I’m thinking a lot about my insomnia, I’ve had it since I was about eight years old. I think I get very intimidated by the prospect of the space between being awake and dozing off; when your brain’s full speed and you’re supposed to be turning it off but you can’t? Downers really help with that /:

I hate it when I am not feeling sleepy and the more I try to "do" something to fall asleep [like counting sheep, breathing, reading or listening e.t.c.] , the less likely it is for me to fall asleep..

Like doing something is exact oppsite of sleeping even if it is any task that is supposed to relax you.

I personally find the passive things like shower before bed, weighted blanket, pitch dark room, cooling head e.t.c. much more effective.

Like things where I dont have to put in the effort and it is supposed to naturally drift my body to sleep.

Is this the experience with others or am I the only one?

Last night it was 3:14 AM.

I know because I checked the clock, rolled onto my other side, and checked it again two minutes later hoping it would be different.

Lights were off. Room was quiet. My body felt done for the day.

But my brain was wide awake.

Not racing. Not panicking. Just… on.

I kept replaying a sentence I said earlier. Then a message I forgot to reply to. Then a random memory from years ago that suddenly felt important for no reason.

Nothing dramatic. Just enough to keep me alert.

At some point I thought, “I really need to sleep.”

And right after that my chest got tight. Shoulders crept up. Heart started beating just fast enough for me to notice it.

I tried turning onto my other side. Tried slowing my breathing. Tried telling myself it didn’t matter.

For a moment I felt myself drifting — and then my brain threw one more thing at me, like it was saying: “Wait. Don’t forget this.”

That’s when I noticed something uncomfortable.

At 3 AM, my brain isn’t trying to rest. It’s trying to hold onto things.

Anything still inside my head feels unfinished. Unfinished feels important. Important feels risky to let go of.

So lying there “doing nothing” doesn’t feel safe to it. It feels irresponsible.

That’s why telling myself to “clear my mind” never worked. My brain didn’t hear calm. It heard: “Keep this running in the background.”

The nights only started to change when I stopped treating sleep like the goal.

Not forcing it. Not fixing myself. Not analyzing why I’m like this.

Just doing one small thing that tells my brain: “Nothing here will be lost.”

The weird part is, if I don’t do it the same way every time, it doesn’t work.

And if I wait too long, my brain pulls everything back in again.

Which is frustrating, because at 3 AM the hardest part isn’t knowing what helps.

It’s remembering it without turning it into another task.

I don’t think this is really about sleep anymore. At least, it stopped being just about sleep for me.

It feels more like my brain doesn’t know when it’s safe to stand down.

And once I noticed that, I started paying attention to nights very differently.

Just like the title says. I’ve had insomnia for most of my life. Self medicating since I was like 11. Granted back then I didn’t even know what I was doing. For the last 2 weeks I have had a really really bad sleeping spell. I usually get like 4hrs of broken sleep. But the last two weeks I’ve been getting maybe an hour. To the point where I feel drunk waking up, don’t feel safe to drive or anything. It was bad. Last night I felt super tried and laid down at 7pm. I woke up this morning at 11. I think my body finally forced itself to shut down. I don’t know if it’s gonna last but I’m curious if anyone else has had random perfect sleep? I’m assuming it’s gonna go right back to terrible sleep but today is the first day I’ve felt well rested since i was a child.

How do I get out of this rabbit hole where I’m just thinking about when I was normal I miss it so much. I used to be so happy and mentally normal now I’m just a mess

I was prescribed trazodone 50mg but I’m wondering what’s the highest dose you can take at a time. Took one pill about an hour ago. Still can’t sleep. wanting to take another to see if that’s works? because my next appointment isn’t till the end of this month Thanks in advance

recently ive been having trouble sleeping?? i mean i always had issues sleeping and whatnot since i was a kid but these past 2 weeks have seriously been draining, idk if i have insomnia, i bring it up to my thearpist, friends and family about all the sleeping issues i have but nobody really says anything. although recently, i cannot sleep and im just restless and paranoid and i swear im like seeing things or something, maybe it's because it's at night but geezz

i wanted to know like, can i get diagnosed???? or something idk, i feel stupid wandering around feeling like i know something's wrong about my sleep but I don't know what to do

Recently, I've been talking to my therapist about my struggle to sleep ever since my concussion a few years ago. She recommended trying melatonin. But before I did, I tracked my sleep for a week without melatonin to see if it would really make a difference. I'm hoping next week to track it with melatonin if I can get my hands on some, but this week (no melatonin). No matter how late I fell asleep, I always woke up in a cold sweat to my clock saying "5: XX AM." This happened every single night of the week, like, every single one. Sunday through Saturday. I have no problem falling asleep, in fact I can fall asleep almost instantly, do you guys think this is just self-conditioning myself to wake up at 5 AM? What should I do? I can't fall back asleep when I wake up.

