Insomnia

DannyL

Wild Horses
So who's a sufferer? Me obviously, thus the thread at 6.30. I've had it for pretty much all of this lockdown and it's gone completely hatstand in the last week or two, where I've literally been up all night. It's a product of not having the work routine in the way we're used to. Upsides - have read huge chunks of books (massive biography of Clement Attlee atm). but overall, it's pretty fucking boring.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
It's 4 am here, just woke up after an hour of sleep despite only getting a total of 5 hours in the 3 nights prior. Tried resetting my self yesterday by skipping sleep all together but I guess Im learning now that doesnt work for me as this is the second time Ive gone through this cycle in a month.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
Any time I try to fall asleep before 6 am something like this happens. I can only manage 1-2 hours, even if Im head nodding exhausted. And I always tend to fall asleep 30 minutes after the night before, so by the end of the week the suns out when Im trying to fall asleep and I can't really get good sleep like that either.
 
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martin

----
Yeah, I've had it in bursts since childhood. What I like about working from home is, if it happens now, I can set my alarm clock for 9am and just log on and take it easy all day. So even if I finally get half an hour of sleep at 8, it's something - otherwise I'd be heading out to the tube, feeling like living death, hallucinating in the office, etc.
 
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linebaugh

Well-known member
And not a very fun insomnia as even when I can't fall asleep I can't read or focus on anything either, and it usually creates a 3 day bloat where the only thing I can do is remain relatively immobile and post here basically.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Yup.

My methods for combating it:

- Earplugs (I used to listen to the soothing sound of rain which worked well but earplugs are more comfortable and do the same job)
- Sleep mask (so I can't tell how light it is outside, this is more applicable in the summer)
- No visible clock in my room (this was a huge revelation when i first did it - for me insomnia is all about anxiety, calculating how much time i have left to sleep etc, so not knowing what time it is after i've gone to bed helps with that a lot)
- Turn heating off at night (monday night i went to bed early and should have slept well but the heat had been on quite high and so i couldn't sleep for a long time, that snowballed into anxiety about it being later and later and in the end i went to sleep at something like 3am - i peeked at the clock)
- Go to bed super early to give myself a bigger 'window' for sleeping (last night I went to bed at 9 cos the night before I slept very very badly)
- In case of emergency, Nytol/Sleepeaze (you don't get a good sleep from these but they do knock you out and you don't wake up in the night)
- No coffee after midday (I break this rule a lot but I've found it does make a difference)
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Came across this poem by Sylvia Plath the other day, really nails aspects of my insomnia experience:

Insomniac

The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole . . .
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.

Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments—the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue . . .
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.

Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I've developed a technique that I've never come across anywhere else for falling asleep that sometimes works - it's hard to explain but I basically deliberately think nonsensically. Literally stuff like "watch donkey eating lemon peel wall over" etc.

This is because I've noticed (as insomniacs always must) that when you're just about to fall asleep your logical mind begins to shut down. So deliberately triggering that process seems to help relax the mind and eliminate the self-consciousness that always keeps me awake.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I had a drink last night, just so I'd get off. Managed about 3 hours but then slept fitfully and have been up since 4.30. I fell asleep at 7 but my fucking body is a bastard, and does the totally annoying thing of waking up again after 3 minutes. Got pills from the doctor this AM so I'll keep you posted. Unable to write anything more witty or thoughtful as I'm on the edge of hallucinating.
 

luka

Well-known member
I'd never really had trouble sleeping till they put all these 5g towers on my roof and ever since then it's been really bad. No one believes me though
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I'd never really had trouble sleeping till they put all these 5g towers on my roof and ever since then it's been really bad. No one believes me though
Dont' see why weird sources of radiation couldn't disturb sleep. Worrying.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Without wanting to be Mr Buzzkill, both weed and booze are bad for sleep, even if they help you fall asleep. Reduces REM which is essential for the health of your brain.

Saying that, I'm sure a glass of wine or whatever isn't all that harmful and if it helps you get to sleep that's better than not sleeping at all.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
It's interesting that at this time of year we're expected to work until 5-5.30 and most of us are still going to bed long after that, when presumably in the natural world we'd all be going to sleep at about 4.30.

This occurred to me watching one of those David Attenborough shows the other night and watching all these animals respond quite rationally to winter by shutting down.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
If Im drunk or high, even a little, I cant fall asleep until sober. very envious of people who can use either to conk themselves out
 

catalog

Well-known member
I'm OK just at the moment, but have had bouts of insomnia since I was at school. There was a point in lockdown when it was really bad, where I was waking up at 3 or 4am and then couldn't get back to sleep. I don't mind if I wake up at 5 or 6am, cos I can do some reading and i like having that time to myself.

was talking to a friend about it the other day who has it worse (he uses ear plugs and an eye mask) and he recommended an hour outside every day, which seems to be good advice, although hard at the moment.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Weed doesn't help me sleep, either, it makes my mind go into overdrive. Which is quite fun/useful when I'm watching movies, playing video games, reading, talking shit, etc. But terrible for lying in the dark trying not to think.
 
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