r/DSPD

During they day, especially after my morning shifts I could fall asleep while standing. Zero concentration, zero power to anything else except eating.

But as soon I lay down I'm AWAKE.. anyone else experiencing this? 🫠

I mainly have DSPD My normal sleeping habits are 6-8am to 3-5pm. And I usually sleep somewhat okay getting 8-10 hours consistently. Last night I tried taking melatonin around 4 am only 1mg. To try to sleep a little earlier. I ended up not being able to sleep at all and went all the way to 4pm wide awake, I tried to sleep again at 4 and managed 2-3 hours that didn’t even feel like sleep, I felt wide awake and concious the entire time I was laying there. I was exhausted and figured hopefully I would atleast get some sleep tonight, I even took 1mg of klonopin at around 11:30pm I slept 2 hours and woke up around 2am. I know sleeping outside of my biological window is nearly impossible. But with so much sleep pressure what can I even do:/ And i have not been able to sleep again since. It’s currently 5am and im not tired at all, it feels like im so out of sync, my body doesn’t know what to do anymore, ive struggled with sleep my entire life but usually only with the schedule. Not being able to sleep at all is a whole other demon. I’m desperate. What do I do in this situation? The sun is about to come up and I won’t be tired. Do I try to sleep again? It feels like my sleep is continuing to drift further and further, as lately I’ve been falling asleep at around 11am-2pm but for some reason last night I didn’t sleep at all basically. And tonight only 2 hours (outside of my biological window) any input is greatly appreciated 🙏🏽 I really need support right now

I see a lot of content about 'fixing' one's sleep schedule to conform with the typical morning-oriented day; most 'advice' I've received from clinicians follows a similar track and assumes that I'm miserable and want to change by subjecting myself to bright light torture or military-grade sleep hygiene regimes.

It's taken me a long time to get to this point--mostly due to the amount of flak being a night owl will catch you from daywalkers--but I no longer see this 'condition' as a problem.

Shift work exists, and frankly I think it's better to take afternoon, evening, or overnight work than it is to try to force oneself into a routine that feels unnatural and inevitably leads to sleep deprivation.

I made the decision a while ago that I'm going to orient my life around DSPD instead of trying to fight this lifelong biological inclination. I actually prefer nighttime and feel totally content being awake when most people are asleep; may or may not be a vampire, but I digress.

I’ve been having a really hard time waking up lately. Even when I set multiple alarms, I often don’t wake up properly or I fall back asleep without even realizing it. It feels like I don’t have enough awareness to get myself out of bed when I’m still sleepy. I’ve been trying to fix my sleep schedule, but I’m still struggling to wake up, and it’s making me really frustrated because it’s affecting my studying.

Even when I go to bed at 10 p.m. and try to wake up at 4 a.m., I still can’t wake up. I usually end up waking up around 8 or 9 a.m. Even when I get 10 hours of sleep, my eyes still feel tired and I still feel sleepy. I’ve been struggling with this for a while, and I don’t understand why I’m having such a hard time waking up.

I am one of the types who has struggled with being overweight my whole life. I'm a night owl by nature, but have to conform to society's schedule.

That was never more true when I was a Uni student and classes started at 9 am every day. After graduation, I was hired as a temporary contractor at a factory that had 3 shifts. I volunteered to take 3rd shift, 11pm-7am.

I got to spend 6 months living life on night shift and it was GLORIOUS. The strangest part is how I lost my appetite and the excess weight just fell off of me. I dropped 50 pounds (23 kg) within those 6 months!

It was not unlike the action of a GLP drug (which I am now on) but without the side effects, and 20 years before they came onto the market for weight loss.

Has anyone else been able to live on nightshift and had their appetite change?

And, more curiously, makes me wonder if forcing a night owl to live as a day walker could mess with metabolism and be a cause of overweight? Is there existing research on this?

I will never understand what is wrong with my brain. During high school, I was never able to get good grades because of how sleep-deprived I was; my natural schedule was 1:00 AM to 09:00 AM.

