~rappstarr

Its 6:53 am.

Clearly, I'm still awake. Problem being that tonight, I ACTUALLY fell asleep at a reasonable hour. Roughly 11:30. However, my body felt it necessary to wake up around 1:45am. Apparently 2 hours and 15 minutes is what I need for sleep.

My mind is an idiot.

So here's the thing. I need to get to the bottom of this. This is just not cool. It's getting worse and worse and I've tried just about everything I can think of, sans a blow to the head to knock myself unconscious and in all honesty...if anyone here can attest to that working, I'm open to that.

So here's what I have tried:

|Sleeping Pills.
Over the counter and Ambien. The only other sleeping pill out there is Lunesta, which is supposed to have pretty intense psychological side effects so that sort of a last resort. There is also a wide variety of sleep aides that are supposed to aid in the ability to sleep and the quality of sleep, but as far as sedatives and sleep aides, the over the counter, Ambien, and Lunesta are pretty much it.

|Meditation.
I should be doing more of this anyway. I have definitely have been slacking off on this since the move to Boston. This will probably aide overall in clearing my mind and making it easier to fall asleep, but again, it will increase only quality and not actually make me tired and therefore I need to have something else in addition to this.

|Reading.
Fantasy, Philosophy, History, etc. Nothing. I find books too interesting, and if they are not interesting, I can't read them, I get too bored. This has 0 effect.

|Complete Silence/Darkness.
I try this almost every night. Usually a little over an hour is spent with everything off. Nothing happens. My mind goes no where, my body feels the same. I eventually become angry with myself since it doesn't work and I decide to try something else.

|Soft Music.
Nope. Too much of a music fan for this to work. I sing along with every song, and if it's not lyrical I sing the melodies or make my own. I've also tried white/pink noise and a program called SabGen meant to cancel out background noises and increase quality of sleep. Nadda.

|No late snacks.
My Stomach ends up keeping my awake when I don't eat. I've tried a number of foods with little changes positive or negative.

|Aroma Therapy.
Lavender is said to have one of the most sedatives and calming effects via smell. I have burned a (very) strong lavender candle near every night while I try to sleep and meditate. It helps for meditation but not so much for sleeping.

|Counseling.
In progress. Nothing has really helped toward my sleeping, however.

|Arts.
Writing, singing, editing....Nothing. None of these help me sleep. They all excite some part of my brain and make me feel better, but more awake then ever. And yet I do them every night... However, they do have a positive efect on the quality of sleep. I toss and turn much less and am less likely to have nightmares (which I'm also troubled with).

|Warm milk/counting sheep.
Gross. And no.

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Basically, I only have a few ideas left:

|Lunesta.
Hey, if i works, I can deal with being a little bit crazy, it might counteract the insanity I have generated from lack of sleep.

|Valerian.
It's a plant grown mostly in Europe and Asia (somewhat found in the Americas). It's root has sedative properties and is either produced in an extract, an alcoholic beverage (not for me), a regular beverage, and capsule form. I would definitely go for the capsule form. I actually plan on picking this up today. There is also side effect for this and in rare cases has been known to garner dependencies, but still less (potentially) harmful then Lunesta or Ambien. However there is no morning after drowsiness with Valerian.

|Sedatives/Sleep Aides.
My mother recommends Trazadone. It's a phsych therapy drug used to balance out moods a bit more, but also has a very powerful sleep aid effect, although it is not a sedative and can cause a lot of drowsiness. There's a million sedatives I could try with prescription of course, but all of them contain high risks of dependencies. I'd rather not have to deal with any of these.

|Rush/Crash.
Perhaps in order to initiate a slumber I should rush on sugar hours before and then on the crash hop aboard the sleep train. I know it sounds like a bad idea, but at least it's cheap and has 0 chance of dependencies.

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Thats about all I have.

If you've got an idea, I could really, Really, REALLY use some advice, I can just feel myself just getting less and less healthy and I'm drained up until about 3 in the afternoon whether I sleep or not.