MILD makes me too awake to sleep

I have excellent dream recall, keep a dream journal, and have experienced a few lucid dreams over the course of my life. I have always wanted to be an accomplished lucid dreamer, and have recently reread LaBerge's first book, and am about to finish Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, which I think is excellent. I tried WILD a few nights, but it frazzled my brain so much I had to give it up--I absolutely could not fall asleep while doing it, so I am now doing state testing as often as possible during the day, keeping my DJ, and using MILD when going to sleep and when I wake up during the night. I also have an alarm set to go off about six hours after I go to sleep. My big problem is that MILD makes me so awake that I can't fall asleep/fall back to sleep after I do it! I am here at work after yet another night of way too little sleep, feel lousy, and am a bit frustrated. I guess I will have to limit my use of MILD to just a couple of repetitions rather than trying to stay with it until I fall asleep. Does anyone have any words of wisdom on this? Thanks in advance!

If MILD is having a negative effect on your work life and sleeping schedule then I'd suggest pulling back the reigns on it a bit. Unless you were to combine a WBTB with MILD, that might leave you sufficiently tired enough to fall back asleep with relative ease.

Yes, I think you're right; thanks. I've been too driven about this; I just WANT to have lucid dreams so much, but I think I need to ease up a bit. (I did try WBTB this past weekend, but overshot on all fronts: I got up two hours early, and then got engrossed in enough stuff to be up for SIX hours, after which I was still determined to get those two remaining hours of sleep, which of course was impossible. Kinda threw my sleep off for the remainder of the three-day weekend.) Anyway, I'm going to try to relax, not think/try so much, and just get plenty of sleep for a while.