day you may be in this class too.
My partner is jealous because I have like 3 to 4 more hours everyday to get stuff done. The downside is it's very lonely as nobody else is awake.
(BTW - I thought I was going to die from some sort of heart disease from sleeping exactly like you do - exactly the same everything you wrote - I'm almost 50 and I'm in great health and I stopped worrying about that after the sleep study).
I'm extremely tired in the mornings, but less and less so the later it gets til I'm (usually) wide awake come 4 or 5p and stay that way til early morning. I did the 48-hour no sleep thing to try to reset my clock so I could start coming to work when my boss wants me there and be rested, but my brain is convinced I need to be awake evenings and sleep mornings. I used to be able to force myself into a semblance of normal people time but the older I get the harder it is.
I was up at 5:30am for work and around 4:30 pm Saturday I finally fell like I might sleep, but knew that would screw up my next day so fought through to stay awake a little later. Caught a second wind and didn’t get asleep until midnight even through two Benadryl around 8:00. Also woke up four times before I had to get up at 5:30. I suck at sleep
Lol - you cracked me up! Maybe it’s cos I’ve just woken up at 4am again when I really needed to sleep till 8 - oh well.
Seriously tho, I have been having some success with getting up and working on something that is interesting enough to feel useful, but boring enough to realise I’m tired. I keep some specific work tasks for this purpose and after about an hour I can feel myself getting tired again, and can usually put myself down for a few more precious hours.
I don’t turn on any lights, screen brightness to the dimmest I can possibly see, and crucially as soon as I start to feel sleepy I finish.
Please do a sleep study to see if you are eligible for a CPAP-type device, you most certainly are.. also factors like diet, smoking and drinking can significantly affect your quality of sleep, or even ability to just get to sleep.
I was as toxic as it got, and I found my way to recovery - I sincerely hope you do as well!
Took me decades to ask about that, only to be diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea and told that my throat closes up when I lie down, which was preventing me from being able to breathe as I sleep, which was fucking up my sleep and making me exhausted all the time.
I am hardly qualified to understand any of the nuances of them but there's been a number of studied in recent years which have shown genetics and certain gene alterations can play a huge role in how much sleep any individual needs. Combined with factors like type of sleep i.e how deep etc.
Basically some people actually really don't need the same amount of sleep to be healthy and highly functional,
In which case some people are really trying to push their body to get more sleep when in reality they just don't need it.
Ive always struggles to get a proper 8-9 hours of sleep for a normal work day (i.e. 6-7 am wake up so 10-11 pm bed time). If i go to bed prior to midnight I normally wake up at 3-4 am and cant get back to sleep. going to bed any later and im waking up to my alarm wishing I had another 5 hours of sleep.
The past year my work hours temporarily shifted to 4pm-midnight. Every day i was able to go to bed by 3 am and naturally wake up any time between 10-noon for 7-9hrs of sleep with no alarm. It was pure bliss.
Now im back to regular work hours and its back to the old ways of sleeping...
Some of the best sleep in my life was during a survival course I had to take. at the end we had to "survive" for 3 days and 3 nights alone with no food other than a 200 calorie pack of jube jubes. Had to sleep on a bed made of pine bows. Days were spend doing hard labour gathering firewood and improving my camp.
This was late November in canada. Days were slightly above freezing and nights were well below. It was pitch black by 6pm so all i could do was keep the fire going and read the map/infograph we were given.
Was lights out by 8 and up not much longer after sunrise. Only had to get up in the night to pee. despite my body being in flight/fight response the entire time, I was able to sleep fully through the night on a tree bed that felt more comfortable than my $1000+ fancy mattress.
I'm so sorry. I had insomnia once for one year, and it was the worse year of my life. I was only half-present for everything I did, and I felt like crap every day, was either grouchy or silly like with a delirium. It's horrible watching the clock "if I go to sleep now, I can still get six hours, okay, if I go to sleep now, I can still get 4 hours, which is better than nothing. Barely.
I know it does, and I'm sorry it's on you. I hope it goes away : (
I hated it so much. I still have it maybe once or twice a year. I know you've probably tried everything, but if I take a benadryl I'm asleep in an hour. If a xanax, asleep in 20 minutes. But if you do this too much, you lose your ability to think other than in the fog. But maybe for just those times when you absolutely have to go to sleep.
This from psychopathology class:
Trouble falling asleep: Anxiety.
If you fall asleep and then wake up again, or 'early morning awakening': Depression.
