Welcome to insomnia club... Anyone else a member?

Legionreturns

I officially suck at sleeping at the moment. A combination of work worries and a very poorly mum means I'm struggling by on about 4 hours a night. Sucky! 

longi

Yup, I struggle with it too. Have done for years although right now it's not too bad though. If only I didn't have to be up at 5 every morning.... What I really hate is being awake until half 3 or 4 then being in a deep sleep at 5 am when the alarm rips me from my sleep. I feel hideous all day. Yuck!

Dominic

The thing is that being mindful of the fact that you don't sleep well is 75% of the problem because it becomes a bit obsessive
- I find that the best thing is to say "great ,I can sleep when I'm dead ......if I don't waste time sleeping now theres loads I can do in the quiet hours .......practice guitar etc ......you'll soon find that after 2 nights of falling asleep with the guitar on your lap that the cycle is broken and the anxiety of not sleeping evaporates ......then you can get back into a normal pattern.
Anxiety over not sleeping is what keeps you awake.

Alnico

Tramadol.
Supposed to make you drowsy, keeps me awake.
I sleep for around 3 hours out of every 24 but feel like a zombie for most of the day.
I've seen 3 am every night now for months and often I'm back up at 4 or 5 am, occasionally I'll have a lie in until 6:30 ish.
I stay active all day as much as my bad legs will allow and sometimes I can crash out in the afternoon but only ever for an hour or two.
I'm on tramadol 24/7 until my specialist referral at the hospital which could take months.

In the meantime, I'm watching a LOT of guitar tuition and learning a lot but my brain is fried a lot of the time.
I'm really glad I bought good headphones last year!

Rickyd

Alnico said:

Tramadol.
Supposed to make you drowsy, keeps me awake.
I sleep for around 3 hours out of every 24 but feel like a zombie for most of the day.
I've seen 3 am every night now for months and often I'm back up at 4 or 5 am, occasionally I'll have a lie in until 6:30 ish.
I stay active all day as much as my bad legs will allow and sometimes I can crash out in the afternoon but only ever for an hour or two.
I'm on tramadol 24/7 until my specialist referral at the hospital which could take months.

In the meantime, I'm watching a LOT of guitar tuition and learning a lot but my brain is fried a lot of the time.
I'm really glad I bought good headphones last year!

Tramadol. Great as a pain killer as I found before and after my hip replacement. But try coming off the buggers! No one told me its a weaning process so I just stopped them in one go. Bloody nightmares like I've never had before, real scary stuff. I found after my op my sleep pattern went to the wall - getting up 2/3 times in the night, mooching around for half an hour or so and then back to bed again.

One night a couple of weeks ago I didn't sleep all night, eventually got up at 5.00am and went to the office. Having discussed all this with the consultant I'm sure its effect of the painkillers. While the Tramadol did make me drowsy in the beginning it seemed to have the opposite effect at the end.

Why do you take them Alnico, any chance you can get yourself off them?

57Deluxe

Tinnitus has meant that if not totally wacked out, I end up laying there hearing it raging, So I have the radio on to drown it, Thing is I get irate at the idiot insomniacs ringing in to the various stations. You have to resort to Talk Radio cos BBC has removed all the good over night shows.

However, the result is I sleep even less and when I do, my dreams involve items from the recurrent and endless news roundups! Bizarre is not the nightly word...

digitalscream

Yeah, I'm there right now - I go through phases of sleeping 1-3hrs a night for a week or two, and then it's OK (5-6hrs a night) for a couple of months.

When it's really bad, I use Amytriptyline to knock me out a few nights in a row and reset my sleep cycle. I'm running out now, though, and the doc won't prescribe me any more...

Alnico

Rickyd said:

Alnico said:

Tramadol.
Supposed to make you drowsy, keeps me awake.
I sleep for around 3 hours out of every 24 but feel like a zombie for most of the day.
I've seen 3 am every night now for months and often I'm back up at 4 or 5 am, occasionally I'll have a lie in until 6:30 ish.
I stay active all day as much as my bad legs will allow and sometimes I can crash out in the afternoon but only ever for an hour or two.
I'm on tramadol 24/7 until my specialist referral at the hospital which could take months.

In the meantime, I'm watching a LOT of guitar tuition and learning a lot but my brain is fried a lot of the time.
I'm really glad I bought good headphones last year!

