Out of Pod Experience

Everyday I wake up thinking "I'll get to bed earlier tonight", every night I go to bed thinking "I'll get to bed earlier tomorrow night".

Well, I seldom have troubles sleeping, and try to have 6h of sleep on week days to be a tad fresh for work, but on holidays the 36h/12h cycle does work.

Regarding insomnia specifically, mama used to say "magnesium is the answer"... but I never bothered with pills and such.

I have tried every single pill there's out there, prescription and over the counter. Most just don't do jack. A few make me feel weird and instead of making me sleep, make me stay awake with a "something is wrong" feeling. Some make me legs real twitchy. But the worst one for me was concerta... that one gave me apnea and almost sent me to the other side.

Now I just accept the fact that my sleep cycle is weird and try to deal with it the best I can.

I'm more irregular. Sometimes I'll sleep fine for one or two nights, then stay awake or sleep very little the following night. Other times, I'll sleep only a few hours a day for several consecutive days. Those are the worst - I can function with sleep debt, but I'm uncreative and very slow on my feet. After more than a couple of days of that junk, it's full zombie mode - I'll forget everything you told me, fall silent mid-conversation, and basically do random things that somehow seem to make sense to me at the time.

I probably should drink less coffee.

You should try 24 hours of daylight in Iceland heh

Isn't the earth's rotation a little bit slower every year? Maybe I could get on a cryogenic pod until the planet's rotation matches my sleep cycle.

very often insomnia problems are related to the intestine. Sorry, but I'm not joking. Of course the first cause can be traumatic or related to some chronic habitude where chronic means "out of any rational control" and habitude means that you feel it like "your normality".
This is true for anyone who's not living in iceland I guess, and here I'm joking a bit, even if circadian rythms can be quite messed up if you don't see darkness (or light alternatively) for a prolonged time. You should ask to some of the CIA guys around here, that's something they know very well (here I don't know if I'm really joking or not)

So long as you are not taking anything which would keep you awake, like Coffee, I'd say the problem is in your mind.

When I've had insomnia, it's because of unresolved thought processes and my mind is not able to 'slip'. I normally rate it on a scale of 0-10.

0 being fully awake and 10 being asleep, and what happens is I'd get into bed and start to feel myself move towards 10, but get to about 8 or 9 and realise that I am moving towards 10 and snap out of it, and go back to 0.

I cut out Coffee for 24 hours and went from 0-10 in about 5 minutes.

If it's in your mind and you are resonably healthy, make sure to talk though everything that has occured during the day to someone, and this'll let your mind slip more easily - but if you need something to help you sleep, the oldest is the best:

Warm Milk, with a spinkle of cinnamon.

This'll knock you out faster than a blow to the head.

AK