Thread: Serious problems with sleeping

I hardly ever fall asleep before 3 pm. Sometimes it happens even that I'm awake until 5 pm... When I already fall asleep, though, I don' wake up in the middle of the night or anything like this. I wake up at 12-13. It is hard for me to say whether I'm refreshed and relaxed in the morning, really, anyway, another important thing: it really happens very rarely that I'm feeling sleepy when I go . to bed. It is just that it is so late so it is simply the time to go to bed. The situation is like this for the last year or so.

Of course I've already tried it like this: I go to bed at 4 or so, when I'm already feeling 'tired', but still it always took me at least an hour to fall asleep. And then I woke up at 8 or 9. During the day I did not sleep, didn't have any dozes. The only result was that after 4-5 days I was constantly sleepy and still, when I went to bed, I couldn't fall asleep. This is rather odd, isn't it?

I've been to a doctor and a psychologist. The doctor told me that the problem is with the inability to 'shut down' my mind, to just stop thinking. The psychologist gave me diazepam, which helped a bit, but not much. I've also had zolpidem prescribed, didn't help in the long run.

I've tried taking baths, running, drinking milk, eating a lot of food before going to bed... whatever one can think up... With no apparent result...

An interesting thing is that there were two very short periods when I fell asleep qiuckly. The first few days I was on a 2-week trip to London, and the first few days after removing to a new flat. It is as if it was easier to me to fall asleep in different surroundings than usual, it is not always so, though.

Obviously, I want to solve the problem for the sake of my health and my well being. Still, as I'm on this forum, it is not difficult to guess that I am very interested in LD and want to achieve this. But how to do this if I don't even get enough sleep? However, about half a year ago, despite of my sleeping problems, I was able to recall 2-3 dreams each night. I even had two very, very short lucid dreams (few seconds for which I was aware that I was dreaming and then the dream faded away).

Any advice?

You could possibly have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, but it's not likely since it's only effected you for a year unless you moved into another time zone.
You may want to look into anti-anxiety meds if it persists (seeing how you can't shut down your mind). Also, ask a doctor if you could take Provigil- but that's more for Excessive Daytime Sleepines, so scratch that one seeing how you're not very sleepy throughout the day (unless I misunderstood).

Someone suggested to me to "move my bed time forward instead of backwards". Maybe that is something you could try?

I'm in a similar situation, but I've been this way since at least my pre-teens. I never have been able to have a "normal" schedule.
Try looking into the thread about alternative sleep schedules. Perhaps something there could be of help.

I hope you find relief soon.

Oh my. What you just described..... is me -_-", except the psychologist part. I cannot fall asleep before twelve or get up before 10:00. I have been complaining about this forever but no one will do anything.


Try reading that makes me sleepy. If that doesn't work try this
http://mortalmist.com/forum/index.ph...0.msg49364#new

Actually, it is not that I've had problems with sleeping only for the last year.
I always had problems with sleeping, only now it has reached it's peak. I always needed at least an hour-hour and a half to fall asleep (only occasionally I would fall asleep qickly), I hardly ever wasn't sleepy at school, esecially if my classes started at 7:45 or 9:00.

There is one major problem with 'moving my bedtime forward': classes at university - on Monday 11:40 (not that bad), on Tuesday 7:30, Wednesday 7:30, Friday 9:10... And the second thing is that there is a lot off free time during the late night hours and I usually just get bored and it makes me slightly frustrated and so makes more difficult to fall asleep.

Do you get up early on Mondays or sleep until class time?

It's important to keep to a similar schedule. If you don't, your sleep will really get messed up. It's like forcing yourself to change timezones every night. So try getting up on Monday at whatever time you are used to get up on Tuesday when you have early class.

That's impossible. I've got classes at 7:30 on Tuesday and Wednesday. According to your advice, I would have to wake up at 6 am each day, so go to sleep at 9 pm every day in order to get enough sleep. You see it makes no sense...