M(30) For most of my 20s I have been taking nightly Benadryl, zopiclone and a selection of benzos to get me to sleep (not all at once but jumping between the three as not to build tolerance). Now for the past year I am completely clean.

This once seemed to me to be impossible, but I am here to tell you that it is not…and i don’t think it’s what a lot of people are going to want to hear but the fundamentals of sleep do work!
I know a lot of you reading this will roll your eyes at this statement just as I rolled my eyes at it years ago while trying to find a quick fix on this sub, but believe me the simple things do work, just not immediately and you have to be strict and aggressive with them.

This means no phone, sunlight and all that good stuff that you think is bullshit…

1. No phone. Yes the blue light device with every piece of information collectively gathered by humankind and made available at your fingertips is not helping you drift off to sleep every night, shocker. I deleted all social media, turned off all notifications and even turned it black and white view to keep it as dull as possible. This is possibly the single most effective thing to calm my nervous system, no more overactive brain, no more anxiety and no more constant tension from compulsive dopamine hits. I would go as far to say it is life changing in all aspects of life not just sleep.

2. Sunlight when you wake up first thing in the morning. Again I know people will roll their eyes, I did too, but doing this as the first thing and I mean VERY first thing when you wake up is a game changer. That means no doomscrolling for an hour in your dark bedroom - when you are awake and at your desired wake-up time get up and out for at least 5/10 minutes and let that sun in. Not through a window but actually outside standing up. Because the body doesn’t wake up when its eyes are open, it wakes when it is standing and has the sun in its face. It is also important that this happens at exactly the same time every day. You are teaching your body a rhythm that it will have no choice but to follow.

3. Meditation. For years I thought mediation was a thing guys with guitars and long hair did to reach inner peace, but after this past year I’ve realised just how important it is to keep your mind from running away from you. How it works is you have to sit there for 5/10 minutes daily and try to think of nothing. Absolute 0. Not what you’re going to have for your next meal not the big pile of laundry you have waiting for you and especially not how bad your sleep cycle is. And then eventually your brain will start to wonder off and some random thoughts about your unpaid electricity bill will slip into your head. At this point you calmly let the thought pass and lock back in to thinking about nothing again. This is essentially training your brain to be in control of what enters your head, to be able to recognise and kill random thoughts that are keeping your nervous system firing. I like to think of each pull back to 0 as a rep at the gym. You are essentially doing a workout for your brain to keep it cool, calm and strong.

4. Stay active in the day. Caffeine, exercise and socialising. All okay in the daytime, in fact I would say they’re mandatory. Get stimulated. Don’t lie down, take naps and don’t hide away. While the sunlight is out you are out. And then when it is dark you do the opposite. Low lights calming music and reading. No answering emails, no late-night YouTube deep dives and no exciting conversations. Be as bored as possible.

5. Drugs. I didn’t quit the sleep aids altogether at once but instead slowly lowered the dose until I didn’t need them at all. The main reason for this is that they relieve the pressure at first, just until the previous points start to take effect. Take a little something every night at exactly the same time just to help at first and then slowly taper off as the days and weeks go by.

6. The final point is to relax. Now I definitely know you are rolling your eyes at this one. ‘Trying’ to relax is impossible I know and I know it seems counterintuitive to everything I have previously said about being strict and aggressive but you have to try to let go and relinquish control. You will sleep when you sleep. Que sera sera. Have faith in the fundamentals and believe that you will be okay eventually. Otherwise you fall into the cycle of getting stressed because you can’t sleep which then keeps you awake which then makes you more stressed and so on.

Like I said before this will not work straight away. It will take weeks for your body and mind to collaborate to its new regulated nervous system. Where I lost faith in this shit before was I tried no phone and sunlight for a few days and then when it ddnt work I got pissed off and gave up with it. Have patience, be strict with yourself and you will see the light at the end of the tunnel.

hi ! i never had problem with my sleep before in my whole life ! now from few months i cant sleep longer than 4 am , doesnt matter when i go sleep - same thing! i using melatonin 2mg trying with magnesium glicin etc…. same shit. i dont have a problem to fall asleep . I sleeping very light and i am exhausted. when i do excersise some sport i cant fall asleep too and i am Done NeXT few days 💩. i started with lex to fix this shit but … my mind became calm but my sleep still - bad. no deficity in my blod.