Tramadol. Great as a pain killer as I found before and after my hip replacement. But try coming off the buggers! No one told me its a weaning process so I just stopped them in one go. Bloody nightmares like I've never had before, real scary stuff. I found after my op my sleep pattern went to the wall - getting up 2/3 times in the night, mooching around for half an hour or so and then back to bed again.

One night a couple of weeks ago I didn't sleep all night, eventually got up at 5.00am and went to the office. Having discussed all this with the consultant I'm sure its effect of the painkillers. While the Tramadol did make me drowsy in the beginning it seemed to have the opposite effect at the end.

Why do you take them Alnico, any chance you can get yourself off them?

I've got really bad legs.
First, they thought it was DVT.
Then they thought it was Lupus.
Now they don't know what it is after those tests came back negative but if I don't take around 8-10 Tramadol per day I simply can't walk. I'm like a pensioner, it's really bad and the pain is Olympic level awful.

Until I see a consultant and they work out what it is, I'm stuck like this and the nightmares have already started. Some nights i try not to sleep because they're horrific.
Plenty are worse off than me so I cope with it and once I work out what's reality I'm usually ok but the whole issue with sleep is a big one right now for me.
As for coming off them, I've been through all that already with rehab earlier this year so I know what to expect and I'll be ok but thanks for the heads up, I wasn't aware of that either.

I'll cope.
It is after all only bad legs and a lack of sleep and I don't do much except run the house and keep the place clean and tidy, shopping and laundry etc, so it could be worse.

Thanks for sharing your experiences though @Rickyd ;

octatonic

Not any more but it was a problem for me for years.
I fixed insomnia with exercise.

BigMonka

The benefit of insomnia is that it's only 4 sleeps till Christmas!
(I'll get my coat)

Alnico

BigMonka said:

The benefit of insomnia is that it's only 4 sleeps till Christmas!
(I'll get my coat)

Proper LOL.

boogieman

57Deluxe said:

Tinnitus has meant that if not totally wacked out, I end up laying there hearing it raging, So I have the radio on to drown it, Thing is I get irate at the idiot insomniacs ringing in to the various stations. You have to resort to Talk Radio cos BBC has removed all the good over night shows.

However, the result is I sleep even less and when I do, my dreams involve items from the recurrent and endless news roundups! Bizarre is not the nightly word...

I've got tinnitus in one ear as well. During the hot weather my wife has had a fan on in bedroom. The fan noise seems to cancel out the tinnitus and I slept like a log. The downside is when I sleep really deeply I snore like a grizzly and then keep my wife awake. 

Dodge

I know the feeling - when i've things on my mind, I really struggle to get to sleep and can easily go through the night with my mind racing about rubbish I can't deal with in the small hours.

I tend to listen to music, read a book, watch a film or something to take my mind off things.

IvanMC

I'll join this club on the spot. Iongi and Legionreturns, I've got exactly those problems. I seem to lose all my will and just can't get the oppressive thoughts off my chest. I usually drop off when it's too late and then the alarm goes off and I wake up in a horrible mood. I've tried getting up and picking up the guitar, reading, but nothing seems to work. I reckon my life would be massively better if I got proper sleep, I think I'm missing out on a lot because of this.

stimpsonslostson

I'm a light sleeper (always have been) so I'm easily woken by my kids talking in their sleep, my neighbours kids, folk outside on the street, the neighbours dog barking etc... then find it tough to get back to sleep. 
I used to average about 5-6hours sleep a night, sometimes more but often MUCH less. 

I took a good look at the reasons why I wasn't sleeping and tried to address them. 

I've taken to putting earplugs in when I go to bed to minimise that kind of disturbance.
I turn off all screens and "dim" the room an hour before I plan to go to bed and either play my guitar or read to relax.
The biggest thing that has helped me is banning all electronic devices from my bedroom (apart from the contents of the wife's top drawer obviously )- no more "I can't sleep so I'll see what's going on in Facebook/Fretboardland". 

Obviously if the problem is physical then there's little you can do, but behavioural patterns are a big part of this. 

chillidoggy

I don't have any problem falling asleep, it's waking up I have a problem with. 5am every fucking morning, I just can't seem to get past that time. I end up getting up and then spend every day feeling like shit. It was 3am a couple of days ago. I know old people aren't supposed to need as much sleep, but FFS.

Sympathies to anyone who has bad sleep patterns.