I was able to sleep normally for a few months after I graduated. Then, I went to college for just a few months; because it was far away, I didn't sleep much, and I quit at the end because I wasn't pursuing the degree I really wanted. Back then, I tried everything to sleep properly earlier:

1. Chronobiotic melatonin (1mg 5 hours before bedtime) to push my sleep time earlier.

2. Avoiding screens before sleep.

3. Using a sleep mask and keeping my room dark and quiet to avoid any disruptions.

4. Waking up at the same time every day and going outside to get some sunlight.

Nothing worked. I was just severely cognitively impaired for a month while trying to force myself to sleep on an unnaturally early schedule. I even tried zolpidem out of desperation, and I'm currently taking mirtazapine, which has barely helped.

Now I have a job and am not in college at the moment. In the beginning, my shift was 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM, so I was sleep-deprived because, once again, by forcing myself to sleep earlier, I ended up getting only 6.5 to 7 fragmented hours of sleep.

Now my schedule is 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM, and I could finally sleep 8 uninterrupted hours—until last Saturday. I don't know what happened, but I started dealing with light sleep (I felt like I was awake most of the night). Then, on Sunday, I started waking up during the night, and now I'm back to where I was.

I cannot sleep enough—not even on my natural sleep schedule. I went from DSPD to sleep maintenance insomnia. I am so tired of dealing with this. I really don't know why I can't just sleep like a normal person.

Should I just accept that I will never sleep normally and start drinking energy drinks and stimulant drugs every day to maintain a marginally functioning mind? My mind is so tired; I cannot think well, I'm lost in thought, I cannot concentrate, I cannot stop yawning, and I don't have the energy to do anything. Everybody must think I'm stupid.

a month ago I did an all nighter and went to work and couldn’t hack it even when doing more at work to get through. I had to go home after 3 hours. So now I feel like doing more to get through actually makes it worse. the anxiety of doing it in the work place. and I hit a wall after a few hours.

im about to go to work in 4 hours and I don’t think it’s looking I’ll sleep. I’ll try to rest for an hour even if I can’t sleep. I’m tempted to have a bit tomorrow to get through but it didn’t work for me last time

Has anyone tried it? Especially if you have Pre-Diabetes/Diabetes?

I don’t mean a complete cure, but have managed to consistently wake up and go to sleep earlier than there usual Times long term? I am currently on a 6-8am to 3-5pm schedule, which is better than I was a week ago of 10am - 12 6pm-8pm. I’m hoping to eventually get to 3-4 am to 11-12 schedule. But the more I think about it and realize how many years I’ve lived with this awful condition and how long my sleeping pattern has been reinforced I don’t know if it’s even possible:/ I’ve never been able to consistently wake up before 1pm for more than maybe 2-3 weeks in the last 5-7 years. Even with light therapy, exercise, alarms, sleep medicine, I’m losing hope and depressed, I’m not sure where to look anymore. I don’t know how to live a life where my mornings are 3-5pm. Just looking for hope with this post, maybe I’m missing something that I haven’t tried yet. I have an appointment with a sleep specialist but untill then I’m on my own with this. Any input is appreciated 🙏🏽

Trying to get a diagnosis so I have something on my health records. I've been referred to Royal Brompton Centre for Sleep but the waitlist is a year long and I don't even know if they're any good with DSPD. Can anybody recommend me a good clinic to go to? Can be NHS or private.

Back in 2022 I went through probably the worst year of my entire life. For some reason I developed the fear of sleeping. Best way I can describe it is the fear of me losing consciousness or losing control of my body. I tend to fight that feeling and it keeps me awake all the time!! Does anybody else go through this and what can I do to help this ?

I get the question “what if you move to a different time zone?” often, and I’m never annoyed because it’s an understandable question. But with DPSD, simply changing time zones is temporary and we will eventually revert back to our regular hours.

How long does that usually take, though? A week? Two? Less? I’ve never tried it long enough to find out. And I’m curious if avoiding sunlight/blue light most of the time after flying west would help keep “normal” hours (which would mean basically staying indoors all the time, but this is just a thought experiment mostly).

Anyone experience this when moving across time zones?

My friend has been trying to convince me that I am ruining my health by being a night owl - despite my subjective experience feeling much better sleeping at my natural rhythm, he claims that the research shows I am more likely to get cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, etc.

I know there is some research showing that, but I (and many of you probably) believe that has to do with social factors, issues around employment, and other confounding variables. Clearly, the idea of a personal chronotype makes sense to me, but I am looking for some scholarly research to support it. Are there papers/studies showing that chronotype is an accepted thing in the medical world, and not everyone is wired to be a daywalker, and maybe even that there is a positive outcome associated with sleeping based on your own chronotype.

