Insomnia is a sleep disorder that is characterized by difficulty falling and/or staying asleep. People with insomnia have one or more of the following symptoms: Difficulty falling asleep. Waking up often during the night and having trouble going back to sleep. Waking up too early in the morning.

Post your experiences with this disorder and why you think it might be a problem. Is it a disoder itself or a symptom of a disorder? What are the causes and treatments? Is taking sleeping pills good or just a few belts of booze. Benzos a good idea?

The cure for insomnia is insomnia.

Think I might be starting to get it. Maybe I just have poor sleeping habits. I have no trouble going to sleep but tend to wake up after 3-4 hours. I’ll be up for 30 minutes to an hour then go back to sleep for an hour or two before the cats get me up to be fed.

Can’t remember the last time I slept the whole night thru.

Best cure I’ve found is intense exercise.

I got the (ADHD) and the mind does not shut off, couldn’t fall asleep since I was a little kid.

I’ve tried a bunch of sleep drugs, however exercise is best. If weed is legal in your state, medical or otherwise there’s some AMAZING Indica strains out now that will put you to sleep and wake up refreshed with no drug hangover. Plus it’s not addictive.

I have had insomnia since I got out of the military. For 20+ years I lived on 2-3 hours a night of sleep. About once every couple of weeks I would crash and sleep for 10-12 hours when I was worn out. I finally went to the the doctor for help.

For me, insomnia is not something that a simple solution like exercise can fix. Many former soldiers struggle with sleep disorders related to hyper vigilance. Its something that’s very difficult to turn off. You can tell yourself to relax, but that’s about as effective as disciplining a cat. Many nights I’ve tried working out a 2:30 AM. All this does is wake you up more. The canned answers you often hear from the health care industry are not helpful at all. Things like - eat better, lose some weight, watch your caffeine, take vitamins, get more exercise are not answers at all. Those are deflections.

The only way I get any sleep is with Ambien, sometimes augmented with melatonin. I understand its not an ideal solution, but as long as I am still working, I have to get some rest. As I have gotten into my late 50s, I can no longer handle trying to work all day with no rest.

There is possibly some hereditary issue here as well as my dad never sleeps more than a few hours a night and he has to take Benadryl to help him go to sleep. My dad was also in the military for several years as well so there is that commonality too.

A brief story on hyper vigilance. I was once on a jump while in an Airborne unit. We had done in flight rigging on the flight back to Bragg from a deployment. One of the guys in my stick went to sleep after we rigged up. We woke him up when the jump master start yelling instructions at us. The guy went out the door without readjusting the straps on his harness. The shock of the chute opening exploded one of his gonads. He passed out from the pain in the air. When he hit the ground he broke both legs and a collar bone. The next day the 1SG told us all “NEVER GO TO SLEEP ON THE FUCKING PLANE”. I told myself over and over again - never go to sleep on the plane. To this day I cannot sleep on a flight - even the 18 hours ones.

Up until a month ago, I would wake up at about 2:30, hit the head and then lay awake for a few hours. I kept my Kindle under my pillow so the time wasn’t a total waste.

A month ago we bought a Casper mattress at Costco and I don’t remember sleeping so good. My middle of the night wake ups art down my 75%. Best $600 I’ve spent in a while.

My doctor refused to renew my Ambien prescription at the start of the opioid crisis, even though a bottle of 30 lasted me 4-5 months. Said to try Melatonin, the 10mg dose works well for me, and I still just rarely use it, it is "over the counter" and fairly inexpensive.

At least 7 hours is needed to recharge your batteries.
Exercise or reading before bedtime can be helpful and don't eat anything 3 hours before bedtime.

I use Quiet Sleep which has 3 mg of melatonin and other ingredients to lower your blood pressure and improve circulation:

https://www.lifeextension.com/...tem01444/quiet-sleep

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Insomnia is a sleep disorder that is characterized by difficulty falling and/or staying asleep. People with insomnia have one or more of the following symptoms: Difficulty falling asleep. Waking up often during the night and having trouble going back to sleep. Waking up too early in the morning.

Post your experiences with this disorder and why you think it might be a problem. Is it a disoder itself or a symptom of a disorder? What are the causes and treatments? Is taking sleeping pills good or just a few belts of booze. Benzos a good idea?

Benzos are horrible if taken long term. Absolutely wicked withdrawals that last months. Worse withdrawals than opioids. Should not take Benzos more than a couple weeks. Lots of exercise is the best remedy. If you can not walk or run long distances, swimming laps in a public pool is very good and is low impact. The over the counter Kirkland sleep-aid is OK. Similar to Sominex. Melatonin can work.

I used to only sleep for 3-4 hours and then I would lie awake worrying about what was on my desk at work.

I found out that I had sleep apnea and got a CPAP machine. I quit waking up at night and just worried about my work during the day.

quote:

Originally posted by FishOn:

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Insomnia is a sleep disorder that is characterized by difficulty falling and/or staying asleep. People with insomnia have one or more of the following symptoms: Difficulty falling asleep. Waking up often during the night and having trouble going back to sleep. Waking up too early in the morning.

