How do you wake up in the morning?

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Every night, I go to bed at really variable hours, but usually the early middle of the night, past midnight. Even when I do go to bed, the thoughts in my head can't stop running, it's like a faucet that won;t stop running. When I wake up (especially on Weekdays except for Thursday) I need to be up and ready for the day by 9:00 AM and I still feel like sleeping in. I can't get up and stretch. I have too much mental fog.

How do I decrease mental fogginess during that time?
Also does anyone have any tips for falling asleep in bed faster that ACTUALLY works? I don't know how I can just keep track of the amount of time before I fall asleep. Today, I got too much sleep, like 12 hours.

It sounds like you need to all-around get a better sleep routine.

What have you tried to do towards that goal?

What is the reason you don't go to bed until after midnight?

Do you limit your caffeine intake?

I have a hard time waking up, if I wake up I find it hard to move out of bed so I go back to sleep until someone comes shouting at me that I would be late for school.

I would love to spend the rest of my life in bed....but I have to get up to go to work!

Sleep Hygiene: plan out a routine and stick to it. http://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/docs/In ... ygiene.pdf
It took a lot of dedication to achieve a better sleep pattern, to quieten my mind I practiced meditation
E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LVkxZUDTsQ

I don't understand the entire concept of meditation. How is it possible to calm speaking in your mind? I can't just shut off my brain.

I'm not sure if any of this will help, but here are some thoughts:

Do you go to bed when you're actually tired, or just at whatever time you think is a good time to get enough sleep? My preferred sleep schedule right now is from roughly 1am to 8am. I find that when I'm tired, I tend to fall asleep fairly quickly without much thought. However, if I go to bed when I'm still well awake, I will think for a long time. I can't really relate to your desire to sleep in or to mental fog, but I have some ideas for the other parts.

If you don't already, try only going to bed when you are really tired, but force yourself to get up at the same time in the morning. Have someone else wake you up if you need to. Eventually, your internal clock will reset to help you feel tired at a more reasonable time, so then you can go to bed earlier and wake up later on a schedule. Truly being tired might just lead you to fall asleep faster with little time to think about other stuff. If you already know it doesn't matter or you already only go to bed when you're tired, then just skip this.

My second idea is harder to describe. Basically, you just pick a few things that you enjoy thinking about and focus on them. For me, it's usually my story plots and ideas. I will go over scenes I've written and see how they play out, or try to decide what should happen next. This helps take away that feeling that my thoughts are annoying, out of my control, or keeping me awake. I will decide what I want to think about before I get in bed, and then try to block out any other thoughts. If I start worrying about what's going to happen tomorrow (etc.), I will yell, "STOP!" in my head and force myself to go back to what I'm supposed to be thinking about. It sounds kind of weird, but it has helped me a lot. I went from thinking about all kinds of things and getting myself all upset at night, to seeing it as a time to work on my stories away from the keyboard. It takes time to get used to, but it gets a lot easier the more you do it. Any subject you enjoying thinking about should work. That's probably my best advice, and the thing that helped me the most. Turn it from something unpleasant into something you enjoy, and eventually it won't be such a problem. I've cut the time it take me to fall asleep from 1hour+ to only about 20 minutes on most nights.

Good luck to you!

I typically wait until I'm too tired to keep my eyes open before I go to bed. Usually fall asleep within a few minutes.

If I try to go to sleep when I'm not really tired, I just lay there awake for at least an hour.

I cant shut my brain off either, meditation is a skill to develop, and requires daily practice.
It might not be an approach that will work for you, but if you try it every day for three weeks, you will establish a healthy habit. I suggest searching on youtube for guided meditations to help you at the beginning as concentrating on the instructions becomes your focus, instead of your inner thoughts. It takes time, energy and self discipline, some days you might only achieve one minute of a quiet mind, the idea is to strengthen and develop that ability.
After you have established this skill through practice in daylight hours, you can try to use it also at nighttime when you're experiencing the running thoughts you mentioned.
This is just what works for me, I'm not skilled or prescribe to a particular method, through research you might discover a different approach that could work for you.

One day, when I was 19, I had to get up to go to work---but I just couldn't!

Then, the Kinks song "You Really Got Me!" started playing on the radio.

That woke me up!

I wake up when I open my eyes, and I am no longer at any of the stages of sleep.

Most people hate getting out of bed in the morning when they have work and other stuff like that to get up for. I can usually get up easier when I haven't got work, even if I've got a big day planned ahead where I'm going to be out all day, I can still get out of bed much easier than on the mornings when I have work.

I don't have much trouble falling asleep. I sometimes get the odd night where I can't seem to get to sleep and I'm tossing and turning for hours, but generally I have a good night's sleep. I find I can sleep better when I'm in a cold room. If I'm too hot in bed and the room feels stuffy, I cannot always get to sleep, unless I have had a really tiring day and my body is exhausted and is really crying out for sleep. But then I'd just wake up soaking wet from sweat in the morning.

Does room temperature affect how you sleep? I know everybody's different. Sometimes when I can't sleep I do little counting games in my head, or games with words and letters. It seems to relax me, and I drop off to sleep. Or I try to make up scenes in my mind, as though I am watching a film. I know a lot of people probably wonder how ''exercising'' my brain can help me fall asleep, but it does distract me from all the anxieties of life, and just relaxes me. Try something like that.