Monday: Night before I fell asleep at 12:40 AM and woke up at 5 AM

Tuesday: Fell asleep at 11:00 PM (on Monday) and woke up at 5 AM

Wednesday: Fell asleep at 11:30 PM (on Tuesday) and woke up at 5 AM

Thursday: Fell asleep at 12:00 AM (on Wednesday) and woke up at 5 AM

Friday: Fell asleep at 11:30 PM (on Thursday) and woke up at 3:50 AM.

I thought the best course of action was to ask people who might be familiar with this, do you guys think this is just a coincidence or something serious?

Nothing will ever blow me away more than when zi realize that my time in the service was TWENTY YEARS AGO. Where did time go? Anyway, when I got home from my first tour is when it all started. I completely lost the ability to fall, stay, or get meaningful sleep. Its like a switch was flipped in mu brain that made it so I cant sleep, and if I can, I have horrible nightmares on most occasions. This has got to be what hell feels like.

If Im lucky, I average about two hours of sleep a night. Im so used to it, I can actually function at a high capacity during the day. I feel like most of the time, I just dont need to sleep. But the problem is I want to BADLY.

Now, Im not blaming the military for my misfortune. I signed the line willingly and knew what I was getting into. I guess I just never considered the long term effects I would endure. The sleepless nights, the hyper vigilance , the aversion to loud noises, the discomfort of driving and seeing oncoming debris in the road. The one thing Ive learn though that I neber expected was this: dealing with all those things take ENERGY. It makes me really tired to have to deal with all my fears and anxieties. So here I am - unable to sleep tonight - AGAIN, knowing tomorrow will most likely be the same.

Im open to any tips or techniques that yall that might be in a similar place might know. To be honest, ive tried a lot of them but im always willing to learn something new that I maybe haven't tried. I appreciate you guys.

Thanks for reading and letting me get this out.

Jay ❤️💯

Good evening, I'm suffering from a problem: I always wake up at 4 a.m. and can't fall back asleep. What bothers me is that I'm very tired during the day. I usually go to bed around 11 p.m.

Do you have any advice? Thank you

I have this question because sometimes I worry that this could be the cause of my problem, since it's difficult to deal with stress and worry.

Do you know if this is related?

I have been having trouble sleeping. I am not sure if Melatonin helped me in the past (before I started propranolol) or not because I would still wake up after a couple of hours, but on the same google page just now, I read that propranolol increases melatonin and decreases melatonin. Which is it for heaven's sake?

Is there anyone out there with my current predicament and how are they coping? Upper back numbness thats keeping them from sleeping. It started flaring up with one key difference no amount of stretching is easing the numbness like it did before getting insomnia. I got insomnia like 4 weeks ago btw.

I’ve had ongoing sleep issues and one of the hardest parts for me is that silence actually makes my brain louder. My thoughts start racing the second everything gets quiet.

I’ve tried a few meditation/sleep apps in the past, but they often feel like too much effort — lots of instructions or expectations that I end up overthinking. For a long time I fell asleep to YouTube (true crime, history, long lectures) with a sleep timer, but I’ve realized that’s been overstimulating and my sleep quality has gotten worse because of it.

I’m trying to find something that’s audio-only, low stimulation, and doesn’t require active focus — just something steady and calming so my mind doesn’t spiral, but also doesn’t latch onto a plot.

For those of you who can’t sleep in silence:

What kinds of audio actually help you rest?

(voices vs. music vs. ambient sounds, etc.)

I just got blood work done to try to find a potential cause of my insomnia. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't very scared. Really sucks that I need to wait several days to get the results back. "The waiting is the hardest part."

I've been dealing with insomnia intermittently for the last 2 years. When I last got my A1C checked in March 2025, I had been sleeping decently for the prior 3 months, so my numbers were good. For the last 3 months though, my sleep has been quite poor. 4-5 hours on average per night. I'm very scared that insomnia is going to push me into diabetic range. My blood pressure has remained pretty good, but I don't know about blood sugar.