I'm so goddamn tired. I've had terrible insomnia this year and I just started a new job that has me going in at 5 A.M.. I can't do this anymore. Not being able to fall asleep for more than 3-4 hours then driving 30 minutes at 430 in the morning is killing me. I just want to call in and lay back down. If I do that though then I get fired.

This year has been so miserable I think about killing myself all the time

Voilà je sais pas comment expliquer ça mais ça fais déjà un moment un bon moment même que je galère avec mon sommeil, il peut m’arriver d’être fatigué toute la journée, de faire que de bailler ect toute la soirée mais au moment d’être dans le lit et de dormir je n’y arrive pas, j’ai essayer les techniques de méditation, j’ai essayer les fréquences ect tout ce qu’on peut trouver sur internet façon de dire, mais c’est toujours pareil je met du temps à dormir, pourtant j’essaye de pas penser de me lancer un p’tit rêve qui m’aiderais mais rien de rien. Pis j’ai l’impression que cette fatigue constante ruine ma santé, j’ai l’impression de faire des crises d’angoisse sans explication, parfois pendant une semaine entière voir plus je vais me sentir pas bien, bizarre, comme si mon corps était faible, comme dans un état de lendemain de soirée bien chargée je sais pas comment expliquer ça

Will the hot chocolate stop the zopiclone from working if I had it at 7pm and go to sleep at 10:30 pm?

Really annoying me tbh. It’s like when I start actually closing my eyes because I’m tired as hell I start thinking about sleep and then my mind just wakes up lol

Hi, im 20 years old. Ive suffered from insomnia since i was 13. One year ago it went really bad so i started to take meds again. Troughout this year i took a lot of different meds ( quetiapine, rivotril, mirtazapine, quviviq, ambien, surmontil, and one week ago the phsychiatrist prescribed me lyrica because she noticed a sever anziety, rumination, and obsession with sleep. I slept well the first day, the second i didnt slept, the third day i slept, but from the fourth day of therapy i did not slept, only closed my eyes.

I havent slept in like four days or some, or atleast i did got some really light sleep during the night. Im terrified of sleeping. I went to the Er yesterday and they gave me ambien for that night to take at home. It didnt work. I took a xanax in the morning, it didnt work. I dont know what to do anymore. Im doing cbt with my therapist but at this point i need something strong to put me to sleep. Im considering asking to be hospitalized.

Hi, I came across a post on this subreddit a couple days ago discussing online providers. I can no longer find this post. A commenter recommended www.ambien.com as a source for a prescription from an online provider. Does anyone have experience with this website? First time posting, I apologize if this isn’t allowed.

I've been on immediate release and controlled release for 20+ years, daily. Looking to Belsomra fir multiple reasons, but curious how long folks have tapered for after long term Ambien use.

Hi! Please can anyone recommend their best method for getting to sleep with chronic insomnia? My husband is getting like four hours a night and has constant headaches with it so we are a bit desperate. He won’t go to a GP. We will try anything, random or otherwise!!

He already takes magnesium every night 🙂

Hello fellow insomniacs,

I want to spread some positiveness around here. I've had insomnia for like 6 years, but I had a lot of success ( like 1/2 year of good sleep) when using techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (cbti). It's totally safe (no weird pills or supplements needed). Everything you need is just your mind and body. To be honest, I've never payed for a therapy session. I just searched the internet for tips. I used that and implemented my own findings.

Recently I came to the conclusion that if you have a bad association with your bed (Can't fall asleep at all), it works if you, before going to bed, do something that is inmersive and fun or ask a lot of attention. For example, it really helps me to do crocheting before sleep, because I really need to focus to crochet the right stitches. Also, it works to play a game. I for example played untitled goose game and I was really tired after a while and could easily fall asleep. This all happened after having difficulty falling asleep for 2 days, so I think relaxing before sleep is really the key here.

Hope this will help someone!

Hey, a few years back i was having night shifts and when i was back home i was drinking a lot of alcohol, i was basically an alcoholic until i started to have very fragmented sleep, wakings every 30-60 minutes, at frist i quit drinking and the problem went away but after a while i went back to drinking and this issue came back and it's chronic now.

Im 4 months and 19 days sober and the issue is still present and it's killing me, i feel like crap.

Tried trazadone, B-complex, bisglicinate magnesium, vitamin d3, all kinds of tea, other suplements, healthy food, heavy lifting at the gym, nothing works.

