.

[RGC]

.

[MR_Soren]

Yeah, I actually thought this was about Icycalm. Anyway...

I can't sleep worth shit lately. At least not when I want to.

Ideally, I want to wake at 7am, which means I should get in bed by 11-Midnight if I want enough sleep. Unfortunately, whether I go to bed at 11pm or 2am, I will wake up at 5am almost without fail. And at 5am, I cannot fall fall asleep until perhaps 6:30 or 7:00. So I am often just falling back asleep when my alarm clock rings, but then I'm so tired from missing two hours of sleep that I just stay in bed until 8:30 and arrive at work later than I intended. (I have a flexible schedule) Then I'm tired all day, which is makes sitting at a computer for 8-9 hours a rather miserable experience.

[RGC]

.

[charlie chong]

where do i start?
first problem i have(on and off over the years) is sleep paralysis.i used to think i was being haunted before my friend mentioned a documentary that was going to be on that sounded like the sort of stuff that was happening to me.that explained a lot and made me a lot less scared .after years years of training i can feel the buzz in my brain when it's about to happen and can snap myself out pretty quick.then i just have to make myself more tired for a while and try and go to sleep again.if you try going back to sleep straightaway it will just happen again.
it has taken so many different forms over the years i'm not even going to go into it . i see /sense shadowpeople,i get crushed and all sorts of different entities show up on the bright side the same thing that causes this makes me lucid dream and on rare occasions have out of body experiences

then i have a second problem which surfaces every 2 years or so usually in the spring/summer when i go positive manic which makes me very happy and outgoing and also unable to sleep for more than 2hrs a night.it usually lasts 3 months and by the end i lose the plot and go deranged thinking i'm jesus.i always do music when i'm like this and i think it excites me too much or something.
it's pretty fun actually but very tiring especially when your trying to keep your job and not get put in a institution.last time i ended up in hospital after collapsing at work. even medicinal smoke wont knock me out when i'm like this.

BEST THING TO GET TO SLEEP IS A BIG WANK OR A SHAG.A BOOK IS GOOD AS WELL

MY BODDY CLOK IS TOO GOOD AS WELL. CAN'T LIE IN ON THE WEEKEND

[RGC]

.

[Acid King]

I just have problems sleeping mostly when I lack a schedule. I was doing well for awhile but now that I've finished school my schedule is gone, aside from my part time job, and I'm having problems again. I've been working night shift for 4 years now and only recently settled into a good sleep schedule on my work days. I used to take sleeping pills on those days but my old lady told me I breathe strangely when I take them so I cut them out and now I don't have an issue.

[E. Randy Dupre]

where do i start?
first problem i have(on and off over the years) is sleep paralysis.i used to think i was being haunted before my friend mentioned a documentary that was going to be on that sounded like the sort of stuff that was happening to me.that explained a lot and made me a lot less scared .after years years of training i can feel the buzz in my brain when it's about to happen and can snap myself out pretty quick.then i just have to make myself more tired for a while and try and go to sleep again.if you try going back to sleep straightaway it will just happen again.

it has taken so many different forms over the years i'm not even going to go into it . i see /sense shadowpeople,i get crushed and all sorts of different entities show up

Weirdest thing about sleep paralysis is how people who suffer from it generally find their brains creating the same kind of stories around it, before they know what it is - I've known a couple of people irl who've suffered from it and got the whole "somebody sitting on top of my chest" thing going through their heads every time, until it was explained to them.

I've had it, but only in limbs, which is an odd experience in itself. Had a dream that my arm had fallen off once, woke to find myself unable to move or sense it. Had a similar thing with the sight in one eye, too, but that must be something different, given that it doesn't seem to be anything to do with the automatic self-preservation stuff that causes sleep paralysis.

[cools]

I regularly am unable to sleep for 3-4 day stretches. It's been okay for the past 6 months or so though. Never gone beyond 5 days though. I don't stay physically active during "sleep" time when it happens, preferring instead to let my thoughts wander around my head and at least let my body rest.

At around the 3rd night normally with an hour or two to go before I'm supposed to be up I'll concsiously move into a dream state. Not asleep, completely aware of where I am but also in fantasyland - my mind's in two places at once. This is quite an enjoyable experience in a way, and recharges my batteries a little though the world still seems quite a fascinating place during the daytime.

I can't sleep at all in unfamiliar locations, or anywhere where there's any form of ambient noise, or light - I can't sleep during daytime at all (tell a lie, I've slept during daytime twice in my life, both times from sheer physical exhaustion). Travelling ruins me, even though I love it takes me so long to adjust to where I'm staying it's quite unpleasant for the first week.

I'm far more creative when sleep deprived however, and rather than my senses being dulled they are all heightened. It's a drug-free-drugged-experience, once the fatigue kicks in and the adrenaline is burnt out.

