Issues getting to sleep

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I have a lot of trouble getting to sleep at night. I just lie in bed and my brain won't shut down, instead I think about everything that I would think about usually during the day. My brain seems to even be working harder when I'm trying to get to sleep - I usually think a lot more and have the best ideas etc at night.

This is really frustrating though, as I only get to sleep at 5-6AM.

I bought a sedating antihistamine medication named Doxylamine Succinate, but it only worked for a few days before becoming ineffective. The standard dosage is 25mg, and now I can even take 250mg and not even feel tired. I do get nasty hallucinations though.

Is there any other solution, or another medication I can try?

Try melatonin pills.
I take 3mg a night on an empty stomach.
Knocks me right out within an hour.

Other natural remedies:
Chamomile Tea
Valerian Root (capsules)

None of these have ever caused me hallucinations or anything unpleasant.
They sell them at most drug stores or even supermarkets.
Or online.

Edit: I don't know about your exercise habits but I find on days I don't work out it's tougher for me to go to sleep. I usually jog or run 5-10 miles a day and it really helps with sleep. Any vigorous exercise helps.

Same here, bed at 5AM, up by 10AM... almost every night! Fitting in exercise somewhere during the week for me at least decreases the amount of time between going to bed and actually falling asleep.

I found my thread!! I will now camp out in here and call it home!!

Anyhow, I am the queen of insomnia. To give some background, as a kid I was always a night owl and I have a hard time winding down to go to sleep. There would be times I would be running around the living room wide awake at 4:30am as a kid. When I was a teen, I still had sleep issues. Due to being medicated with adhd stimulants like ritalin and adderall, I developed a nasty habit of grinding my teeth, but that's since gotten better since I've gotten off of adderall. Then in my late teens on, I was put on antidepressants, first effexor, then lexapro. With effexor, I only got 2-4 hours of sleep max on a nightly basis. With lexapro, I slept 14 hours a day. This is certainly not normal, nor is it helpful to my life. Now, I think I have developed a pretty severe sleep disorder which seems to be in line with one called "non-24", where your body is unaware and believes that there are more or less than 24 hours in a day and your circadian rhythms are quack because of it (personally my body believes that there are more than 24 hours in a day). Because of this, I can't stop cycling. In the beginning of the month, I have humane sleep hours typical of someone living in the american midwest. by the next week, I am going to bed at about 2-4am. next week, it becomes about 7-9 am. Then, it's more like 11am-noon I go to bed. Then 4-6pm, etc. Until around the end of the month, where I meet where I began the month at, with sane humane hours instead of something typical of someone who lives in asia. Currently I am sleeping in the afternoon as I am up at 3:17 am and cruelly wide awake as the rest of my world around me sleeps.

I thought it had to do with my menstrual cycles because my previous birth control pill (which was triphasic) had insomnia as a terrible side effect and everything was lining up perfectly with my cycles in a monthly pattern. But I've been on a new pill for almost 2 weeks now and I can't get out of this madness. I've tried a lot of things, including melatonin (I think my dosage isn't good enough if it does work for me), and I would like to know other sleep options that don't include sleeping pills because I don't want to go that route if I can help it.

Try white noise.

I probably should expand on that simple statement, but I won't much. In a brief, there are many kinds. I will leave it at that, for now.

^^tried it.

relaxing yes, but sleep doesn't come.

What did you try, many kinds to go with.

Volumne needs to stay the same, no flashing lights, that's general tv s**t to me...like the damn weather channel.

Bad times, head phones...which have to fit, feel good, etc. and level "good music", (Enya? forgot her name, worked for a while)

I tend to listen to it over time, even dream it, so ya, gotta be careful with even white noise. It will set things in motion, but that is my bad dreams part.

I keep white noise going on all day, isn't just sleep time.

Ask your physician for some Stilnoct 10 mg

Natural me requires very little sleep. Natural me only needs 5-6 hours of sleep each night. Then, in my teens, I, too, tried SSRIs for my OCD/anxiety. I was on Zoloft, then Lexapro, then Zoloft again, and then Prozac. None of them did anything for my OCD (I am now on Anafranil, a tricyclic, which is my miracle medication), and what's worse, a year or so after I first tried Zoloft, my doctors increased my dosage from 25 mg to 50 mg. I've never been the same. I started needing daily naps, and it soon escalated from there. All of the SSRIs made me so incredibly tired. It's a wonder that I was able to finish my high school and college workload.

The tiredness still exists, and I recently was diagnosed with idiopathic hypersomnia and circadian rhythm disorder- irregular sleep-wake type. Just one year ago, I finally found a stimulant medication that doesn't counteract my Anafranil and make me have panic attacks. I now rely on Daytrana transdermal methylphenidate patches to stay awake. The Daytrana is the only reason why I am able to hold down a job. On weekends, I often am too tired to even wake up and put my patch on, which makes me sleep the whole weekend away. It's a miserable situation, and apparently, idiopathic hypersomnia is a lifelong condition. Hooray for me.

try a weighted blanket. it felt really weird at first but it works great for me.