I've struggled with brutal insomnia (getting to sleep and staying asleep) my entire life (45 years old now). Over the years, I've gotten pretty good at forcing myself to get to work early and just made due with 4-6 hours on most nights and trying to make it up on the weekends.
Early this year I discovered medical marijuana. It's completely game changing. A few puffs from a vaporizer (with flower, not the terrible oil pens) and I've had some of the best sleep of my entire life. I don't remember a time when I've ever actually felt good waking up until now.
The other key (for me) was the book, "The Obstacle is the Way" by Ryan Holiday. This helped me dramatically reduce the nonsense and worries that would crowd my mind as I tried to fall asleep.
Obviously YMMV, but these two things together have helped far more and far longer (6 months now) than anything else I've ever tried.
I was born not to sleep. Newborns typically sleep 22-23 hours a day. I was sleeping for 1-2 hours. I almost destroyed my family. If you have children imagine your child only sleeping 1-2 hours day.
From birth until I was about 12 I lived on 1-3 hours sleep a day, but I slept every day.
When I hit puberty I started having days and days of no sleep, my record is 11 days without sleeping I was 15. From 14 until my mid 50's my routine was get 2-3 hours of sleep, then be awake for a 3-8 days, then get 2-3 hours of sleep, then be awake for 3-8 days, wash rinse repeat, over and over again.
I once was working a trade show setup in my late 40's, round the clock prep, my company had 3 shifts of people doing all the prep work, I was there for all 5 days every shift. That's when my co-workers realized that I was actually awake, most people think that I was sleeping and didn't know it, or get cat naps, lied etc. Because nobody can even consider being awake that long but the thing is that when I get sleepy I actually fall asleep, it just rarely happens and when it does happen, it doesn't last very long. Usually I'm just awake.
Yes I went in for sleep studies but I needed to be wired up at all times, and it's a real drag being wired up and then trying to sit in a room for 6 days until I get sleepy. I did it twice, once for 5 days another time it was 4 days and both times I didn't fall asleep what they learned is that the normal cycles that people go through to fall asleep didn't happen for me. When I die they can try examining my body to see if they can figure it out.
When I was in my mid fifties I found a iphone app called BrainWave is a Binaural beats program that will actually allow me to sleep on nearly a daily basis. It's been a godsend, because being awake all the time really can wear you out intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.
There's a program called SuperMemo which has a feature called sleepchart. In sleepchart, you plot sleep episodes which gives you some neat data that can help figure out things like subjective night [1].
But since SuperMemo is a spaced repetition system, sleepchart can also do some very unique analysis. The main graph it can make with repetition data + sleep data is alertness over time: how grades change the longer you've been awake. I would be very curious if you were to try it to see how your alertness/grades reported for repetitions change the longer you're awake.
What settings do you use for binaural beats? I have trouble sleeping sometimes and have tried binaural beats but they are maybe 20% effective. Seems to have worked a lot better for you, and I wonder if it's a frequency thing.
> "Early this year I discovered medical marijuana. It's completely game changing."
Not to be a wet blanket or anything but, like any other form of medication, watch out for buildup of tolerance. You may wind up having to "dry out" for several months or so if tolerance gets too high.
I have followed a similar path. My problem is that I usually wake up at 3am after only 4-5 hours of sleep, and can't get back to sleep. After 2 nights of that I'll feel tired throughout the day.
I discovered that one good puff of marijuana when I wake up too early, helps me to drift off to sleep again. After that I wake up feeling great the next day!
My Oura ring tells me that the marijuana significantly lowers my resting HR, and increases my HRV (Heart Rate Variability). From what I understand both of those effects are beneficial.
Came here to say this but expecting downvotes, surprised to see this on the top.
I used to have terrible insomnia for around 15 yrs. I had just forgotten how to fall alseep, every night i would go into the same terrible racing thoughts loop. Going to bed was a dreaded chore. I tried everything from counting sheep to ambien. Only marijuana helped me forget my bad thinking loops and taught me to fall asleep.
Now i don't smoke anymore but i don't have insomnia either. I am just careful about not getting into that frenzy thinking habit.
This is the best answer IMO. It's not for nothing that people say things like "one glass a day keep the doctor away". We have plants that we've discovered a long time ago that help us sleep, and we make all sorts of tea with it, why not use this?
If it's illegal where you live, then sure, but if it's legal then what's the big deal?
I keep temazepam and Xanax at had because knowing they're there helps immensely, and maybe use one or the other a couple times a month.
Other things that help me are diet, but also very much so exercise both cardio and heavy lifting.
Another thing I occasionally do is write down my loopy thoughts in a sort of shorthand / appreciated English that isn't immediately readable by others in the house, sit with the writing for a few minutes reading it over then testing it in to small pieces and scattering the pieces in the compost where they might do some good.
Getting the looping worries out of the mind in to the physical realm where they are tangible as physical objects to be manipulated help me greatly.
I've been using Marijuana for sleep too until a few years ago. I had to stop when I wasn't able anymore to come up with a source for it (it's illegal here).
After a terrible phase of sweat and insomnia, I started to sleep normally again and I realized: I started dreaming again and I needed less sleep now than with M. I also felt really relaxed and refreshed so I didn't need that much time to be ready to go (stopped drinking coffee because of it too).
You should try some phases without it from time to time.
Early this year I discovered medical marijuana. It's completely game changing. A few puffs from a vaporizer (with flower, not the terrible oil pens) and I've had some of the best sleep of my entire life. I don't remember a time when I've ever actually felt good waking up until now.
The other key (for me) was the book, "The Obstacle is the Way" by Ryan Holiday. This helped me dramatically reduce the nonsense and worries that would crowd my mind as I tried to fall asleep.
Obviously YMMV, but these two things together have helped far more and far longer (6 months now) than anything else I've ever tried.