Insomnia And Sleeping Patterns

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Does anyone else have trouble with insomnia or irregular sleeping patterns? If yes, is there usually a trigger?
I'm not sleeping well lately...at all! I'm exhausted all the time but just can't seem to switch off. I think it's the change in my routine. I usually attend college but it has now broken up for the summer holidays and lhas eft me feeling a little lost. I'm only getting around 2-3 hours per night now and even then it's a very fitful sleep. Help?

I'm going through that right now, I hear it's common with AS. I usually sleep 5-7 hours a day. I used to go to bed at 12 and get up at 5 or 7am. Then I stayed up until 1am and got up at 6 or 7am, stayed up until 2, got up at 7 or 8am, and so on until my bed time started to become 12 or 1pm until 5 or 7pm. I hated that. I thought I fixed this the other day by just staying up and not sleeping one afternoon as I usually do, so that I would be tired and sleep that night. Well didn't work, for some reason after I slept well that one night I did that tonight I just stayed up again and that's where I'm at now, it's 6am right now and I'll be in bed at noon.

Other times I stay up a whole day sleep 8 or 9 hours and stay up another 24hrs. Sometimes I only take 30min-1hr cat naps and stay up all 24 hours of a day. And other times I sleep my usually 5 to 7 get up every hour or so for like 10-15mins untill I fall back asleep.

Also, sometimes special interests will trigger it and keep me up all night, most of the time though this just happens for no reason.

I thought I was the only one feeling uneasy during the breaks from college.
I suffer from "what am I gonna do? what am I gonna do?" syndrome, and it makes me very anxious.

I suppose finding a temporary job would be good, but I know it's not very easy. Spend some time in the school library may help. My school library has a wide selection of magazines. I typically read Physics Today, Interface, PC Magazine, Mac World, New Scientist.

In the May 2009 issue of New Scientist, there is an article on the Savant Syndrome that almost goes hand-in-hand with Asperger's. There is something genius inside us. We'll just have to be motivated & make the connections.

Yep my mum said as a baby I never slept at all usually now I have 4 - 6 hours I usually sleep in daytime I'm that bad

My body is very rigid with respect to my sleep window. If I am in bed by 9 pm, I will fall asleep within minutes, have a normal night, and hit the bricks running at 5 am. If I miss that window, it takes me hours to fall asleep and I will be somewhat hosed for a few days after that. Very frustrating, but I have learned that is how it works for me--I can fight it and feel crappy, or work with it and feel good. It has been this way for decades. I have a lot of sympathy for those who routinely have trouble falling asleep, because it is an escalating spiral of vexation. My husband loves to go to the theater, but we have to go to matinees to accommodate my sleep issues. I am making an exception for Spamalot, since we could only get cheap tickets for an 8pm performance. Don't even ask about travel across time zones...

I used to suffer from insomnia as a kid, things were pretty much ok later, in the last...say 4/5 months my need to sleep seems lowered, I often spend nights playing videogames until almost dawn, sometimes I try to force myself but it rarely works, idk, it seems like my ryhtms are a bit off but right now this isn't causing relevant issues.

Edit: does anybody know if there is some research suggesting that AS people have a lower need for sleep, like, say, less hours per night compared to NTs. Because this is the way it feels right now, I feel all energized with little sleep but at the same time I'm a bit afraid that I will pay it later. Do we really need less sleep ?

Oh yes! When I was a baby, right up until present day. It's been suggested that I may suffer from Delayed Onset Sleep Phase Syndrome, and I'm going to see a sleep specialist. Maybe take a look at it's entry on Wikipedia, and see if that's you? There's another sleep thread about it as well.

A program by Insight on SBS about sleep was suggested to me so you can watch it here if you want to.
http://news.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/ ... atchonline

I require 10 hours of sleep a night. When I was 14, my sleeping trouble started in summer camp when I would wake up briefly before sunrise. Now, it is rare for me to sleep through the night.

From what I can tell, I have no circadian rhythm. I take melatonin to help with it, but also quite a lot of benadryl as well. Otherwise, I wouldn't sleep. I've always had huge problems with it. Even in utero.. Normally a baby kicks at the same time every day.. not me. My mom decided before I was born that I must be an alien..

I don't have a very good sleep pattern. Once in a while, if I go out and was very active and come home exhausted, then I'll fall asleep within minutes of arriving home. I feel like today is one of those late-sleeping nights...if I don't have to be up by a specific time, I usually take 10-12 hours of sleep >.<

I would not call it trouble: I have extreme irregular sleeping patterns, but they are quite helpful, because I can find sleep during the day sometime and I am not bond to a fixed rhythm.

I am not sure how bad your insomnia is, but I still suffer from it mildly. When I was younger, I would string many days together that I didn't sleep, and as a result I would have auditory and visual hallucinations. Time is what it took for me, as nothing else seemed to work in the past. Now, I just make sure that I follow the same ruitine when I go to sleep, but even doing that leaves me at about 50% sleep trouble (not like one night fine, the next night not, but like one week fine and the next not). Sorry I can't be more help, but if you find a solution, let the rest of us insomniacs know about it.