Post your experiences with this disorder and why you think it might be a problem. Is it a disoder itself or a symptom of a disorder? What are the causes and treatments? Is taking sleeping pills good or just a few belts of booze. Benzos a good idea?

Benzos are horrible if taken long term. Absolutely wicked withdrawals that last months. Worse withdrawals than opioids. Should not take Benzos more than a couple weeks. Lots of exercise is the best remedy. If you can not walk or run long distances, swimming laps in a public pool is very good and is low impact. The over the counter Kirkland sleep-aid is OK. Similar to Sominex. Melatonin can work.

+1
Dont start on the Benzos. Don't do the booze either.
They both work but it's a temporary fix that leads to other problems.
Benzos, like Fish stated, are horrible. Get addicted and it's bad news.
Booze will knock you out but you don't get restorative sleep like you need. More like passed out sleep.
1st step is to talk to a doctor. You may even need to talk to psychiatrist.
My insomnia was mentally related. Simply put, I couldn't shut down at night. Took a while to get through it but with some medication and some relaxation techniques, I have control now.

I'm using a cpap machine but I still only sleep 4 hours a day. 5 if I'm lucky.

I've had it all my life on and off. Some nights I just can't get my brain to shut off it seems like.

I think for some reason I'm just a nocturnal person, I've never been a morning person and LOVED LOVED LOVED working third shift when I did shift work.

I use melatonin to turn off my brain before I go to sleep...works for me. Otherwise I’d lay there all night thinking about reloading, or gun stuff...

I often have insomnia, the kind where you wake up too early and can't fall back asleep. It's exacerbated by lots of work travel, time zone changes, and odd / late work hours. By the time my body gets used to a travel work schedule, it's time to come home.

To combat this, I have made the choice to travel less for work and / or step back from operational portion of work that required me to be in a plane to all hours of the night when at all possible. So I do the ground work which usually gets me to bed by midnight instead of 2-4 am.

For several years I took Ambien-CR which helped keep me sleeping for 5-7 hours without waking up. Now I use 1/2 a Benadyrl for a similar effect, which usually gets me to 3-4am and then a small glass of milk usually gets me to sleep again until 6-8 am, depending on what the kids / dogs are up to.

ZM, since post stroke I have a miserable time trying to get a decent nights sleep. I'm currently taking the Ambien generic Zolpidem 10mg to fall asleep which really helps because if I don't get decent sleep I cannot function well during the day. I've was recommended and tried melatonin but get nasty headaches. Many folks use melatonin and it works fine though for them.

I've posted here a few times about insomnia, at one point I stopped sleeping for almost 9 months. My total per day of "sleep" was about 45min to an hour or so, tiny micronaps that apparently was just enough to keep me from dying.

During all that time awake, I had nothing better to do than research sleep, so I learned a lot until I figured out my particular issue (Cushings syndrome and cortisol levels over twice as high as normal maximums) and was able to start recovery.

Basically, there is no one cure for insomnia, be it melatonin, exercise, this med or that. Because there's dozens of causes, there are a number of treatments. You have to nail down the particular problem of yours, be it anxiety, any of a large number of hormonal issues, adhd, poor sleep habits, etc.

There's a few things that can help many people, I found this one video very helpful as a way to help recover. There's a bunch of tips, including what's known as sleep compression. It sucks to do, but man did it help.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjJGfDHCaBU

Several of us have made middle of the night posts about insomnia. I’m one of them, I think my issue is mostly related to pain. My back is messed up from a fracture and two major surgeries. I simply can’t stay comfortable. I took Ambien for years, literally. It got to where it didn’t help me sleep... but I couldn’t fall asleep at all without it. I was weaned off it by my Doc without any issues. Worst side effect I had was online shopping on my phone in the middle of the night. I’d wake up and have an email for some shit I’d bought and totally forgot about.

quote:

Originally posted by dry-fly:
Worst side effect I had was online shopping on my phone in the middle of the night. I’d wake up and have an email for some shit I’d bought and totally forgot about.

Oh yeah, that’s a thing. I blew out both my left shoulder and right hip within 12 months of one another about 2 years ago. Had surgery on the shoulder followed by 6 months of PT/recovery, then had the hip fixed surgically with another 6 months of recovery. Was on a wide mix of medications that just screwed me up in a variety of ways, with horrible insomnia being one of them. Tried the benzos (agree with others- don’t do that) and Ambien. For like 2 months I had boxes from all over the place showing up addressed to me. Funny thing was it was all stuff for the kids or my wife, I never ordered anything for me, lol.

The insomnia stuck with me after I was off the meds. In the end I solved it just by sticking to a rigid routine. For months no matter what I got up at the same time, ate at the same times, exercised, etc and then went to bed at the same time. Eventually I started getting more and more sleep, and I think after about 45 days or so I was sleeping 6-7 hours a night again. It sucked horribly for the first couple weeks, but gradually got easier.