When you can't sleep

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I'm surprised you didn't have hallucinations after staying up that long. I also cannot sleep sitting up and have never slept on a plane or bus but thankfully I've never been on a four day bus-ride.

count your blessings.

Most of the times that i have trouble sleeping is when i have a lot of energy. And i mean A LOT!! Most of the time i lack of energy. When it comes to energy, i've got just 2 levels: just almost none, or just really high! And when i'm all high energized, i can't sleep. I think too much, i have too many energy that is inside my body that i just want to get ride off, so what i do is, i'm trying to steam of my energy. So i clean my house at night (really recommended! accept for vacuuming because of the neighbors that maybe want to sleep), or go write very much at night, watch movies at night, everything that makes me go to sleep. Which barley helps actually, but hey, that's just what it is. That's my life basically. Most of the times no energy. But sometimes too much, mostly at night. It's not balanced at all, but i think that's just one of those things. One thing i do think of everytime i've got my energetic period: i have to take advantage of this, because i never know when it goes away. So yes, i clean my house at night sometimes, or i just go paint, write, read or walk the dogs, even if it's not at a 'normal time' to do that. I don't care, it's just how my life works i guess. Maybe i have to adjust that when i'm having kids or something. But until now, i'm just doing that, and i'm just leave it to.

Lately I've been taking melatonin to help me sleep, and while it helps me fall asleep, I tend to sleep in more and I feel groggier when I wake up than if I haven't been taking it. Granted, before I started taking it, I would often have nights where I got almost no sleep at all, and those would affect me even worse. The only way I can really get a decent night's sleep, and wake up early I find is if I work so hard that I play myself out and crash on the nearest bed/couch/whatever. This doesn't happen very often though.

Also, I've been awake for over 24 hours before. I believe my lifetime record is actually somewhere around 35 or 38 hours. :O

Last edited by mr_bigmouth_502 on 19 Mar 2014, 11:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The longest I've ever gone without sleeping has been 20 hours, and that's with all the coffee I can force down my throat. I have no idea how to stay awake for any longer than that. It just doesn't seem to happen.

Longest I have ever gone is just over 60 hours, but that was due to a machine breakdown at work. Still I have problems sleeping at times. I take time release melatonin and if I am real bad a xanax sometimes helps. Usually I am on the internet if not with the computer, then my phone. I belong to a couple of other forums and use tapatalk on my phone there. Here is doesn't seem to work and I tried using a browser and it is a pain to say the least. Either I am doing something wrong or this site isn't set up for tapatalk.

Longest time no sleep was 5 days, while working 12-hour shifts. Every time I would try to sleep, I just could not. Guess I was not tired enough, too wired wanting to see the indexing mechanism in a CNC lathe's turret and exactly what allowed it to function as it does.

Most of the times, if I cannot sleep, I keep all lights off, block out the sun -if it is in the day- and just reach over my headboard (which is a bookshelf full of stuff I like to fiddle with) and grab something to feel until I eventually fall asleep.

When I couldn't sleep, I used to fire up my XBOX and play Skyrim as it is very fun, addicting, and helps me not notice my pain. It was an excellent alternative to being bored and in pain, but my XBOX broke, so now I usually have to be miserable wishing I could sleep and that the pain would go away.

My XBOX probably broke because I used it too damn much playing Skyrim.

I think that I have always had difficulty falling asleep.

When I can't sleep I watch ASMR videos:

https://www.youtube.com/user/HeatherFeatherASMR
https://www.youtube.com/user/GentleWhispering
https://www.youtube.com/user/VisualSounds1

I've had difficulty sleeping since before I was born, never had good sleep for longer than one month, and have gone about three days without sleep before -- just long enough to get those lack-of-sleep hallucinations, which are very unpleasant. I've found that the only activity that can consistently calm me down enough for sleep is reading. TV is too much environmental noise, and lying there doing nothing has never helped. I also find it difficult to sleep around other people. When I was married, I often got most of my sleep while my husband was at work. Nowadays, I pretty much sleep when my body is ready for rest, which ends up being early-to-late morning plus the occasional afternoon nap. Drugs can work in the short-term if I use them very infrequently, but it's a little too easy to go back to a nocturnal schedule.

I tend to go to sleep okay, though there are certain times I toss and turn. Whenever I need a boost falling asleep, I will do something like escape into my fantasy world. For example, I collect historic roller coaster blueprints, and I often ride them in my mind while in bed. I often fall asleep during one of the rides.

The longest I spent without sleep would have been when I was in high school. I came home from school (got up at 6 a.m. on that Friday morning) and went to an all night bowl-a-thon. It was Saturday morning when I got home. I went with my parents on that Saturday to a huge department store two hours from home. We got in well after dark. I went to bed Saturday night around midnight. That would have been 42 hours without sleep.

I've been a life-long insomniac, and it usually takes me as much as hour (often longer) from the time I go to bed to the time I actually fall asleep. I do not take medication (nor do I have any desire to do so) and do not drink alcohol or caffeine at all. Some nights I will start to drift off to sleep, and then the neighbors make some noise (such as talking, starting a car, or stomping up and down the stairs) and I'll be instantly awake and have to start the process all over again. Sometimes I'll wake up (or more likely, be woken up) in the middle of the night and be unable to get back to sleep at all until 30 minutes before the alarm clock goes off.

I cannot sleep in a chair or a moving vehicle unless I'm really tired and start to "nod off" (in which case it's usually just a nap) and the more I try to stay awake the harder it gets to do so. It seems that humans naturally have a "dip" at around 2-3PM in the afternoon (hence the siesta in Spanish culture) and a boring meeting or lecture can knock me out better than any sleep medication. I was once on a red-eye trans-Atlantic flight and had a row of seats to myself, yet I could not get any sleep.

When waiting to fall asleep, I will surf Wikipedia on my tablet. When I feel that I'm unable to keep up with what I'm reading, I will turn it off and sleep will usually (though not always) come within a few minutes. I've done the same with audio books, though sometimes if the story gets exciting, it has the opposite effect and I'll be up all night.