r/sleep

So I smoke weed almost everyday because it helps with my anxiety and depression but I’ve noticed my anxiety has gotten a lot worse so i decided to take a tolerance break, which I have done before but the thing is now, I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep at all and it’s driving me crazy especially because I’m on vacation with my family it’s driving me crazy. Tomorrow I’ll be in my own bed so maybe that will help though I’ve never had trouble sleeping in the same bed as someone I just can’t fucking sleep for some reason. Any tips, tricks, magic atp I’ll take I just want to sleep. And yeah I know it’s normal for weed to make it super hard to fall asleep now that you have stopped but fuck dude this is horrible

Hello everyone! I am a twenty-year-old male. My problem started approximately two years ago, when I started to sleep in my university’s dorm. Two weeks after sleeping on my new bed, my neck started to hurt since the pillow saw too stiff.

One night, I hugged the pillow I saw putting my head on, and I slept like a baby. After that night, no matter how hard I tried, I always found my pillow around my arms. My problem started after I came back to my hometown. I could not sleep since one pillow was not enough. Now I have two pillows and I cannot even fall asleep without hugging one.

Has anyone else experienced this?

this has been happening to me way too often lately. i’ll spend the whole afternoon feeling like i could fall asleep anywhere, then once i finally get in bed my brain decides it’s time to be awake. i’m not even doing anything interesting. i’ll just lie there thinking about random stuff or checking the time and getting annoyed that i’m still awake. then the next morning i feel terrible and tell myself i’m definitely sleeping early that night, only for the same thing to happen again.

has anyone actually managed to break this cycle? what helped you get sleepy at the time you actually wanted to sleep?

I’m looking for people who have experienced something similar to what I’m going through.
I have difficulty falling asleep in the first place. When I go to bed, my mind keeps running and I feel like I’m thinking continuously. It feels like I can’t switch my brain off and properly transition into sleep.
Eventually, I believe I fall asleep, but even then, I often feel like my mind is still active and I’m conscious throughout the night. When I wake up in the morning, it feels like I barely slept or sometimes like I didn’t sleep at all.
What makes this confusing is that I have already had a sleep study. I was told that I was actually asleep during the study, even though my subjective experience of sleep feels very different.
My sleep tracker also often reports poor sleep quality, which adds to my confusion.
So my experience is basically:
Difficulty falling asleep.
Constant thoughts or mental activity when trying to sleep.
Feeling conscious or mentally awake even after I seem to fall asleep.
Waking up feeling as if I barely slept.
A previous sleep study showed that I was actually sleeping.
My sleep tracker often reports poor sleep quality.
Has anyone experienced this exact combination?
I’m particularly interested in people who were diagnosed with paradoxical insomnia (sleep-state misperception), hyperarousal, insomnia, or frequent sleep arousals.
What did your sleep study show, and what eventually helped you? I would really appreciate hearing about your personal experiences, especially if you initially felt like your brain was “awake” all night despite objectively being asleep.

I used to think I needed a better “method” to fall asleep. Like some breathing technique, meditation, specific sound, supplement, whatever. But lately I’m starting to think the actual routine matters more than any individual thing in it. For a long time my evenings were completely random. Some nights I’d watch YouTube until I got tired. Some nights I’d be on my phone in bed. Sometimes I’d shower late, sometimes early. Sometimes I’d listen to a podcast, sometimes music, sometimes nothing. Basically there was no clear point where my day actually ended. Then I’d get into bed and expect my brain to instantly understand that now we sleep. Which obviously worked very inconsistently lol. So I started trying to make the last 30-60 minutes of my day look almost the same every night. Nothing extreme. I lower the lights. I stop starting new videos or anything I know I’ll get invested in. I wash up, get things ready for the morning, put my phone down. Then I put on the same sound setup in Nocturne: Sleep Sounds & Noise (dear angry user who will hate me for mentioning an app, sorry, im really sorry), usually brown noise with a little rain underneath. I like that I can make the mix myself, but honestly the bigger thing is just that I use the same one every night now. It’s kind of become part of the sequence. And after doing it for a while, I genuinely feel like my brain starts recognizing what’s happening before I even get into bed. Like okay, nothing else is coming now. The day is finished. I think before I was waiting until I felt sleepy to start winding down, but now I’m doing the opposite. I start winding down first and let the sleepiness catch up. That sounds really obvious when I write it out, but I somehow spent years doing the exact opposite. I’d stay stimulated right up until the moment I wanted to sleep, then get frustrated that I wasn’t sleepy yet. The other thing I noticed is that routine removes so many stupid decisions.

