Sleep continues to elude me to an extreme degree

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I have a mental block when it comes to getting to sleep. I can be absolutely exhausted, barely have the energy to brush my teeth and take a shower and as soon as I put my head on my pillow I am wide awake. The last time I can say that I truly fell asleep the way that my dog can in something like 2 minutes or less was a time that I was so jet-lagged from flying from Thailand to NYC and my friend insisted that we go out for beers right when I got there.

When I eventually got him to let me go home I was probably fast asleep within 30 seconds of closing my eyes. In my mind that was absolutely delightful.


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I am tired all day long too and therefore I find it very difficult to get motivated to do even the smallest of things such as leave my house in order to obtain food to eat. I force myself to exercise every day in the evenings in the hope that this exertion is going to somehow help me to accomplish sleep at night. When I first return from said runs, I feel like I could do that and sometimes I even give it a go despite the fact that it is merely 7pm or something like that.

It Never Works

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I do not have a TV in my bedroom, I do not ever look at my phone in bed and go down some sort of YouTube wormhole that engages my brain, I don't really have much involvement in social media. I am not stressed about my life and am actually very happy about what my work is, where I live, and how my financial situation is. I am NOT stressed. I just can't sleep.

There are a few things that I can use in order to counteract this and one of them is to get really drunk. Of course I can sleep after I do that but of course hangovers are not very much fun and this is a surefire way to get one of those.

The other way is to take tablets such as Valium and read a book for a while. This works sometimes. It really is a bit of a nightmare to sit there in bed, trying to meditate and focus on some white noise in order to eventually drift off to sleep.

My body hates me so much that there is a recurring dream that I do have often that even though I eventually did achieve slumber, I dream about not being able to get to sleep. I DREAM ABOUT NOT BEING ABLE TO SLEEP.

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Maybe I need to get involved in a Fight Club instead of focusing so heavily on bowling and PS4? I fear as though that, and any other form of exercise is not the problem here since I exercise at least half an hour every damn day.

The thing that gets me is that this is not a problem that I have had my whole life it only began some time after college when my real work life began. I slept quite nicely in college although to be fair booze was a factor in a lot of those encounters as well.

People keep recommending herbal remedies or certain types of tea but I was always under the impression that tea has caffeine in it and if i EVER have caffeine past say, 7pm, I can forget about any sort of shut eye for many many hours afterwards. The crazy thing about this is that coffee fails to wake me up in the morning as well. It simply seems I can not catch a break.


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I did some searching online and found out that I am not alone as far as dreaming about not being able to sleep is concerned and it is actually a recognized medical condition (or at least that is what the shrinks say, they went to school for a long time so I will just take their word for it.) and this condition is called "False Awakenings" and can actually be very damaging to the quality of sleep that your brain actually accomplishes.

Doctors remedy this by prescribing more powerful sedatives which to me seems like a terrible idea because then I wouldn't be able to accomplish sleep without the drug - or so I imagine.

There was a drug I got prescribed just ONE of a while back by a friend of the family doctor. Take one of those F**King things that you WILL sleep... and you will sleep very well. However it is meant to be habit forming and that is all I need in my life... another bad habit.

I'm just curious if any of you out there in internet land have experienced False Awakenings before?

Thankfully I work from home and don't really have a schedule that I have to keep but I do get very frustrated at night when I am staring at the ceiling, especially when my dog pal is able to lay down next to me and be snoring within 90 seconds of lying her head down....

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This little darling is ready for a snooze basically 24-hours a day. Sometimes she gets so tired just looking at me eat that she starts to nod off. I'm so jealous.



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14 comments
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Are you just assuming caffeine would keep you up after 7 or have you actually tested that theory. If coffee doesn't wake you up in the morning you might have something like ADD and in that case caffeine would have the opposite effect. No lie my wife has to give kids cans of Mountain Dew to calm them down sometimes when their parents can't be bothered to bring their meds in. Have you ever tried Melatonin? We give one to my dog every night so she can sleep soundly through the night in her old age. There is always weed too, but you said you stopped smoking that I think.