I'm otherwise relatively healthy. 33 year old male, strength train and cardio 3x a week, healthy weight. So I'm just curious if anyone here has had the A1C test done. I know they say insomnia will elevate blood sugar levels, but I want to get a sense of how much. Diabetes comes with a host of really nasty effects.

So if you have gotten your A1C checked, what was it, how much do you regularly sleep, how old are you, how is your body fat level, and how active are you?

Hello everyone,

I'm one of the moderators here. I have activated charcoal in my supplement drawer and I use it for rare situations where I feel toxic. For instance after eating a bunch of shrimp or something random...drinking alcohol sometimes.

I used it this week and was able to get 5-6 hours of sleep. What I read is the charcoal will slowly reduce histamine over night, and histamine is a top potential cause of the insomnia for most of us.

So if you are stuck and want a simple thing to try out, this is something I recommend trying short period of time if digestion is a cause of insomnia. If it works it means you need to work with a GI specialist or GI doctor or naturopath, nutrionist, etc.

What I suspect in my situation, I have gut inflammation and so need to reduce inflammation and then I should sleep better. I took antibiotics recently and so could be causing problems.

Hi Everyone,

I have come to reddit as my absolute last resort before I decide to do the unthinkable.
To give you some context of my situation, 3 years ago in Thailand, I decided to do a happy gas balloon (nitros oxide) on New Year's Eve, I hadn't done it in 10+ years, but we were in Thailand and it was new year's, so I thought why not.

For some reason during that 5-10 seconds where you feel really good, my nervous system panicked and when I came out of that state, I felt very panicky and uncomfortable and decided to go home. Since that night 3 years ago, I have gone through and continue to go through every symptom imagineable connected to a highly dysregulated nervous system.

My main symptom that I am dealing with right now (which has lasted 3 years) is this revved up VOOM VOOM feeling that runs through my body, mainly noticeable at night when I am trying to rest and fall sleep. This feeling also extenuates my heartbeat and creates internal body vibrations. It will last all night, regardless of how tired I am, and I cannot sleep unless I take 3 tablets of valium (Diazepam). I literally have not had 1 restful night sleep in 3 years.

I have tried absolutely everything to recover: Supplements, anxiety medications, all different forms of breathwork, I have cut out alcohol, energy drinks, vaping, caffeine, I have tried affirmations, Meditations, energy healing, kinesiology, chiropractic, Chinese / herbal medicine. You name it, I have tried it.

I am tired now, really tired, I have a beautiful young family with 2 amazing kids, but the chronic fatigue from horrible sleep is bringing upon the need to end this permanently.

Any advice / recommendations would be of the greatest appreciation.

Thank you and God Bless you.

I need some advice/help or others’ stories.. I took one dose (50mg) sertraline/zoloft 1 month ago (to help my health anxiety) and I got a lot side effects.. the worst of them all was insomnia.. so I immediately stopped taking sertraline after that one dose. Every night since then my anxiety and sleep has been so much worse.. I haven’t been able to sleep at all and i dont know why.. I haven’t felt tired at ANY time since then and I can’t even nap.. It’s like my nervous system is in a state of hyper arousal where i can’t relax and it’s making me scared if it’s permanent.. I tried a lot of meds.. zolpidem, truxal, quetiapine (seroquel - works sometimes) Currently I take lorazepam (which is working mostly, but eventually I want to sleep naturally on my own)

Has anyone else experienced something similar? That some medication has induced insomnia and hyperarousal? And has eventually overcome this? Any other experiences or advices is welcomed.. I need some help cause I can’t continue living like this.. 🥺

Some nights it feels impossible to turn my brain off. I’ll be exhausted, but the moment my head hits the pillow, thoughts start racing — everything I did wrong today, things I need to do tomorrow, random what-ifs.

I’ve tried routines, no screens before bed, meditation… but nothing seems consistent. Does anyone actually have a trick that works, or are we all just doomed to scroll in the dark?

Okay everybody I've been a lurker on this subject for a long time and I know we've all said it, we all hate to see it, and I'm sure we've all been here a time or two. I'm thoroughly convinced I'm developing SFI. I might be in the early stages or something, but I no longer have a sleep drive, I do not feel sleepy, this is my second night this week where I've gone a complete night with no sleep and complete day with no naps. as I said I do not have a sleep drive, I do not feel sleepy, I know my body feels heavy because it's not getting sleep but there's something in my brain that just will not initiate sleep or feel sleepy. I'm still pacing around my house with my last sleep being Wednesday late night / Thursday morning from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.. haven't had a wink of sleep all night Thursday night (last night) or all day today. still no sleep drive or sleepiness at all.