I’m not lying in bed thinking: should I watch one more thing? what sound should I use tonight? should I read? should I try breathing? am I tired enough yet? There’s just a sequence and I follow it. And I think that has made falling asleep feel much less like a task I need to succeed at. I still have bad nights obviously. A routine doesn’t magically make you fall asleep every time. But I definitely feel more “ready” for sleep now than when every night looked completely different. I’m curious if anyone else noticed this. Do you have an actual routine that you repeat almost exactly every night? And if you do, what part of it seems to matter the most? Because right now I’m starting to think consistency might be way more important than finding the perfect sleep hack. OOOPPsss long post.

EDIT: This is a repost from yesterday, but it got some good traction before and some interesting discussions. It was removed because I had a super duper small NSFW section lol

Stats show women sleep more a night. Is it hormonal or something?

I mean look at lions for example 😭 the males sleep 3hrs more than the females on average. So what is it? Why do human females sleep more?

I’m usually a 6-7 hr a night sleeper. Weekend lay-ins I can go to 9 hrs if I’m super comfy in the morning!

Hi all, in my early twenties I developed what I was told was RLS (restless leg syndrome) when I was switching from Cymbalta to another medicine for depression/anxiety episodes. It started in only my left leg and hip where I would feel a jolt down from my head into my left lower limb, hip calf and foot. It only occurred before bed. It was often but not every night. I was prescribed Requip and it seemed to help but caused next day impairment where I didn’t feel safe to drive, heavy fog almost like I was poisoned. Same with Mirapex. Later around this time I was prescribed promethazine with codeine for an injury and it caused immediate attacks, had to stop it immediately, this also made me feel “poisoned”, terrible increase in symptoms. Doc ordered brain CT which came back normal.

Fast forward to my late twenties the episodes became more frequent and progressed into my upper limbs and neck to the point I would twist myself to cope with the agony of the feelings and muscle contractions. The jolts sometimes cause involuntary jumping of the affected muscle. I was prescribed Gabapentin with no relief same effect from Pregabalin. I also started noticing urinary hesitation and increased urination at night which may or may not be related, unsure. Doc ordered brain and spinal MRI which only shows mild stenosis in my cervical spine.

Fast forward to my mid-thirties and these attacks became pretty much every night and also more often during the day. Symptoms have expanded to having: a sensory aura (feeling like something is misfiring in the head) before they start, hand stiffness where I feel a need to sort of claw my hand, and more upper body impact from the jolts and contractions. Still start primarily in the legs, hip, and feet. I brace myself when a jolt happens otherwise my back sort of thrusts backwards. The attacks ONLY start happening while either lying down or sitting. This year I learned my father has Parkinson’s (action tremor and shuffled gait as primary symptoms which started 5 years ago and he is also almost entirely blind at age 65).

Doc started me on a low dose levodopa/carbidopa trial which is the first thing that seems to be very helpful and without side effects. It kicks in within an hour and lasts up to 3 hours. I take it with lemon balm and it seems to entirely block my attacks, at least 90% of the symptoms.

An attack goes like this:
Each contraction lasts up to ~10 seconds
There can be seconds to ~ 1 minute of relief, then another contraction
It can hit the same muscle or migrate to a different muscle
Sometimes the contraction produces an actual limb movement; sometimes it is simply a sustained tightening
It can continue for hours disabling ability to rest and fall asleep.
It is particularly problematic when trying to fall asleep. No issues staying asleep after falling asleep.
No urge to move the legs, rather a desperation to stay still.
The attack ceases while actively walking.

