Counting Sheep, Redux. Or: How to Sleep, What to Do at Night, According to Tumblr
Thanks to everyone who responded to my inquiry about how to sleep, and what to do about nighttime creativity that materializes when, to maintain society’s schedule, you ought to be asleep. Allow me to pat myself and you on the back by saying this: I have awesome readers. At the risk of turning this into a blog about sleep patterns and remedies for insomniacs, let my try to summarize and comment on what people suggested.
There was some contradictory advice. Some suggested putting more effort into going to sleep while others suggested putting it off and doing something else until you feel sufficiently tired. Secondside said: “If I can’t sleep BUT I have to get up, I lie in bed and hope for the best. At the very least, some part of me is resting up.” Pocket Contents: “Everytime a thought wanders into my head replace with: …and now it’s time to sleep.” Water my mouth: “if it proves infeffective to lie there, i get up and do shit till my eyes burn and try to nap the remainder away.” Falsetto Fridays: “If I can’t sleep, especially if I have to get up in the morning, I do something worthwhile.” Pocket Contents (again): “Stop stressing about being awake.” Bmpietras: “Sometimes I have the same problem, so I would stay up and use those hours to write or whatever I felt like doing.”
The “suck it up” approach, which is to say, lying in bed for hours, on the premise that eventually you will fall asleep, and in the meantime, at least you’re getting some rest, has proven ineffectual. From personal experience, I can assure you that I don’t feel any more awake or refreshed if I’ve lain in bed three hours without getting to sleep than if I spend those hours doing stuff, and then go to bed. I suspect this advice might have been more applicable if I worked out more, so that I would be physically, not just mentally exhausted before going to bed every night. I’m also pretty sure that most sleep researchers recommend against that approach. In fact, they tend to say that you should reserve bed for sleeping (and sex), so as to create a subliminal connection there, which is bad since I’m sitting fully awake writing this in my bed, which I also use as a sofa during the day.
I have more faith in the getting up and doing stuff approach, but I always feel guilty about not at least trying to sleep when I know I need to get up. Also, there’s often a period when you’re too tired to do much, but not sleepy enough to fall asleep. Maybe this is the way to go after all.
I don’t have an answer, but “circa” is an awesome word (:
She’s right. Circa comes with the Daily Meh & Greatwhiteshark Stamp of Approval, so use it early, use it often.
Circuitry said:
I discovered it late, but 6am can be nice AFTER sleeping, too. Try this experiment: go bed at 22, read a bit, sleep, wake up reeally early :)
If I could go to bed at 22, read a bit, and sleep, I probably would. Suffice it to say that I’ve tried this experiment and never got past step two.
Some people suggested various substances. Nruth: “Zopiclone. Alcohol. Sometimes both at once.” Alarms and diversions: “take two melatonin and two benadryl.” Erratic Notions: “I drink ungodly amounts of chai tea, and romanticize the mundane aspects of my life.” The panda ate my face: “I get up and drink hot milk & honey or a lot of canomille tea (a lot of this will knock. you. out.)”
The problem with sedatives is twofold: first, everything is prescription-only (at least here), so I’d have to find some shady means of getting it, since my doctor won’t give me any. Second: there’s a reason for that. I have no doubt that various sedatives will knock you out for the night, and some maybe even without any side effects the day after. But apparently, they’re addictive (the big no-no word with doctors), and they can actually harm long-term progress; taking them over an extended period of time can make your insomnia worse. (Wikipedia: “Daily or continuous use of [Zopiclone] is not usually advised.”)
I might actually try chamomile tea and see if it’s effective. Without having researched that at all, it sounds reasonably safe and easy to get legally.
Water my mouth also suggested: “you need to move to nyc.” I guess the idea is that my biological clock is better attuned to New York’s time zone. I don’t know if I’d be able to keep it up, though. I’ve never travelled far enough to experience jet lag, so I don’t know how I’d react to that. Also, unfortunately, moving anywhere, least of all over the Atlantic, is very unrealistic at the moment, and not something I’d do simply to get a good night’s sleep.
Some people suggested essentially boring yourself to sleep. Jerm speaks: “Low volume classical adante music helps me, though I don’t want to resort to that.” (I suppose some don’t consider that boring, but I would.) Radix 33: “I always watch golf on the DVR. Eventually the droning voice of the announcers put me to sleep.” If this works for you, great! Personally, I can’t remember ever having fallen asleep due simply to boredom. I don’t get sleepy when bored — unless I’m tired already — I get unresponsive. Like, you could walk past me in a gorilla costume and I probably wouldn’t blink.
Too Epic said: “Keep a notebook next to your bed and try reading at night.” I will buy buy a notebook (maybe even one of those moleskines that all the cool kids are bragging about). I already usually read before getting to bed; often, books or magazines, but I suppose surfing the web in bed, which I also often do, isn’t ideal for getting to sleep.
Nruth also took the time to write some more elaborate advice. Thanks.
No one mentioned something I’ve heard a lot about, but never tried: light therapy. In some circles, this is apparently all the rage in treatment of insomnia, or at least the kind of sleep disorders that are caused by biological clocks out of sync with society. I don’t know anyone who has tried it, and it requires a lot more effort than “take this pill thirty minutes before going to bed.”
As for last night, I put off climbing into bed until, I don’t know, maybe 3. At 3:40, I had almost fallen asleep, when a loud, high-pitched beeping sound woke me up fully again. I’m not sure exactly what was making the sound, but it might have been the heat pump in the hall outside my bedroom. In any event, it kept me awake until some time after four. This morning I got up at eight, feeling not very refreshed at all. I wonder if the problem is quality or quantity of sleep, or both.