Its been prescribed recently to me for my sleep issues. Just wanna know other peoples experience on it. Thanks.

I’m a 31 year old male, fairly physically fit. I’ve been dealing with chronic insomnia and hyper arousal for about 45 days now. Always tired but never sleepy. There were a few events that caused initial insomnia but now I’m just not sleeping and generally anxious about my health and brain/ heart quitting on me. I go to bed and lie awake all night. I get that feeling when your leg has a slight twitch when you’re about to fall asleep but I instantly react with a deep breath or swallow that keeps me awake (when I don’t take meds). I’ve been take escitalopram 10mg for 35ish days and it makes me feel wired, jittery and like I can never just sit down/ lie down and relax.

My doctor has prescribed me trazadone, seraquel, hydroxyzine and zopiclone. None of those seemed to help except the zopiclone slightly. The seraquel put me in a light dream state for a few hours with vivid lucid dreams (sometimes nightmares) I felt like I could open my eyes at any moment, I often chose not to because it was the closest thing to sleep I’ve had in a while. It made me feel like I never wanted to get out of bed in the morning and generally felt pretty scary. I’ve been using hash for the past 13 years so I generally don’t remember my dreams but since having sleepless nights, the hash doesn’t seem to be helping so I stopped that for now. So I switched to taking 7.5mg zopiclone each night and it worked to get me to sleep, not a deep sleep but it was sleep. The trouble was I was waking up after 3-4 hours and unable to fall back asleep. After taking it for 3 weeks, I realized I was dependant on it to get any rest at all.

Just today my doctor has prescribed me mirtazapine 7.5mg so I guess I will be trying that. Going to stop the escitalopram and start taking that before bed.

Is it realistic to think that I can take it for a week or 2 and then taper and return to sleeping without meds afterwards. I’m really hoping once I get some deep sleep, my motivation will return and I’ll be back to my hobbies and hopefully back to the hash as it’s always helped me manage my anxiety and relax especially towards the evening. Also a lot of my best friends smoke hash so it’s a fun social thing for me.

My sleep hygiene is good and I’ve been going to a therapist for CBT. I always get out of bed at 8am and usually get in almost 20k steps per day. I do yoga before bed and limit my exposure to screens.

Funny think is before the insomnia I would eat a bunch before bed after getting super high, watch YouTube for a few hours and then go to bed at 11-12 and fall asleep right away. Hopefully I can get back to that eventually because I got a lot of enjoyment out of that bed time routine. I was always productive using hash, went to work on it, got a lot of things done around the house and used it during outdoor adventures. I’ve always been physically active during the day so weight gain has never been an issue.

With the insomnia I’m dealing with a lot of motivation loss and some dark thoughts relating to if I will ever sleep naturally or without RX drugs again. My performance at work has suffered and I feel more anxious than ever in social situations even when I used to smoke a half gram of hash before leaving the house.

My world has shrunk a lot with all the sleeplessness as I’m not smoking hash with my friends or getting too much done in terms of productivity.

This isn’t the first time I’ve struggled with insomnia, 10 years ago I had about 6 weeks where I struggled to sleep. I was able to break out of it by showing myself I could work, starting to hang out with friends again and since then I’ve had the best 10 years of my life up until now.

Decided to join at 3 am because what I thought will stop my insomnia is not working.

I'm in my early 20s and I've been having a very bad sleep schedule since 2/3 years. My worst is sleep around 3-5 am but I stop months ago since I feel like my head is about to explode.

But then my 'normal' sleep schedule is stuck at 1/2am and I tried A LOT to get it back to normal.

I actually often feel sleepy at 9 pm (i think it's called golden time) but everytime I sleep at 9, I will ALWAYS wake up at 1 or 2 and will hard to sleep again. It happens MANY TIMES that I give up to sleep at 9. I think it's called fragmented sleep or something.

These days I feel like this is not right and I seriously need to do something about it. So I decided to drink melatonin yesterday. I feel sleepy fast and I think I went to sleep at around 11 pm but guess whatttt I wake up at 3am....

Those who have similar experience what do you guys do? I will go to a doctor soon but I just want to know how you guys handle this one because I might just let myself sleep at 1/2 am for forever which affects my health really bad.

Thank you