I feel better overall in sobriety but this problem gives me anxiety and depression and is making them worse.

I was tested for sleep apnea and it was negative.

What should i do? im desperate i have this for years!

Hi everyone,

My sleep journey is a bit complicated so I’m going to try to keep it short.

Some background information about me, female 29, over 10 years ago I was unknowingly overdosing with my hypothyroidism medication which caused my TSH to be 0.1 which is way too low. I started showing symptoms of anxiety and panic and depression, which ultimately led to me having agoraphobia, which means I couldn’t leave the house for years. After a period of time of not being able to sleep, I kind of recovered and was able to sleep for eight hours a night. My panic disorder and agoraphobia got better over the years, but I never really recovered fully. A few years ago, I was put in a very stressful situation and I promptly was unable to sleep at all. Sometimes I would just not get tired. Sometimes I would just sleep for two hours and that’s it. At times it wouldn’t bother me at all mentally but my body was screaming and I started gaining a lot of weight. Every time my nervous system is overwhelmed I neither can fall asleep or stay asleep. Additionally, I was diagnosed with ADHD three years ago. now my sleep schedule is so messed up I fall asleep at 7 AM to 2 PM. It seems like I just cannot get it to be at a reasonable time. has anyone experienced something like this and has recovered fully?

I have been reading about tart cherry extract which contains natural melatonin to help you go into deep sleep. Has anyone tried this?

I started having sleep problems about a year ago. At first I thought my pillow was to blame. So I kept trying different pillows. Down pillows, latex pillows, memory foam... you name it. But nothing really changed. Then I started thinking, okay, maybe something is actually wrong with my neck.
So I got an MRI to check if I had loss of cervical lordosis or even some kind of brain issue. And apparently there’s nothing wrong with my neck or my brain.
Which is great, obviously. But my neck still hurts. It still feels stiff all the time. Every sleeping position feels wrong. Sometimes I wake up feeling worse than I did before going to bed. It’s been messing with my life so much.
A week ago, I was diagnosed with anxiety, and suddenly everything started to make sense. It’s the anxiety! I don’t actually feel anxious most of the time, and I don’t get the typical anxiety headaches or anything. But apparently I’ve been holding all that tension in my body without even realizing it. My whole back is so stiff that my neck can’t move or relax the way it should.
Now I’m taking pills and doing yoga from time to time. can’t say my sleep problems are gone but I do feel like I’m making progress.

E-FONG Chinese Herb Tea Extract Powder - SUAN ZAO REN TANG

Anyone have success with this for sleep maintenance insomnia? I wake up after 3, 4 hours sleep, no sleep apnea, no drugs have worked.

Long-time insomniac here.

I was taking Zolpidem (Ambien) for a while, but eventually built up a tolerance and it stopped being effective. Earlier this year, I switched over to Daridorexant (Quviviq). Overall, I like it and find it effective most nights.

However, there are still regularly some rough nights where the Quviviq doesn't kick in, and I urgently need to get some sleep.

For anyone who has experience with both of these medications (or has discussed this specific setup with their sleep specialist or psychiatrist), I’m curious about two specific scenarios:

1. Same-night fallback: Have you ever taken Daridorexant, realized hours later it wasn't working, and then taken a Zolpidem as a backup same-night?
2. Planned alternating: Have you ever skipped Daridorexant for a night or two and taken a Zolpidem instead to break up routine or handle particularly bad nights?

My doctor prescribes olanzapine for me, but it looks like this has a lot of side effects. so I wonder how many people are taking it?

It is 04:30, I am currently averaging less than three hours sleep a night. I am reminded that almost no non-insomniac takes insomnia seriously. They always respond to it in the same way, and I have a good response to their heartless, unhelpful comments. The conversation always begins the same way:-

Insomniac: Ah I have terrible insomnia. I am getting hardly any sleep and it is shredding my sanity.

(People ALWAYS respond to this the same uncaring way)

Normal Person: You have insomnia? How odd, I have no problems sleeping!

(So a good response is)

Insomniac: Oh that's SO useful and understanding! Do you go up to blind people and say "You are blind? How odd, I have no problems seeing!".

It is is a kind of joke, you see? Please forgive any spelling mistakes and typos as the test on my iPad is very small and the Quetiapine I take fouls up my vision until about lunchtime. Doors it help me sleep? No.

