Anyone else with aspergers develop chronic insomnia?

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I'm 34 years old now, and up until about 2 years ago I always slept perfect. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, I gradually started having sleepless nights (for no apparent reason). I don't have depression or much anxiety. The insomnia got so bad that I had to leave my awesome job in NYC to move back in with my parents. After trying a bunch of medicines, 15mg of Remeron seems to have stopped the insomnia and I'm now sleeping better.

So anyone else here with aspergers suddenly develop chronic insomnia (that wasn't temporary) and have had to take medicine to make it better?

I hope I never get that. I love sleep, and I get really anxious and upset if I don't get my sleep. I enjoy sleeping. I sleep well most nights and I have a nap most days (about 1-2 hours). I never wake up groggy after a nap, but if I was to only nap for half an hour, I WOULD wake up groggy.

Sleep difficulties, including insomnia, are very commonly associated with autism. I've been suffering with the sort of insomnia you're struggling with on and off throughout my life. Medication doesn't help me, as all it does is make you tired. It's not a problem of me being tired, it's a problem of my brain imitating sleep. Interestingly, I find that a change in environment often helps me. There have been several times where, after six sleepless hours in my bed, I'll move to my couch in a different room and I fall asleep within ten minutes.

I suffered from chronic insomnia a couple of years ago. I would say it lasted several months all told. All the troubles at work and at home just got on top of me and made me ill (with insomnia as the main "symptom"). I was eventually diagnosed with Asperger's.

So, yes, someone with Asperger's can develop insomnia. [Needless to say I've always had ASD, just never knew until after the episodes of insomnia].

I reluctantly took tablets to help me sleep - but not sleeping tablets - just those that make you drowsy. I went through all the sleep hygiene hints and tips, which helped. Eventually I convinced my employer that working shifts wasn't doing my sleep any good and I was put on days.

It took me a long time to realise that insomnia is a symptom of some other underlying problem rather than an illness in and of itself (though it can feel like that when you are suffering with it).

I've developed it three times in my life. I had it for an entire month in 2005. I had it for a month and a half in 2009 and I've had it for a month and a half early last year.

Had it for many years,used to sit up mind racing when I was very young unable to sleep, it got a lot worse when I was 21, then as I've gotten older its severity has increased. I've had periods when I've not slept in days. I'm on trazadone a recent change and my sleep has improved somewhat.

When I were a child I experienced terrible insomnia. I could stay in bed for half a night, unable to sleep, entertaining myself by tearing the wallpaper (grandma says it was a stim because no other kid she knows ever did that, the wallpaper looked as if she had a misbehaved cat, lol).
The insomnia was so unpleasant that when grandma taught me praying and said that after praying I can "ask God for anything and he will fulfill the wish" I wasn't asking for anything special - every evening I was begging God just to "let me fall asleep faster tonight". But it never helped. So I concluded there is no God or God is a sadist, liking to torture little kids.

Right now I don't have the problem anymore - because I am allowed to stay up how long I want and I don't have to wake up early in the morning. I will fall asleep at 2-5AM(the same time I did as a child - but I was forced to go to bed at 10PM back then) and wake up at 10-12AM after having a good "morning" sleep, without interruptions. It must be the "delayed sleep phase syndrome", right?

If it's any help these are some of the things I changed to try and help me sleep better.

Padding over the mattress (duvet topper and duvet under the bottom sheet)
Blankets over the top instead of a duvet and tucked in sheet
Less clothing on top half (preventing over-heating)
Blackout blind and hidden clock
Lavender spray on hankie near pillow

Dim lights after about 9.30
Relaxing on the bed for 20mins before final toilet visit (with very dim lights)

Up early and open curtains straight away
Alarm clock away from bed - have to get out of bed to snooze it or switch it off.

No caffeine (de-caff tea, no fizzy drinks)
Regular day shift at work
Organise work time-family time-free time balance to reduce stress/anxiety

I had chronic Insomnia all throughout growing up, it made me have my first psychosis experience and hospitalization. after about a decade and now on antipsychotics I can say that it may hopefully be going away.

I get insomnia and I use melatonin to regulate my sleep cycle. I take 5mg but it has to be the slow release type or else I wake too freaking early and can't get back to sleep. I hate how sleeping pills make me feel stupid the next morning. I don't get that way with melatonin.

I typically experience sleeplessness in association with unscheduled change of events (of any degree). This could vary from canceling an appointment with a friend, getting up to late, to selling a vehicle.

More often than not, sleeplessness do for my part mean that I will spend the whole night thinking my whole life through from top to bottom, getting less than a very few hours of total sleep.

A thing I find helpful, is that I every night before bedtime re-evaluate the day with my fiancé, talking about any good/not so good events that have occurred that day. It gives me inner peace and a feeling of closure, when I share my thoughts, even if nothing unusual happened that day.

The above exercise is a suggestion my mum once told me about (she's an aspie too), as she used to perform that same exercise with my dad every night as well

Yes. Between 2011-2012, I can say, without exaggeration, I got exactly ZERO minutes of sleep. My sleep is all right now, but it has been full of bad dreams and I wake up with a funny pressure in my head.

I've had a great trouble sleeping for the past 13 years. I have taken tons and tons of sleeping medications over the years.

I've had varying degrees of insomnia for a large portion of my life, but I feel it's gotten especially bad over the past couple of years or so and I'll regularly stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning, sometimes later. You would think getting up at the same time everyday(even weekends) would help me get to be on a more consistent schedule, but it doesn't seem to help much. I feel like it started getting really bad just because I had people I wanted to talk to and it seemed like late at night was when they were often most available. They were either in different time zones or had sleep schedules just as awful.

I'm now at a point in my life where I don't actually have any friends, or at least no close friends that I talk to on a regular basis, but my sleep still hasn't gotten any better. I find that I won't even attempt to lie down and go to sleep until I'm so tired that I absolutely can't keep my eyes open any more. I think this is because it often takes a toll on my mental health when I'm lying awake not able to fall asleep quickly. It's when I feel the most lonely, and often unwanted thoughts will go through my mind. When I was younger I used to use this time to try to brainstorm fanfic stories, even if they were things that I'd never end up writing. I still try to do this to some extent, but I can't focus as well on it.

I've tried several medications to try to help me get to sleep earlier(including melatonin which seemed to help but I'd build up a tolerance to it very quickly), but generally they were either too strong or didn't really help at all. There was never really any middle ground. If I took the ones that were too strong, then I'd be really out of it and not really able to stay awake until late afternoon the next day. Or sometimes I'd just be too groggy to do anything but not able to go back to sleep, and then I'd have the same problem with unwanted thoughts going through my head.

I haven't really tried drugs like Ambien or Lunesta(though I may have had Ambien once in the hospital) because my doctors were reluctant to prescribe them for some reason, so no idea if those would work. At this point I've kind of given up hope of ever having a normal sleep schedule, and since I'm disabled and can't work anyway, I find I don't have much motivation any more to try to fix it.

I had since I was just a child, which is why I spent most of my school days sleeping on the front desk.

It started when I was around 8. I might still have it.


I don't like sleep. I also don't like waking up.
And autism alone isn't the only factor why I have difficulty of falling asleep, with mostly bad sleeping quality, and waking up drained.

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I have since I was like 8. Sleepless nights are a common occurrence with me. It sucks because I will get bad sleep for multiple nights in a row, then sleep for like 20 hours when I finally go to bed.