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I don't really like to smoke anything. but there's always edibles I guess and we have loads of that stuff. Melatonin is another one worth looking at. Thanks for the tips.

As far as the caffeine things is concerned it might just be in my head, but I toss and turn if I have a coffee later in the evening, but for the most part I do that anyway :)

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I tired melatonin and it never really did that much for me but some people swear by it. In my younger years I did the other occasionally to find my pillow. Now it is legal and I pretty much never touch it.

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Maybe your mind is just too active and an active mind won't let you sleep. Maybe some form of other exercise like swimming or something just to change it up. Could also be diet related as that can have a huge impact. Ever since I joined Hive my sleeping hours have been messed up which makes me crash every couple of weeks for a day or so. I hope you get this sorted out as drinking is not the answer.

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Chamomile tea is completely herbal and has nothing other than the herb in it which is well known to aid sleep.


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That's the word I was looking for. I'll have to try some of that.

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I am NOT stressed. I just can't sleep.

Well, I think, your brain is thinking a lot and I do have similar condition - I can sleep but maximum 4-5 hrs. Just today I came back from a Doc consultation and he says, its some kind of stress that I need to get rid of. But it's damn difficult. How about getting rid of PS4 ? May be that is what causing the unconscious dream ?

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I would recommend changing your sleep patterns and smoking cannabis!

I am not sure why I have always been able to sleep quickly and soundly. I have plenty of things to....not worry....but concern myself with. Young family, surrounded by women, entrepreneur without a salary going on 10 years, caring about people, and on the hook to help people promote and expand their businesses. That should keep me up!

Maybe it is because I really cherish the freedom (of schedule, not lifestyle yet) of being able to take a nap in the afternoon. The ability to work anytime but not having to work all the time? Being active physically but not having it define me?

I would say starting with a nap would be great as you don't get overly concerned about not falling asleep early as you have already rested in the day. Maybe it is time to learn/explore/discover something new! If you are stuck, grab some weed and read some https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Banks and hive me in the morning! ;)

You are adventurous from what I have seen and there is no end to where you can go.

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Sounds like you should see a sleep physician if this happens everyday, man. There's a ton of sleeping disorders that cause insomnia like symptoms you could have. Sleep apnea (Which I have), restless leg syndrome, delayed sleep phase syndrome, etc. Probably wouldn't hurt to get checked over at some point, dood. I do agree that medications for sleeping almost always have a dependency factor to them and they're not the way to go. Though, there are sleep behavior therapies though that I've heard can help.

My only other suggestions would be a Vit D3 supplement, and or the devils lettuce if you're into that sort of thing. You know, like some kind of degenerate. But, yeah. Insomnia sucks some fat, greasy ass.

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Devil's lettuce might be the way to go since you're the 2nd person to recommend that. I had one of those vape things with the weed oil in it but i think it was some sort of mislabeled or meth lab shit because it made me even more awake and jittery too.

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Hmm, maybe it was from a sativa strain? Those are supposed to make you more "energized", but I think they just make you more anxious and shit. Indica is supposed to help with relaxation and sleep. I know a good handful of people who smoke to be able to go to sleep, so I'd say it's worth a shot if you can get some that hasn't been cut with bleach and the hair from the ass of an ox or something. I imagine you guys don't have any dispensaries in that part of the world, which has become super common and makes it easy to get stuff now these days.

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There are places to score weed here but they are not dispensaries so much as they are a well known location that sells weed and even the police know about it but no one does anything about it. I knew there were 2 strains but I forgot the names, I put "Indica" on my whiteboard and if the shop here has some, i'll pick it up.

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Ah, gotcha. Yeah, as long as you know it's safe and not being extracted from some guys bath tub or something, then give it a whirl with the THC oil. I really hope it helps you out a bit, dood.

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Relax and try some chanting or meditation. Sound therapy also works. Or you can try some mantra chanting. Or may be reverse counting. Whenever I use to get some enxiety or insomnia due to change of season I tries all these tricks and sometimes it helps. But I can understand when I can’t sleep and next to me a person is sleeping I feel like kicking. Just kidding

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