Hallucinations are interesting too. I've never had anything blatant but I'm always catching things out of the corner of my eye.

It was far, far more regular when I was in my late teens and early twenties. Every other night I'd be unable to sleep at all. I managed to overcome this by (a) cutting out caffeine altogether (b) deep breathing exercises (c) binaural beats entrainment.

The funny thing is, my body clock is accurate to the second - wakes me moments before my alarm starts and will quite happily let me lie in on weekends. On the other hand generally if I have to break routine and be up earlier than normal I won't get any sleep whatsoever.

I've learnt to accept it. I have more consciousness stamina than anyone else I know and the side effects are generally enjoyable. The annoying part is while I've learnt how to stop it's not an exact science - control is limited so if I genuinely need sleep it's never guaranteed.

[Stormwatch]

Obligatory xkcd.

[Ex-Cyber]

The main problem I have is that I'll occasionally go to sleep expecting a full night's sleep and only actually be able to sleep for 3-4 hours, which is not enough to prepare me for a productive day, and tends to fuck over my sleep schedule. Since the drugs are pretty much aimed at people who can't fall asleep in the first place, I don't know what my options are aside from "sleep hygiene", which is not at all guaranteed to work and is almost impossible to stick to without a regular daily schedule (which I'll have once I start work, but couldn't dream of having as a college student with one class that met Wednesday nights, another that met Tuesday/Thursday afternoons, another that met Friday mornings, etc.).

[Tylerxuppercut]

Sleep paralysis sucks so much, I dont want to even get into it..Its plauged me my whole life as well.

[Ex-Cyber]

Sleep paralysis sucks so much, I dont want to even get into it..Its plauged me my whole life as well.

I've only really experienced it twice (maybe 3 or 4 more if you count experiencing paralysis within a dream, which must be a related phenomenon), and I can't imagine what it would be like to have it happen regularly. It's pretty damn scary.

[Tylerxuppercut]

yeah you hear and see some weird shit lol then not being able to move on top of all that is just the icing on the cake. Go REM

[RGC]

.

[rancor]

Damn.. I've never heard of it, but that sleep paralysis sounds absolutely terrifying.. As long as I'm on a regular schedule I can usually fall asleep in less than 5 minutes, and like cools, my body wakes me up literally seconds before the alarm sounds. 6:00am on weekdays and 9:00am on weekends - without fail. I'm glad I don't have any sleep issues as it's absolutely essential I get a good 7 hours in each night. I once went a little more than 30 hours once without sleep and I almost quite literally went mad. I can go days without eating and not even notice, but sleep is absolutely essential for me.

[cools]

Trouble is, I've no way of knowing whether there was a positive chemical effect from the herbal remedy, a placebo effect from taking them, or whether sleep came about simply due to sheer and utter exhaustion (I was emotionally exhausted yesterday too, having attended the funeral of a good friend who died in his thirties).

A combination. The herbal stuff does work but I find I have to take about 2.5 times as much as the packet says. You'll be able to feel the onset of them if they're functioning.

You definitely learn to live with insomnia (there's no other choice), but people's lack of sympathy can be quite frustrating. The doctor will only recommend "take more drugs", and friends/family without the problem will regurgitate platitudes like "you wait til you have kids, THEN you'll know what no sleep is about".

I've never seen a doctor about it. Most people I find are frankly amazed to find out I've been awake for 60 hours. I don't meant to sound rude but it sounds like you've accepted it as part of your life, so no need to complain and worry about the lack of sympathy

If we can get by without, then why do we need sleep at all? Why do we feel so lousy without it?

Google

[RGC]

.

[cools]

Have you done any reading into circadian rhythm sleep disorders?

[ZacharyB]

If we can get by without, then why do we need sleep at all? Why do we feel so lousy without it?

The body has a physiological need for REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, just as it needs food and water. REM sleep is a by-product of the memory encoding process in the brain, which creates dreams. It is also representative of other processes, like subconscious "problem solving."

For example, among these is the "fear extinction" process, which manifests as bad dreams. In these, the brain will attempt to solve the "problem" of a fear, to see if it is still relevant to your current self. If the process succeeds, the bad dream is survived and the fear becomes less important, maybe even irrelevant. When the process fails, this is the technical definition of "nightmare" and the fear remains.

I'm using a lot of quote marks because all of this occurs on an abstract level that doesn't have anything to do with your identity, or real things. This is all involving the internal thought mechanisms of the brain, organizing sense data into concepts that become relevant to it. Think of sleep as the "clean up" phase of the data recorded by your senses during everyday life. When you don't sleep, there's no clean-up and memories, sensations, and problems all pile up and start to lose relevance.


