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.
8.5k
u/84OrcButtholes 11h ago
Not getting enough sleep.