When attack spreads to upper body now I start doing things like finger tapping, head bobbing, grimacing as sort of a reflex to cope with the muscle tension. Left eyelid twitches also present.

I just got results to a Parkinson’s genetic panel which came back negative, next they’re doing a dystonia panel. Normal iron, ferritin, absorption rate and other labs also normal. Ceruloplasmin (copper) normal. Waiting on results to heavy metal lab which seems to be taking quite awhile to get it back.

Neuro is calling this either “Severe RLS with dystonic features” or “dopa responsive dystonia” for now and we are ruling out a form of Parkinson’s or parkinsonism. Common genes for causing DRD came back without mutation.

I’m happy the medicine is helping however I want to understand why this is happening to me. My worry is neurodegeneration and ruling it out. I’m being referred to an academic movement disorder specialist. What do you think the next steps should be as a mid-30s person who doesn’t want this to get any worse? I’ve had to explain to docs that it truly impairs my ability to rest, people can’t sleep with me in the bed because they tell me I “appear possessed” without medication. Before the new med I would literally moan and yell out from the attacks.

This year I’ve been getting attacks more frequently earlier in the day. Years ago this was very rare to happen. Please let me know if this aligns with any known condition other than “severe RLS” or “DRD”. Thanks

Disclaimer: I am not asking for medical advice I am asking if anyone believes these symptoms correlate to any known condition and I will not discern any responses provided as actual medical advice.

I used to think I needed a better “method” to fall asleep. Like some breathing technique, meditation, specific sound, supplement, whatever. But lately I’m starting to think the actual routine matters more than any individual thing in it. For a long time my evenings were completely random. Some nights I’d watch YouTube until I got tired. Some nights I’d be on my phone in bed. Sometimes I’d shower late, sometimes early. Sometimes I’d listen to a podcast, sometimes music, sometimes nothing. NSFW >!sometimes I'd masturbate!< NSFW Basically there was no clear point where my day actually ended. Then I’d get into bed and expect my brain to instantly understand that now we sleep. Which obviously worked very inconsistently lol. So I started trying to make the last 30-60 minutes of my day look almost the same every night. Nothing extreme. I lower the lights. I stop starting new videos or anything I know I’ll get invested in. I wash up, get things ready for the morning, put my phone down. Then I put on the same sound setup in Nocturne: Sleep Sounds & Noise (dear angry user who will hate me for mentioning an app, sorry, im really sorry), usually brown noise with a little rain underneath. I like that I can make the mix myself, but honestly the bigger thing is just that I use the same one every night now. It’s kind of become part of the sequence. And after doing it for a while, I genuinely feel like my brain starts recognizing what’s happening before I even get into bed. Like okay, nothing else is coming now. The day is finished. I think before I was waiting until I felt sleepy to start winding down, but now I’m doing the opposite. I start winding down first and let the sleepiness catch up. That sounds really obvious when I write it out, but I somehow spent years doing the exact opposite. I’d stay stimulated right up until the moment I wanted to sleep, then get frustrated that I wasn’t sleepy yet. The other thing I noticed is that routine removes so many stupid decisions.

I’m not lying in bed thinking: should I watch one more thing? what sound should I use tonight? should I read? should I try breathing? am I tired enough yet? There’s just a sequence and I follow it. And I think that has made falling asleep feel much less like a task I need to succeed at. I still have bad nights obviously. A routine doesn’t magically make you fall asleep every time. But I definitely feel more “ready” for sleep now than when every night looked completely different. I’m curious if anyone else noticed this. Do you have an actual routine that you repeat almost exactly every night? And if you do, what part of it seems to matter the most? Because right now I’m starting to think consistency might be way more important than finding the perfect sleep hack. OOOPPsss long post.