I just want him to stop trying to scare me about my future health (it's making me a hypochondriac lol), and let me try to live in a way that makes sense for me. I'm sure many of you have experienced this from loved ones. It sucks :/

So about a week ago I got diagnosed with DSPD. When I was meeting with my sleep doctor, I was going over my history of sleep issues by telling him that I’m on the autism spectrum and I’ve had sleep issues since I was a kid. So once I brought up the possibility of having DSPD, he told me that ( I was in like 5 hours of sleep so MAYBE I’m not remembering everything correctly) I should try to not think of it as a disorder because then most people just end up accepting it. But the thing is, isn’t it medically considered a disorder because it makes it so that your biological clock is really inflexible? I don’t want to act like I know more than someone who studies sleep for a living, but am I right to be little concerned that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about? My official diagnosis is Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, but IMO calling it a syndrome just makes it sound like people with this disorder “choose” to stay up late. DSPD isn’t like Night Shift Syndrome where you can just go get a day job and then it’s fixed.

For the last few days I’ve come to realize even more that a lot of people that have never had a mental disorder or other invisible disability live in this fantasy world where they think that as long as you have enough willpower, you can do anything. I’m not saying that if you get a diagnosis, it means that you should just give up, but I think people need to learn how to be realistic sometimes.

Do you actually intend to sleep early, but then end up doomscrolling, watching YouTube/Netflix, gaming, or just doing random stuff until way later?

I have this problem all the time. Even when I wake up relatively early, I’ll tell myself “tonight I’m going to sleep early,” and somehow I still end up staying awake way past the time I wanted to.

Have you tried anything to fix this and did it actually work?

I always regret it the next morning and often face no consequences.

Curious if other people struggle with the same thing and what you’ve actually tried. Thanks.

Honestly I'm posting here in hopes that someone will tell me this isn't possible as a combination yet that wouldn't change my sleep issues anyway sigh. 3 sleep disorders is a poorly made joke.

At around ~11 I developed DSPD. Went to bed 12-3am originally woke up for school at 8-8.30am. Sometimes I would scallop and go 3-6am but would always come back to ~3am. Discovered DSPD at 13, really related to it and accepted this as something I probably had but moved with life and eventually forgot about this.

Age 16 I developed severe insomnia. Tested a few meds but what works is a combination of 2 high dose antipsychotics and mirtazapine. Been stable on these doses for close to 2 years. Originally they likely sedated me but I'm unsure due to poor memory (not sleep related). If I don't take my pills I am wide awake until 8am and my sleep is broken.

I got diagnosed with moderate sleep apnea at 18, likely had symptoms from at least 16, maybe earlier. Been on CPAP since and AHI of 6 with CPAP last test, basically no symptoms anymore.

Now: age 21. I take my insomnia pills every night but I've found that my body needs to be tired for me to actually fall asleep. This ranges 12-4am , usually around 2-3am. I wake up roughly 12 hours later (this likely a mix of a medication side effects and my body needing more sleep after years of poor sleep). It doesn't matter what time I take my sleep pills, the onset of tiredness is the same (it varies widely day to day, I can post my log if anyone's interested).

I could see a doctor about this but that likely won't be until sometimes in 2027 because I need my money for other stuff and this isn't really a priority since I don't care for treatment really, my life works around my sleep. Obviously no one here can diagnose me but is this even possible? To have all three at once?

I just wanna start up by saying I don’t really know how to use Reddit. I don’t know where I could post this so I could get better answers so I’m posting this here. I’m 19 F and ever since I was a little kid I’ve been always struggled with sleeping. I could never sleep even if I did sleep. I would always wake up late the next day. This has always happened to me and this really affected my school.Now that I’m older I’ve realized that my sleep problems have been deeply affecting my academic life and my personal life. Every time I wake up late now I feel disgusted with myself. It’s currently 2:40 AM and Im wide awake. My doctors pointless and useless. I have been recently diagnosed with ADHD and I have been taking Vyvanse for a couple months now and I’ve heard that medication also affects your sleep, but I’ve been having the same issue for years now. Does anybody have any advise anything to fix my sleep schedule? I wanna be the person where they sleep at 10 PM wake up at like 6 AM. I don’t remember the last time I slept before 12.