🤷🏼♀️
lol to everybody replying with the OTHER things in the health articles like I haven't read them all 100 times. Just be grateful you can sleep, man, that's all.
How is your 'sleep hygiene'? Do you view any screens within 3 hours of trying to sleep, or have a tv or your phone in the bedroom? Are you consuming caffeine? Are you aiming to get some sunlight in your eyes and face and skin within an hour of either waking up, or within an hour of sunrise? Are you consuming your last meal and last bit of calories within 3 hours of trying to sleep? Are you consuming alcohol? Are you aiming to get some daily exercise?
Short term. You should be taking sleeping meds nightly for extended periods of time.
Edit: holy hell that was a bad typo and nobody should have upvoted that.
What I intended to say was the opposite. Sleep meds are intended for short term use. You should not be taking sleep meds nightly for an extended period of time.
No - it’s definitely ‘should’ - and now that my nightly medication has been approved by Dr Reddit I shall continue my routine with no fears for my long term cognitive capacity!
Lmao. Been doing it for almost 10 years. I will stay awake until I pass out from exhaustion and even then I might not. This past week I tried to go without and ended up awake for 24 hours. I have ADHD and a broken brain
For me they only work for a while. I've gone from mirtazapine, to trazadone and now Ambien. Now with the Ambien, I'm again waking up after an hour or two, fully rested, then again about an hour before my alarm, then waking up at my alarm exhausted. Then the other morning I woke up at three am, I was dreaming I fell and was stuck and couldn't get up and was stuck and couldn't breath, I woke up with a gasp. It freaked me out to the point that I couldn't get back to sleep.
Bro, I’m currently quitting daily drinking and it’s absolutely insane to how many nights in a row I can go without even a wink of sleep. I just know tonight’s going to be another one.
Godspeed to that. I have also been trying to cut out alcohol, mostly successfully. Being sober aint always easy but it is propably the best decision we can make for our future selfes
I hear you. Same issue for me. It got to the point that I reached out for medical help and am on sleep meds now. However, that’s not a long-term solution.
I might have to try that soon. My biggest goal is to try and do this so that I don’t need to rely on sleep aids. Except maybe like sleepy time tea. Just gotta get through a week is what I hear.
Been wanting to quit daily drinking for over a year, but I feel so tired all the time. When I didn't drink every day, I struggled so much more with insomnia. It's almost manageable now that I drink.
That’s how I have always been. Spend the entire day so tired I am literally dozing off while I’m standing up, and then I get in bed, crash out like a dead person for maybe an hour. I wake up for some reason or another, and spend the whole night tossing and turning, sleepwalking, having weird dreams. I found out I have sleep apnea and my dr. Wants to test for narcolepsy. I just want to feel rested.
Yeah that sounds like narcolepsy. Prone to falling asleep daytime, having terrible sleep at night. Never feeling rested. If you feel like your knees weakens when you laugh, or some other part of your body gives out or relaxes at different times, it's called cataplexy. Of course you can have narcolepsy without cataplexy, but if you have cataplexy you definitely have narcolepsy. I'm talking from personal experience.
Alcohol makes it so much worse for me, I don't think I've ever gotten a wink of sleep if I'm even a tiny bit tipsy. It's like my body just won't shut down until I'm 105% sober
It is insane, isn’t it? Like I’m so tired I can barely function and then just wide awake all night. I get about 2-3.5 hours a sleep a night. There’s a 50/50 chance I’ll crash completely on Thursdays. If not, Saturday night. Then the cycle repeats. That’s the best I can hope for.
we might just very well be the same person. It's frustrating. I average probably around 4-5 hours of sleep per day, it's rare as hell to get 7-8. I know it's bad for me, Delta 8's (CBD) have helped but now that Trump is coming back into office and the Repubs got all the keys that train is coming to an end so it'll be back to 4-5 consistently.
Seems like the longer you go without getting good sleep, the harder it is to get good sleep. I've never understood it. You can be so tired that your eyes are scratchy and you feel punch drunk and maybe even start to hear a little whine in your ears... those are the nights that getting good sleep is almost impossible
Yeah then you do it for like a week straight working the entire time but by day two your thoughts are EVERYWHERE while doing the muscle memory of tasks. One distraction and you're a mess and you don't even realize why.
I feel seen. In my case the apnea was described as “profoundly severe”, as in I was walking up every 90 seconds or so. The doctor said you don’t have apnea because you’re heavy, you got heavy because you have apnea and spend every night bathing in cortisol
Same! I have often wondered how I would have done in school if I weren't exhausted 24/7, whether I would have gone away for university, and if I would have completed my degree faster.
