the great sleep fighter

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Anyone else here have a compulsion to fight sleep? I know when i am tired but i cant seem to settle down easily. It takes a long time for me to want to sleep, even though my body is telling me to lie down and i really want to. It takes so long for me to take a nap in the afternoon that i only get about thirty minutes in. Like clockwork I will go like that alll week and then crash on my day off and sleep hard for most of the day. Its like i can always find something i would rather be doing. I am fighting it right now. How do the rest of you wind down.. maybe i can try it. Not big on sleeping pills. I am really sensitive to medication and cant wake up in the am. Any tips?

I definitely fight sleep, and I fight medications, as well. I find that I shouldn't stay on the Internet right before bed, because that gets my mental processes racing. Also, it's best not to watch scary or exciting television programs too close to bedtime. I generally read while in bed, but I still fight sleep if the book is good, lol. I have read somewhere, that doing nothing but sleeping in your bedroom is good, and having a "going to bed ritual" helps prepare you for sleep.

Ive been a sleep-fighter for as long as i can remember. I suppose i just didnt grow out of it. I really dislike the sense of lethargy, so i have a compulsion to do things like eating chocolate to wake up. On the other-hand i think maybe i have a natural affinity for feeling slightly dopey and the interesting mental landscapes that can produce. Sometimes i lie awake from 3-5am and then 'give up' start on the chocolate/weed/coffee &turn on the PC - then the rest of the day is pretty much wasted, all my energy is spent on simply trying to stay awake. So i have periods lasting a week where i can end up sleeping every other night, occasionally i have a few weeks of being completely normal though.

Overall i view my own avoidance as a simple immaturity, this sense increases as ive grown further into adulthood. I had an epiphany a while back, where i realised that getting lethargic in the evenings after the days work is completely normal & natural - i should just accept that it happens & not try & fight it. Its 4am right now, so obviously im still waiting for that lesson to sink in properly...

every day i do 2 things i dont want to: get up, and go to bed - Dr Johnson
(thats the guy who wrote the first dictionary btw, almost definately an aspie!)

Last edited by psych on 10 Sep 2007, 10:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Its been getting worse since I found this forum, cause it gets kinda busy around 12/1am. Also I easily get distracted by other things, like computer games and hunger. So Ill end up eating a bowl of cereal at 2 in the morning and spend more time on the computer until I finally feel tired and wake up past noon the next day unless I have an appointment or my parents wake me up early for some reason.

No, but I'm definitely a night owl.

Quite right about the mental processes - I have the same problems.

One ritual (only do sometimes) included gentle yoga at 8 or 9 pm to help me to relax - just to stretch a little, relax, get the breathing more regular, activate the parasympathetic nervous system. I start by taking a drop of sandlwood or ylang-ylang or some essential oil that has shown to be relaxing and rub it over my shirt so I get a little exposure while I am stretching. The first 10 or 15 minutes are sometimes more turbulent in terms of my nervous system, but I usually start to get relaxed after that.

When my sleep gets really bad, I take a little melatonin - maybe 1/4 or 1/2 of a 3 mg tablet. Sometimes that really helps. If I take it at the same time for 3 days or so, it can reset my circadian clock and get the cycles established where I actually get sleepy on my own at a normal time. I don't take it every day, but the cluster headaches I get are associated with lack of normal melatonin release patterns year round. Melatonin can make it more difficult to wake up, but when my sleep starts to change in a certain way, I know I will get cluster headaches if I don't get back on a better schedule. And there aren't many things I am more afraid of than cluster headaches.

I should have taken an antihistamine last night - was cutting the grass, and everytime I do that my sleep gets really crappy. I think it is from the allergies to the molds and grass dust that get kicked up. Apart from the sneezing and congestion, histamine in the brain triggers wakefulness, and antihistamines that cross into the blood make people drowsy while the new ones tend not to enter the brain and not trigger sleep. So I fell asleep at midnight, and woke at 1:30 and was fully awake after one lousy REM cycle. Couldn't get back to sleep until around 6:00.

Sometimes when I take something to sleep (be it melatonin, a benzo, or antihistamine, or St. Johns wort or whatever) I will wake up feeling refreshed and energized and very good emotionally. But that usually happens only the first morning. If I take it the second night, I wake up the second day feeling the way I usually do.

only if im wound up

Oh man I've been a chronic sleep fighter all my life. I hate the idea of just lying in bed doing nothing, waiting for unconsciousness to hit. I hate the idea of sleeping! Not being awake and aware of myself for hours at a time. I'd stay awake as long as possible every day to put off having to go to bed.