For basically half the summer i could only sleep at about 7 to 9 am and wake up at 5 pm. when i try to not sleep for the entire day and sleep at 10pm the next day i fail and end up sleeping at 2 pm and waking up at 8 make the issue much worse. when i try to only sleep lets say 2 hours so am tired but i can go on till 10 pm and sleep i end up not sleeping till 7 am again even tho am only running on 2 hours of sleep?! please help me fix my sleep schedule i dont want to waste the remainder of the summer 🙏

Talking only about the case you train 4 hours at least before you go to bed. The common suggestion is that it helps.but i think my body is already super hyperarousal physiologicaly because of chronic sleep deprivation. So sport

For those who had been diagnosed with Depression and also had insomnia at the same time. Did you try Trazodone and how were your experiences with it?

I'm asking because I often have anxiety and also have trouble with sleeping. There are nights where I sleep from 2-4h and other times where I sleep enough but feel to tired.

I saw that Trazodone does not disturb sleep architecture but also helps with anxiety.

So I'm thinking to change to that one.

This used to be the most annoying part of going to bed.

I'd be tired all day, then the second my head hit the pillow my brain would suddenly start going through random conversations, tomorrow's tasks, things I forgot, stuff that happened months ago...

I stopped trying to force myself to “clear my mind” because honestly, that just made me think about not thinking.

What helped more was doing a quick brain dump before bed. Just writing down whatever was going around in my head, especially things I needed to remember tomorrow.

Then I keep the last 30 minutes pretty boring. Low lights, no work, no scrolling through random stuff.

It doesn't make my brain completely silent, but it gives it a lot less to chew on when I'm trying to sleep.

The biggest thing I learned is that sometimes you don't need to *force* your brain to relax. You just need to stop giving it more things to process right before bed.

I’ve ordered a magnesium “Glycinate 3 in 1” containing:
Bisglycinate
Citrate
Malate

Now I read everywhere here to take glycinate to help with sleep problems. Will my supplement have the same effect as pure glycinate?

It says 2 capsules have 1814 mg magnesium compounds (whatever this means) and 384 mg elemental magnesium.

Don’t see much of an improvement of sleeping through yet…

Waking up at 3 am, every night! The smallest things will wake me up, then my brain is officially up. I’m so irritated. Tried melatonin, other sleep aids, no phones after 9 pm, seemingly everything. I’m just fed up.

How did it go? What type of neurofeedback or protocols did you use? Adverse reactions?
No practitioners please!

Why do I wake up more than six times a night and go straight to the fridge, even though I ate dinner before sleeping?

Am 39

Any tips pls

Thanks

For years I’ve had an issue with falling asleep as soon as I get comfortable anywhere. If I am in bed trying to relax, no matter when it is, I will sleep, so I try to not be in bed. I have a gaming PC setup so I always try to be there instead, but I fall asleep in my chair even sitting upright. I can have my lights on, audio playing in my ears, I’ll be drinking caffeine, even mid conversation, I will fall asleep. It happens especially when I try to watch things. I have fallen asleep at work, in public, it doesn’t matter.

I don’t know what to do as I am in a long-distance relationship and it’s seriously affecting both of us. The only time I get to have with my partner is talking on the phone, playing games, or watching shows / movies together. We both love watching things, especially together, and we used to bond over this heavily but it’s reached the point where most of the time I can’t even get through a 40 minute episode of something.

It also affects my relationships with my friends and family as I will sleep through calls from them, sleep through them trying to talk to me, or be unable to wake myself up for plans.

I know this isn’t something I can just have a quick fix for but I really need suggestions on how to keep my mind occupied while I try to talk to my partner, mostly. I can see how much it is hurting them and I feel so horrible and guilty inside even though I am aware it’s not really my fault.

I’m aware this is something I need to see a doctor about as it’s obviously more serious than just sleeping a lot, but I don’t have health insurance and can’t afford any medical care unless there is an immediate threat to my life. I don’t want a huge fix everything solution, I just want to know how to keep myself up when I am trying to relax at home. Any advice at all is appreciated, but if you are going to tell me to see a doctor, it won’t do anything for me as I already know I need to, but I’m not in a position where I can right now.