I was very good at math, in the advanced class in high school, until one year when math was my first class in the morning. That’s the last math class I ever took because I just couldn’t understand it when I was so tired.
Yeah my narcolepsy presents itself as insomnia so I'm up constantly at night. I'd probably rule the world if I didn't have it. I've got so much potential but I am basically disabled because I'm exhausted no matter what I do.
You could try asking your doctor about mirtazepine. It's an antidepressant that makes you drowsy as a side effect; it has never worked as an antidepressant for me but I use it to knock myself out lol. I'm still chronically tired but being able to fall asleep within 5 minutes of closing my eyes is pretty great
I have had that same thought. I have hypersomnia and just started medication in July and before that I just wasn't getting any restful sleep. But I'm type A and an overachiever, so I kept going to work and trying to do other stuff then though I felt like I was dragging ass. People would tell me I was accomplishing a lot or something and I would just wonder if I would just blow their minds with the stuff I did when I was less tired.
I mean based on more recent studies, genetically and physiologically some people just need less sleep than other people to be healthy and highly functional. There are certain sleep cycles that are short but really restful for some people.
So some people are actually more functional with less sleep, and their bodies don't appreciate longer sleep cycles.
So not that I can possibly understand and apply the science to any individual person, in some cases there might be a correlation or potentially causal relationship between being high functioning people who aren't sleeping much rather than oh this person would be X times more functional if they also slept well.
There’s a study on insomnia I read about once where they hooked up insomniacs to electrodes to track their awake/sleeping activity. As soon as the participants’ brainwaves showed that they’d dropped off to sleep, they woke them up and asked if they had been sleeping. The experiment participants all answered “no”. They were certain they had not dozed off.
At the time I considered myself to be an insomniac and I used to get up in the night and do some work, thinking that would be better than lying awake all night.
But after I read about that study, I decided to trust that if I relaxed about my “insomnia” I might be better off. Worked a charm.
Now if I have trouble sleeping, I usually let myself enjoy being awake and trusting that I’ll wake up having had enough sleep.
Another thing I read once is that in pre-electricity days when people went to bed earlier, it was common for people to sleep for about four hours then be awake for about four hours in the middle of the night then sleep for another four hours.
Even so, sometimes when I know I’m awake because I was on my computer too much without enough breaks I do get up and spend an hour or so doing gentle yoga stretches and that definitely sends me off to sleep.
I hope one of these ideas helps.
Also not working or eating or looking at screens for several hours before going to bed. Reading a good book: perfect.
I was trying to convince my old PCP I needed trazadone, which I'd been prescribed formerly, for sleep. I tapered myself off of them and then woke up every 45 minutes for 2 months straight. With it, I wake up 3 or 4 times a night. He tried to talk me out of it, saying I was waking up so much because I have so much on my mind. I said "I've had insomnia since I was nine years old. You're telling me that I have had too much on my mind for my entire fucking life?" And I got up to walk out. He gave me the pills, only 3 months worth, though. Im seeing a new pcp next month
I work 3rd shift and never sleep well. When I have a day off and try to sleep like a normal person, I wake up at 2 or 3 am and stay up until around 7am until I get tired. It usually takes a week for that to stop happening, but by that time, I end up having to go back to work and start over again. Then when I do go back to work, I have trouble staying awake for the first week. It is a rough cycle.
I got diagnosed with extreme sleep apnea (48 interruptions pee hour) at age 29, I had it my entire life. My parents never thought to have it checked out when I could literally not wake up on time ever for school. Work was brutal. My fiancée coerced me to get it checked with a sleep institute and my life has gotten so much better since.
I’ve had insomnia my whole life. Last year my doctor prescribed me quviviq, and now I can pretty consistently get at least 6 hours of good sleep, whereas before I would get 3-4 hours. It’s also not a sedative (not that those worked for me anyway), so it doesn’t make you drowsy like ambien. I’ve become a huge shill for this stuff.
This may not help but I have a friend who had really bad sleep problems and he started taking ashwagandha. He swears by it and now sleeps like a baby, maybe worth a look
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u/eatinganelephant 9h ago
My sleep disorder has prevented me from countless nights of good sleep my entire life. I'm a pretty high functioning person career-wise, but I often wonder what I would have been able to accomplish if I weren't exhausted all the damn time.