Board 8 > I'm so tired of insomnia.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Pun half-intended.

I've suffered from severe insomnia for around half my life now. "Severe" meaning "Without medication, I'm up for over 24 hours, no matter what." 36 hours is common. My medication has, thankfully, been fantastic, and I haven't built a tolerance to it.

Even so, I'm sick of it. Every once in a while it doesn't work, and I'm up at 3 a.m.

I'm not sure what to do. Apparently cases like mine are ludicrously rare. Does anyone have any suggestions?

As someone suffering from it I would imagine you would have a more specific understanding of the topic than most of us. I can really only offer what I assume are the most common suggestions.

Build a routine. If possible wake up at the exact same time every day without fail. Whether you got 9 hours of sleep or 90 minutes, it's take to wake up. This may not be possible for everyone based on work schedules. When i was working from home I would be up every day at 5:50, but now that I have to work from the office again I had to shift it to 5:00.

Track your caffeine: This may not be your issue, but I have always struggled with poorly regulated caffeine consumption and have only recently begun to take a proactive approach to managing it. For a long time I was on a 2 or 3 energy drink a day routine. But they weren't always the same brands or taken at the same time of day. As a result I was not only consuming 500-600+ mgs but there was no consistency to how much would be in my body at one time throughout the day. Some days they would be spaced far apart and other days I'd have all 3 before noon. This irregularity resulted in headaches that I'm fairly sure were caused by my caffeine dependency overlapping with larger gaps in consumption. I took it down to a flat 2 drinks a day (350-400 mg), and then to 1 energy shot (300 mg) and currently I'm on one of those powders that you mix into a bottle of water. 3 of those per day is 240 mg and it's easy to space them out so the caffeine levels are staying roughly similar. Caffeine has a half life of about 5 hours so if you want to stay balanced you should take an initial amount of caffeine and then every 5 hours consume half of that amount again. I get headaches far less often after paying more attention to this.

Turn off devices: Another obvious but difficult one. Dopamine is a bitch and we like to convince ourselves that we were kids who grew up on the internet so we aren't as affected by it, but that's just not true. I feel like my early exposure to the internet and to communities like board 8 gives me a unique perspective on what the internet is, or could be, but the reality is that we're just as susceptible to the effects swiping through youtube shorts (tiktoks/instagram reels/etc) as the next person and we still have the same reward button in our brain that is affected by how that kind of short form content makes us feel. I'm not very good at reminding myself to stop watching shorts and to switch to what I perceive to be better long form content, but the easiest way to not spiral into an extended session of content consumption is to just remove temptation all together. If possible put your phone somewhere that is literally out of reach when you are getting ready for bed. No matter how much we deny it to ourselves, it does affect us.

Replace light bulbs. Perhaps your circadian rhythm is particularly sensitive? But when I moved into my house all of the lights were quite bright and they were that pure white cool-temperature that's full of the blue light spectrum. So I replaced every bulb in my house with the more yellow looking warm-temperature to not have to deal with the additional blue light strain and the "wakefulness" effect it can have. There are apparently also lighting systems you can use that transition from one to the other so they become cooler/whiter throughout the day and then transition into the warmer/yellower temperatures at night, but those are probably expensive and probably not worth it unless you live in like alaska where your exposure to a regular daylight cycle changes dramatically with the seasons.

.

But since your situation seems to involve some kind of more serious medical cause it's possible that this is all stuff you've already tried or things that won't solve your specific issue. Or perhaps this is stuff that you could still be doing better to help your medication be more effective? Best of luck either way :)

36 hours is completely insane, but I've had horrible insomnia most of my life as well. Which medication are you on right now? I've been on so many that if you name it, I've probably tried it, but Doxepin is the one I recommend the most.

Definitely done miracles for my insomnia. I have the least groggy mornings on it while still getting good rest. Stuff like amitryptiline I would sleep even longer on, but would be groggy half the goddamn day. Might as well be asleep.

No tolerance though...can't imagine that's Doxepin. Taking it every night, I have 100% become dependent on it and can't hardly sleep without it.

I'm on Remeron, which actually isn't FDA-approved for sleep (it's normally an antidepressant), but at super low doses for some people it ends up being wonderful for it. Thankfully I was one of those people, since nothing else worked.

I appreciate the insight, FD. I should've given more details:

• I use caffeine maybe once every two years, since it doesn't make me feel "less tired" but instead like I have electricity constantly shocking me. I've also never had alcohol in my life, nor any other "drug" one might think of, even marijuana.
• Since I got my new job last year, I have been able to maintain a consistent "waking up" schedule.
• I hate short-form content, but I definitely am talking on Discord up until bedtime, so that might give a little help.

Damn, 36 hours is rough.

I don't know if I can offer and real suggestions that haven't been said. I use melatonin occasionally, and that's been helpful (though I've been explicitly careful not to use it too frequently).

Do you have any sort of exercise routine during the week? Running has helped me a lot with sleeping (and also helps mitigate back pain too).

I used to be on Remeron for insomnia also! I don't think I've ever met another person on it. It was a big help for a while but eventually I started to feel like it was hurting more than it was helping.

I wish I could give you better advice but my insomnia basically just went away over time (or maybe incidentally from other lifestyle changes). One change I can recommend that has seemed to help is using a blue-light filter on my computer that activates automatically at sundown. I think Windows can do it natively now but I use a program called f.lux

VintageGin posted...

Damn, 36 hours is rough.

I don't know if I can offer and real suggestions that haven't been said. I use melatonin occasionally, and that's been helpful (though I've been explicitly careful not to use it too frequently).

Do you have any sort of exercise routine during the week? Running has helped me a lot with sleeping (and also helps mitigate back pain too).

The worst part is, I'm functional 36 hours in. I'm just... used to it. Obviously not driving or anything.

No, I don't exercise much, I have a messed up shoulder that triggers on damn near anything that involves my arms -- including running, it turns out. Once I'm making enough money at this job I'm going to get physical therapy on it. For now, I walk my dog, and thankfully she likes to go fast.

bike

cannabinoid products can definitely help with falling asleep, primarily thc, cbn, and cbd in order of effectiveness. cbn is non-psychoactive and would probably be your best bet on that front.

thc can reduce sleep quality but getting a slightly worse sleep is better than no sleep at all

depends on legality where you are of course