If you've been losing a lot of sleep, it's possible that your brain has "decided" that you need to be more aware, because something "dangerous" has become relevant to you. When I say "danger" I just mean something that your brain is realizing has the ability to put you in a bad position. So it's vigilant. Do you have any debts or outstanding obligations?

[charlie chong]

you need that r.e.m sleep. they say a lot of people who suffer sleep paralysis will never feel fully rested because r.e.m sleep gets disturbed a lot. they also say it can cause depression/general lethargy which i have definitely suffered from.

can deffo relate to cools methods. breathing excersises are really good for drifting off to sleep.it may take a while but eventually you will drift off without even realizing. i also cold turkeyd caffeine last september which helps a lot as i generally feel a lot more tired in the evening than before.
i think my ideal sleep pattern would be similar to r.g.c. i just seem to prefer to sleep in two shifts at different times of the day rather than the whole lot at once. i often get into this pattern when i have over 3 days off work.

i have played around with brainwave frequencies as well but mainly at the other end of the spectrum (beta waves) to help prolong my manicness to make more music.
i did try and cook up a few songs with the sleepy frequency but i'm not sure if the intensity was strong enough on the delta waves..
alpha waves are weird i once put a lot of alpha in a song mistaking it for the sleep frequency and i had weird arse cosmic revelations/visions that were pretty scary feeling

[charlie chong]

here's the sleep song i made
http://www.divshare.com/download/12254330-db8 it might help it might not.. it's very repetitive but i think that helps you get drowsy

[cools]

http://www.bwgen.com/presets/desc577.htm does all sorts of madness to me.

Paralysis, loss of feeling from my entire body, sensation of movement - slow falling, amongst other things. Completely lucid dreams too.

[charlie chong]

dang that sounds like an awesome preset!! i just use the inbuilt generator in cool edit and inject the brainwave frequencies into ghost layers of song parts/main mix.

i have to document it all in a book as i'm just dialling in the settings pretty randomly. i know what each type of waves general effects are but it deffo gets deeper than that.i think i'm addicted to the warbly sound of brainwaves !

[neist]

I used to have pretty bad insomnia, and at a pretty young age, too (under age 10). Would lay in bed half the night staring at the ceiling. Pretty boring. Not like my parents would let me get up, even if I couldn't sleep.

Somehow I managed to teach myself to just.. knock out. I can put myself to sleep in a minute or two now, maybe less. You might try adopting a polyphasic sleep cycle. The basic concepts helped me a bit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep

In a nutshell, you only sleep in 20 minute increments. If you keep waking yourself up, it forces you to learn to go straight into REM sleep because if you don't, you don't get any sleep at all. If you can't go to sleep, just hold out until you can, then wake up 20 minutes later. Repeat every 2 hours. Just do it when you have some time off of life, or you won't be functioning all that well. It can take a while to get it clicking (weeks, even).

Yeah, and do it at your own health risk. Not sure what the health ramifications are, but some people do it for years. They aren't dead yet, so I can't imagine it's completely harmful.

[RGC]

.

[brentsg]

Probably a year or so I went to one of the sleep clinics and got checked out, hooked up with all the probes.. videotaped, etc. It was really bizarre.

Ended up that I do suffer from sleep disorder, but not statistically bad enough to warrant the devices and things that they use. It's been a bit, so I forget the severity now. But they did record many incidents where I stopped breathing until I woke up enough to restart. It seemed crazy to me that I was doing this a lot, yet still not enough for them to consider it a serious issue. They also noted some weird things, periods of time where I would shake my legs and stuff. Weird..

They wanted me to come back for some counsel and I never did make it. They'd given me enough information over the phone that I could tell I was just going to pay for another visit, but not get any real assistance. They wanted to coach me, basically.. don't sleep on your back, etc.

Also..

A few months ago I traveled to another country for a software upgrade that was fairly complicated. The work had to be performed at night, but also hadn't been done before so it didn't quite go according to plan.

Went:
-Full travel day
-6 hours sleep
-36 hours work
-10 hours sleep
-36 hours work

There was a phase 2, but it wasn't a sleep issue.

It was fairly crazy, and I had that detached feeling for much of the 2 work sessions. This was fairly intricate work on a custom platform made of Unix servers & code.. with Oracle database components.. so it wasn't something I could sleep walk through. I did some checking of my work afterward, looking back and despite the sleep deprivation, no mistakes were really made.

[null1024]

BEST THING TO GET TO SLEEP IS A BIG WANK OR A SHAG.A BOOK IS GOOD AS WELL

Sadly enough, this is the only thing that works most of the time [for me at least]. Being away with family sucks a lot for this reason.
Reading a book/browsing the net just keeps me up. Especially bad when you end up going to sleep at 1-3am and need to wake up at 5.

Falling asleep is usually the hardest bit for me, once I'm out, I'm out cold.