Finally, I found a cure for my insomnia

[alan1]

Insomnia has been an issue my whole life. A University sleep clinic just had a variety of medications to offer and the story was always the same: A new medication that worked great for a week or two then I needed a higher dose and then it did not work at all but i could not fall asleep without it. The sleep that I did get with medication never seemed very restful and lasted only for the duration of the pill, usually 4 to 6 hours and then I was UP. That would be followed a a very painful week or two of withdrawal from the medication during which I spent loooong sleepless nights and looong exhausted feeling days. Things aren’t perfect now, but I do sleep better and when I don’t I don’t sweat it.

What changed things was two books. The first was Desperately Seeking Snoozing by John Wiedman. It is an easy read written by a layman. The other, Say Good Night to Insomnia by Gregg Jacobs has more scientific explanations but offered pretty much the same advice. The following are some concepts that helped:

- The idea that you need 8 hours of daily sleep is not true for everyone.


- We have biorhythms that determine our awake–sleep cycles and in insomniacs they are pretty screwed up.


- Knowing that it may take an hour or two to fall asleep, we go to bed way to early and then just lay there “trying” to sleep.


- We also lay in bed twisting and turning trying to fall back to sleep if we get up in the middle of the night. That is a pretty stressful exercise.

- We need to reset our biological clocks so we do not go to bed until our body is ready to go to sleep and get out of bed when it is not. >

Both books go through the typical means of sleep hygiene and discuss diet, exercise and presleep activities. But, the essence of both books is on how to reset your internal clock. It is not a comfortable process because you will spend the first few days being really, really tired BUT IT WORKS. I wont go into great detail here since the books are very inexpensive and offer more detail than I can give here. The key to the success of the method is that you follow the advice exactly. I guarantee that if you make to the 3^rd or 4^th day you will fall asleep in just minutes. But only if you don’t cheat (take a nap or go to bed earlier than planned). It may take a few weeks to totally reset your clock but then the anxiety associated with sleep is gone. Really gone.

My wife and I both did this and it worked for both of us. Over time, we slid away from following the books guidelines and then the insomnia started to return. But we don't let it get back to how bad it was and so getting back in rythm is never as hard either. There are still some sleepless nights but I know that I can get through the day and get back to a good night's sleep so I don't have anxiety about it. Also, those nights are only intermittent, not the dreaded daily battle with sleep it once was.



Desperately Seeking Snoozin is available at the time of this writing, used at Amazon.com for $0.01 + shipping.


Say Good Night to Insomnia is also available used on Amazon for around $2.60 + shipping.

[Benji8807]

i have found that seqouel is a sleep aid and works great for me

[alan1]

I assume you meant Seroquel. This is a pretty powerful and expensive drug used mostly as an antipsychotic medication including schizophrenia and bipolar depression. It does frequently cause drowsiness as a side effect but using it just for insomnia would be an off-label use. Because it is also associated with many other adverse effects possibly including death (that is controversial) its use for patients with insomnia but without associated mental disorders would be highly frowned upon by the medical community.