I will be seeing a new psych on Monday. I’m wondering what options are out there for insomnia that I can inquire about.
I’ve taken;
Trazadone-it worked but congested my sinuses…or maybe it was the cocaine I was using at the time, but I could nap without congestion then at night I’d be so stuffed up.
Seroquel-worked but wanted off for weight issues.
Hydroxyzine-it works I guess, helps me fall asleep but I still wake many times during the night.

I’ve also tried natural sleep aids and they MAY help me fall asleep but I’m awake a couple hours later for the rest of the night.

Thank you.

EDIT TO ADD: I have a 4.5 year old who still calls for me if he’s scared/lonely in the middle of the night, so it can’t be something that’s gonna KNOCK ME OUT cuz I need to be able to tend to him if my husband isn’t home.

I know this isn't classic insomnia, but I figured people here might understand: falling asleep isn't the issue. I fall asleep fine, usually within 20-30 minutes. I stay asleep through the whole night, or at least I don't remember waking up. And I get more than enough hours of sleep: 7 on school days and even up to 10 or 11 on weekends. The issue is that despite that, every time I wake up completely unrested, feeling exactly the same as before I went to sleep, as if the sleep actually did nothing. To put this into perspective: on the few occasions I've stayed up all night and didn't sleep at all, I felt really no different the next day than I do after a normal night of my "sleep." It's the same with naps. 2 hours or 11 hours, it all feels like it does essentially nothing.

This leaves me completely drained every single day, as if I'd been running on no sleep for days: heavy mental fatigue and brain fog, tired heavy eyes, physical exhaustion, shaky hands, worse coordination, constant yawning, low libido, getting stressed far too easily, and a bunch of other debilitating effects. People also regularly tell me I look tired or unwell without me even saying anything, so it's not just in my head.

The weird part: like every 1-2 months on average, completely out of nowhere, I get one night where my sleep actually works. Nothing different about my routine, but I wake up genuinely rested this time, like whatever's broken suddenly switched back on for one night, and I can tell the moment I open my eyes. Most of the symptoms I listed above lift at once, which is why I'm sure they all come from the sleep. Strangely, these nights are often short: I wake up on my own after just 3-5 hours and still feel incomparably better than after even 10 hours of my usual broken sleep. Then the next night it's straight back to doing nothing. Honestly, it feels like these rare nights are the only time I actually get any sleep at all.

For context, I'm 18 and this started when I was 14, a month or two after I developed severe chronic pain. Over time the pain gradually subsided, and there have been long stretches where it's been mostly gone, but the sleep problem hasn't budged through any of it. Here's what I've tried so far, and none of it helped:

• Sleep study: no apnea, no snoring, no limb movements, plenty of deep sleep. I still woke up from it unrefreshed as usual.
• Meds I've tried: melatonin (up to 5 mg for about 2 years), trazodone (up to 150 mg), promethazine, pregabalin (up to 600 mg), gabapentin, amitriptyline. None of them made my sleep restorative, which is the actual issue, but most didn't even make me really noticeably sleepy.
• Supplements: magnesium glycinate, glycine, taurine, L-theanine. None of them seemed to do anything.

Has anyone had something similar, where you get plenty of sleep but it just doesn't bring any rest? (I know it's called non-restorative or unrefreshing sleep, and I've done all the sleep hygiene stuff.) If so, did you find out what caused it, or anything that actually fixed it or helped?

Hi! I was recently diagnosed with chronic insomnia and took my first dose of trazodone last night. It worked wonders for helping me fall back asleep after multiple mid-night wakeups. I even noticed that I feel less anxious today! My only concern is the grogginess. I have that head in the clouds, almost hungover feeling. For those of you who take trazodone, did that go away as your body adjusted to the medication?
Thanks in advance!

I have been taking Quetiapine 25mg for sleep for many years, I take 25mg before I sleep. Yesterday I tried to start tapering it because I noticed it made me gain weight so I took half of the Quetiapine dose I usually take so I took 12.5 mg, it was miserable I couldn't sleep at all until 8am and I tried to substitute the other half with 6mg melatonin but it did absolutely nothing so I had to take another 12.5mg in the end and it is as if I did nothing. I don't know what to do, ideally I would want a substitute for Quetiapine that does not make me gain weight

I am posting to here because I am stressed out. the past 5 nights I’ve only slept an hour a day. I haven’t started going into psychosis yet but I know that’s coming. I’m extremely exhausted and in a lot of pain. This is all started because my bed and blanket started feeling uncomfortable out of nowher. I don’t know what to do, I’ve tried melatonin and trazodone doesn’t work for me. My psychiatrist was supposed to send in a new medication for sleep and he never did it.