Dominic

OK all of you ..........look at the positives;
You are unlikely to burgled in the night
Remember too that SEX is a natural sedative ....I know this is true because everybody I do it with falls asleep half way through

Alnico

IvanMC said:

I'll join this club on the spot. Iongi and Legionreturns, I've got exactly those problems. I seem to lose all my will and just can't get the oppressive thoughts off my chest. I usually drop off when it's too late and then the alarm goes off and I wake up in a horrible mood. I've tried getting up and picking up the guitar, reading, but nothing seems to work. I reckon my life would be massively better if I got proper sleep, I think I'm missing out on a lot because of this.

That's exactly how it makes me feel.
I spend all my time thinking "If only I could sleep properly things would be so much happier each day".
I hate it but things rarely stay the same for long so I'm just holding out and hoping that maybe by the end of the year I will have seen the consultant and have an opportunity to be off the tramadol. 
Before all this I slept fine. I was only ever a 5 - 6 hours guy but 25 years as a trucker will do that to you and I'd learned to cope with that really well.
A good 6 hour sleep was all I needed.

Last week I tried using olanzapine to sleep. If you don't know it's weapons grade sleeping tablets.
They don't mix well with tramadol at all.
I lost Friday 14th completely. 
Crashed out Thursday night. Woke up in a terrible state at 3pm Saturday. 

Not doing that again !

revsorg

I have terrible sleep habits so probably the last person to give advice.  But a few days ago there was a thread on Reddit asking for advice about getting to sleep and a lot of people talked about building a dream palace.  From my limited understanding you imagine your palace and organise the rooms in your mind.  Imagine walking into and around it.  I've tried it for the last few nights and am still at the stage of figuring out how the lobby is arranged before falling asleep.  My dream palace is Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, but located in a valley in Herefordshire.

jonnyburgo

i work nights and it messes with my sleep, when I'm working I'm lucky if i get 4 hrs in the day, what with school runs etc.
Not great at all, worst is after tea I'll get a couple of hrs then up at 8.30pm feeling terrible.

Rickyd

Alnico said:

Rickyd said:

Alnico said:

Tramadol.
Supposed to make you drowsy, keeps me awake.
I sleep for around 3 hours out of every 24 but feel like a zombie for most of the day.
I've seen 3 am every night now for months and often I'm back up at 4 or 5 am, occasionally I'll have a lie in until 6:30 ish.
I stay active all day as much as my bad legs will allow and sometimes I can crash out in the afternoon but only ever for an hour or two.
I'm on tramadol 24/7 until my specialist referral at the hospital which could take months.

In the meantime, I'm watching a LOT of guitar tuition and learning a lot but my brain is fried a lot of the time.
I'm really glad I bought good headphones last year!

Tramadol. Great as a pain killer as I found before and after my hip replacement. But try coming off the buggers! No one told me its a weaning process so I just stopped them in one go. Bloody nightmares like I've never had before, real scary stuff. I found after my op my sleep pattern went to the wall - getting up 2/3 times in the night, mooching around for half an hour or so and then back to bed again.

One night a couple of weeks ago I didn't sleep all night, eventually got up at 5.00am and went to the office. Having discussed all this with the consultant I'm sure its effect of the painkillers. While the Tramadol did make me drowsy in the beginning it seemed to have the opposite effect at the end.

Why do you take them Alnico, any chance you can get yourself off them?

I've got really bad legs.
First, they thought it was DVT.
Then they thought it was Lupus.
Now they don't know what it is after those tests came back negative but if I don't take around 8-10 Tramadol per day I simply can't walk. I'm like a pensioner, it's really bad and the pain is Olympic level awful.

Until I see a consultant and they work out what it is, I'm stuck like this and the nightmares have already started. Some nights i try not to sleep because they're horrific.
Plenty are worse off than me so I cope with it and once I work out what's reality I'm usually ok but the whole issue with sleep is a big one right now for me.
As for coming off them, I've been through all that already with rehab earlier this year so I know what to expect and I'll be ok but thanks for the heads up, I wasn't aware of that either.

I'll cope.
It is after all only bad legs and a lack of sleep and I don't do much except run the house and keep the place clean and tidy, shopping and laundry etc, so it could be worse.

Thanks for sharing your experiences though @Rickyd ;

8-10 a day, Christ mate you have my sympathy, they must be giving you a lot of gip. Even before my op and I had shooting pains up and down my leg I managed with 4 a day. Get your arse down to the consultant  asap (or as quickly as those old legs will carry you)