Thread: What do YOU do if you cant sleep?

Have you tried listening to relaxing music? Check out the Zen Garden music on YouTube, it's so peaceful and relaxing. Trust me on this, you will fall asleep.

My experience is that reading is quite helpful to get more tired. It makes my eyes get more tired and makes me concentrate on the content of the book and not on my worries etc.
I just read until I can't keep my eyes open anymore, I think this is way better than just rolling around in your bed.
If it's more serious I take a small dosage of Melatonin, wich normally helps me to go to sleep but I try not to get used to it...

I take melatonin when I can't sleep.

Although it's commonly sold in 3 mg tablets, try just taking .5 - 2 mg at a time. I've found that taking too much melatonin at once can actually negatively affect the quality of your sleep.

I drink 500 gallons of tea and self-medicate with the internet. Of course that makes things about 100 times worse, but ╮(｡❛﹏❛)╭

I'm on a prescription benzo as a sleep aid. Because I literally go nuts if I go without sleep too long. .5mg will make me sleepy enough 30 minutes-hour after ingestion, but on a stressful day I take .25mg as a precaution. My psychiatrist sees this as responsible use. When I take a half-tab (.5mg), it's usually after I've already tried sleeping for an hour.

Shower and a shot (of spirits) works just as well as the benzo, so I alternate.

But seriously, lucid dreaming (attempting WILDs for so long) has made me partially insomniac. I recognize where I'm at in my first sleep cycle, and nervously check the clock, and the anxiousness feeds into itself and keeps me up.

I often do a bit of math and make it simple. If I know I can't sleep (not been up for long), I just don't go to bed, I simply stay up and do stuff. If you got up at noon and try to go to sleep at midnight, you're most likely just going to fail.

That said, this mindset can be very dangerous, as you might end up staying up much longer than you need to. Never stay up "until you're ready to pass out", just stay up maybe an hour or two past your usual bed time. Then I'm a little more sleepy, plus my biological clock is starting to nag more.

I'm rarely in a situation where I can't really sleep, but I have found that over the last 6 or 7 years, which is when I started getting into lucid dreaming, I can have a hard time falling asleep, if I'm not focusing on it. That might sound a little foreign and backwards, but really, if I'm not focusing on calming my brain, and if I'm not stupid tired, my mind will just keep wandering, constantly bringing up new stuff to think about.
So how do I calm my brain? It's a long line of things that I've learned over the years as a lucid dreamer, and generally they blend together, but here's a list:

1: Breathing excercises. Take a number (usually three) of deep breaths, and then start breathing normally. Put all your focus into your breathing.

2: Clear your mind. Simply focus on the darkness of your closed eyes, and listen to your heartbeat and your breathing. Count your breaths if you need something to focus on.

3: If you feel an urge to move, try to quickly judge whether you're actually uncomfortable, of if it's just your unconscious mind checking if you're asleep. If you move, it'll know not to disconnect you just yet. If you stay still, the urge will go away, and you'll relax even more. Usually.

These are all things I've learned from different dreaming techniques, mostly WILD. However, you don't actually have to go all the way and enter paralysis or anything like that. Just use it as tools for relaxing and reducing your mind activity.


If I'm actually having issues falling asleep, I usually put these tricks into play, consciously. It's really just a meditation method, and the main purpose is to reduce current stressing thoughts, such as anxiety (due to not falling asleep) and whatever else might be bugging you. It also speeds up time, which might just be what you need some nights.

Originally Posted by Miguelinileugim

The opposite concept can be applied for staying awake or WILD right? The problem would be which opposite will let you WILD and which one will keep you awake

Nope. AFAIK you try to hold on to a very slight string of consciousness if that makes sense. This however takes quite some practise.

I listen to isotones... better than binaurals

When i get trouble sleeping i get up from bed and turn to my library and choose some books or some puzzle solving work which helps to immediately to get a better sleep and most of my friends do the same it has worked most times.

It's usually a temperature thing that keeps me up, so if it's too hot to sleep I take a quick shower, or if it's too cold I turn the fan off and bundle up then I'll knock out. Sometimes when it's not a temperature thing I freak out and either take xanax, ny-quil, z-quil, or whatever sleeping pills are in the medicine Cabinet.

I found that purchasing melatonin without ever using it was effective - haven't had any need for it ever since I bought it. Ok, so maybe the yoga and other regular exercise, reducing caffeine drastically, and other stress reduction techniques have helped, too, but surely purchasing that melatonin just to have helped a bit.

I listen to classical music on my iPod. Relaxes me and knocks me the heck out.

When I can't sleep, I usually jack off. That's everyting and works within a few minutes.

There's this app called Relax Melodies that I often use. You can choose various relaxing sounds from it and layer them over each other, etc. It's a very simple and nice app. I have it on my iPod and on my Kindle, so sometimes I'll use that to help me relax as I fall asleep.

Sometimes I also try to count from 1 to 100 and backwards again, and if I lose count then I start over. Sometimes if I really can't sleep, then I'll try to read until I'm too exhausted to stay awake anymore.

Also, as others have said, I find it easier to sleep on days when I've exercised. If I've just been sitting around all day then I feel more restless at night.

What do I do? I usually just lay there and wait. Even if I don't sleep, It's good to at least rest. I recall, Once when I tried to go to sleep early it didn't work; I couldn't fall asleep after two hours of laying there but I didn't know how to. I was still deep into a habit of viewing a computer screen at night and doing that caused problems with my sleeping cycle.

The worst thing you can do if you're having trouble sleeping is get a stimulant; Coffee in the morning does not make up for a lack of rest in the daytime. If you're tired, You're tired and rest can help. Stimulants will make you feel energetic for a short while but will wear off and make you feel even more tired later so if you go for another cup of Coffee later to have a "Pick me up" Which makes you more tired later to make up for the energy it dissipated (?), Well, Can you see where this awful cycle is going? The last time I drank a cup of coffee, I felt more tired than I did before I drank it!

In short, If you're having trouble slow down and think about what you're doing and seek for many tiny ways to improve your habits. "To lose 100 pounds, Don't look for 100 ways to lose 1 pound; Look for 1600 ways to lose an ounce."

Here's a little article about overcoming habits:

http://drbass.com/addiction.html

If I'm having a very difficult time going to sleep, I'll drink a cup of coffee. It wakes me up in the morning, but it will knock me right out late at night.

I put on a movie I've seen a million times. Usually if I can't sleep it's because my mind's wandering, so the TV gives me something to focus on. Since it's something I've seen before, I don't feel the need to pay too much attention to it, so I can just drift off.