Job Discussion Forums

[dmb]

Any advice? It is 3 am and I am posting here and having a coffee. Probably not the best remedy. What do you do when you cant sleep?

[babaoreiley]

dmb,

Just cruisin' through and saw your post. Something that always works for me, and I think it just might work for you, is running through memorized lists in your head. I memorize the starting units on offense and defense for all 32 NFL (National Football League-American football) teams. This may seem weird, but going through any kind of memorized list while lying in bed can work. It'll put you to sleep as long as you don't get stuck on a word or name you can't remember. So memorize the front-line players in whatever soccer league you follow. Perhaps memorize all the winners of the Nobel Prize in literature, or all the gold medal winners in the 500 individual medley; you know, whatever is convenient and of interest. Any kind of lengthy list will do. Just take a list of data that you have memorized and lay down, turn the lights off, and focus (I mean really key-in) only on regurgitating the info from that list in your head. After a bit, you'll drift off. I have terrible insomnia sometimes, but it always works for me, if I really concentrate on it.

Hope this helps!

[molly farquharson]

hot milk helps. just don't fall asleep while you are heating it...

[justme]

Counting forwards and backwards between one and 100 in all the languages I know (or, at least that I remeber the numbers). German gets me most times, though sometimes Italian has a strangely alluring and rhythmic quality...

Running through all the lyrics of an album I know well, like The Wall, or the Fiddler on the Roof soundtrack, or Mozart's Requiem.

The other trick I worked out is harder to explain, but it's like stopping controlling your thoughts and watching them like a movie. It's like thinking in words but not trying to control what the words are saying. It took some practice but it works pretty well.

I'm a terrible insomniac. I attribute my substance abuse to this, the fear of laying awake and fretting until the first ezan yet once again...

[whynotme]

[justme]

That also doesn't hurt!

[Baba Alex]

[dmb]

I tried going through a team list but all I come up with is 'we all dream of a team of Carraghers, a team of Carraghers,etc' and I am even more awake

[alterego]

chamomile tea helps as well.

[31]

hot milk, camomile tea-what happened to 6 cans of Efes, a bottle of Guzel Marmara, cheap Tekel votka and cherry juice?

[justme]

Once the insomnia kicks in, all drinking does is raise your heart rate and make you have to pee a lot, which doesn't help the sleeping effort. Hash is a wild card-- sometimes it knocks you right out, sometimes it makes it worse.

Counter-intuitively, sometimes a small cup of coffee while reading in bed helps. I don't know why. Reading something incredibly dense and boring is sometimes good too. The King James Bible (Old Testament if you're like me and the New Testament makes you mad) is the best boring reading I know, with the Penguin Classics Koran as a close second.

In high school, I used to get so desperate for sleep that I would do that pass-out thing to myself-- hyperventilating then squeezing my neck-- but after a few nights I got immune to that one. Prescription and over-the- counter sleeping pills don't really work either, at least not if you use them regularly, and the next day's grogginess is hardly worth the dreamless sleep. I don't know if you can find valerian root here, but that works ok as a tea if you don't use it too much, and it doesn't leave you feeling bad in the morning. It doesn't taste too good though...

After all these years of insomnia, I see all I can really tell about here are the things that don't work.

[31]

Drinking always helped Zoe sleep. Many a time someone had to be sent to her flat to wake her up. She was often found fully clothed in bed with a bottle of vodka.

[dmb]

That's not sleep. That's unconsciousness.

[justme]

Drinking makes me sleep, but usually when I don't want to sleep. I call it 'passing out' but with more drool.

If EastEnders came up with an effective insomnia remedy, I'd try it. If the last couple of months of EastEnders were later at night, I'm sure it would have put me to sleep right quick. It's been about as dry as the King James, but with more screaming women.

[scot47]

I used to treat my insomnia with C2HO5H in its various forms. A few years of that turned me into an alkie.

I quit the booze. Now I just live with insomnia.