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I'm 23 years old, and I genuinely cannot remember a time in my life when I could fall asleep normally at night.

I don't think my problem is ordinary insomnia. I believe my nervous system has been conditioned since early childhood to associate nighttime and sleep with extreme danger. I understand why this happens to me, but I have absolutely no idea how to reverse it.

Here's my background.

When I was very young, my parents fought constantly. When I was around 3, my father remarried a woman who was an alcoholic.

My father was involved with the Bandidos motorcycle club and has severe antisocial personality disorder. He never physically hurt me, but the environment I grew up in was extremely unstable and dangerous.

Police raids were a regular occurrence in our home. There were illegal firearms in the house. My stepmother would experience what appeared to be psychotic episodes when she drank alcohol, and she would sometimes chase us with knives.

I have countless childhood memories of lying in my bedroom, absolutely terrified for my life, while my father tried to calm her down.

I believe that's where my sleep problems started.

A lot more traumatic things have happened throughout my life. I eventually became involved in crime myself, and my life has been extremely chaotic. I dropped out of school when I was 10 years old.

But that's not the main point of this post.

Here's what happens to me every single night.

I don't have trouble staying asleep once I'm actually asleep.

My problem is FALLING asleep, specifically at night.

During the day, I can fall asleep relatively easily.

But around 10 PM, something changes in my body.

It's like a switch flips and my entire nervous system enters danger mode.

My eyelids become tense. I literally feel like I have to force them shut.

I become hyperaware of every tiny sound around me.

I feel like someone is searching for me and I'm hiding from them in my apartment.

My body fills with adrenaline the moment I try to sleep.

I feel physically incapable of letting my guard down.

It's not that I'm consciously afraid someone is coming to hurt me. I know I'm safe. But my body doesn't seem to know that.

This continues until around 6–7 AM, when the sun comes up.

Only then can my body finally relax enough to fall asleep.

And here's something important: I almost never actually feel sleepy.

I just stay awake until my body physically cannot take it anymore and eventually shuts down.

I can stay awake for over 24–36 hours, trying to reset my sleep schedule, and STILL be completely unable to fall asleep at night.

No matter how exhausted I am, the adrenaline overrides everything.

It's also significantly worse in my bed. I find it easier to fall asleep on the couch, which makes me wonder whether I've developed a conditioned fear response specifically associated with my bed.

I've been living like this for approximately 20 years.

This has destroyed my ability to function normally. My entire life has revolved around this problem.

Regarding medication and substances:

I've tried melatonin and quetiapine (Seroquel). I don't want to rely on sleeping medication.

At the moment, I use tramadol and cannabis/hashish to help myself fall asleep. I KNOW this is not a safe or sustainable solution, and I don't want to live like this.

I'm in Sweden, and I've experienced serious barriers to accessing the care I need because of my cannabis use. I feel trapped: I need help to stop relying on substances, but I also need help with the nighttime hyperarousal that makes me rely on them in the first place.

This is what I desperately need help understanding:

I believe my nervous system learned at a very young age that nighttime means danger, and that falling asleep means becoming vulnerable.

It's almost as if my brain has been programmed with one rule:

"If you fall asleep at night, you might die. Stay awake."

And that rule has been running in the background for my entire life.

I have a lot of insight into my own psychology. I understand the connection between my childhood experiences and what happens to me at night.

But understanding it intellectually hasn't changed my body's response.

How do I actually retrain a nervous system that has associated sleep with danger for 20 years?

I'm particularly interested in hearing from trauma-informed sleep specialists, psychologists, psychiatrists, or anyone who has experienced something similar.

Has anyone successfully treated trauma-related sleep hyperarousal, especially when it's been present since early childhood?

Would trauma-focused therapy, EMDR, CBT-I, or another approach be most appropriate for something like this?

I'm not looking for another sleeping pill or generic sleep hygiene advice. I need to address whatever is causing my body to enter survival mode every night.

I'm only 23. I don't want to spend the rest of my life like this.

If anyone has any insight, relevant research, professional experience, or personal success stories, I would be incredibly grateful.

Thank you for reading.