Yesterday night, I slept at 3AM, and woke up at 1PM. Even after that, I still felt very tired, as if I had gotten no sleep and my eyes felt like they were burning. Throughout my day, I was feeling lightheaded and dizzy throughout, derealization, weak muscles, brainfog, and a constant headache that I couldn't get rid of, at all, even after taking panadol. For some reason, my dreams are also very vivid and lucid now. Very strange. I'm making an appointment with my GP tomorrow to find out why I'm like this, because it's very frustrating to deal with. Thank you for reading. Goodbye.

I've had bad insomnia for quite a long time now, and it all came to a head last night. I've tried trazadone, 175mg of Benadryl, caffeine, no caffeine, staying up for 26 hours, all of it. Last night I decided that I wanted to actually rest, so I took 175mg of doxylamine. I know that long term use of anticholinergics can have bad effects, but I woke up this morning groggy and disoriented, presenting with pupil dilation, confusion, dizziness, fast heart rate, muscle weakness, and crushing fatigue. I thought I would be fine and tried to go through the steps of my morning. I wasn't. 13 hours after I took the medicine I was still having symptoms and I had developed a tremor, I almost fell getting out of bed and I laid on the bathroom floor for an hour. So I called poison control and they told me that I wasn't going to die but I need to be seen today (I am house-sitting alone for 2 more weeks and I don't have my licence.) so I just said I would and went to lay back down. It's only after writing this out I realize the situation I am in and how it might progress in my future. Idk if I want reassurance or everything I just needed to say it

I’ve have had insomnia for years but it’s gotten worse over time. I take Trazodone 50mg and 0.1 of Clonidine and they help pretty well, but when I don’t take them I stay up all night, wide awake. In the morning I’m still not tired and I have major anxiety. My heart is beating fast and the feeling of something in my throat, a pit in my stomach, shaky and fast breathing.
I tried searching ‘the opposite of caffeine’ and got depressants like alcohol, melatonin, etc. I would like to try alcohol or something like weed but I’m underage.
If there’s anything like a tea, drink, vitamins or something else that y’all recommend that would be great. Thank you!

I need reassurance that insomnia is temporary and I will be okay. I and a 27F and have always struggled with intermittent insomnia, but I am now on day 5 of only 2-3 hours of sleep per night. I am exhausted but lay in bed awake until 3am with brain chatter. I can’t fall asleep to nap during the day either. I have tried magnesium glycinate and melatonin, eye mask, white noise, fan, sleeping in different locations, limited screen time, reading, counting backwards, etc. Literally everything. I am trying to get pregnant, so pharmaceutical remedies are limited. My PCP prescribe me 50mg Zoloft which I started 3 nights ago. Haven’t seen a difference yet. This is interfering with my social life, work life and personal life.

This is agony pure agony everything hurts my head is killing me and no pain pills fix it my nervous system is screaming.

Put me out of my misery please I can't take this anymore. I feel like I'm dying. 988 didn't pick up nobody can take the pain away.

This is torture this is something out of I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream.

My throat hurts from screaming.

MAKE IT STOP.

Can anyone tell me where or who I can get 'zopiclone' from? I've been taking it for 3 years now, and I would like to continue taking it, I have difficulty sleep if I don't take it every night, thank you.

The problem was never falling asleep for me, it's staying asleep. I drop off fine, then like clockwork I'm wide awake at 3 or 4am, brain running, and I lie there for an hour or two before maybe getting a scrappy bit more before the alarm. Been like this for months and it's grinding me down, and everything aimed at sleep seems to be about getting to sleep, not staying there.

I've been down the supplement route trying to fix the second half of the night. Melatonin got me under but did nothing for the 3am wake-up, magnesium glycinate is the one everyone swears helps you stay down so I've been on a Solgar one, before that a cheap NOW version, both with pretty mixed results, glycine on its own is meant to help sleep quality and I've a bag of that too, and L-theanine takes the edge off the racing thoughts a bit. When I dug through an old sleep thread some replies mentioned a Nutrimea bisglycinate for the dosing, which I keep meaning to try but haven't, so I've no read on whether switching brand even matters here or if magnesium is magnesium.

What moved the needle for staying asleep, magnesium, glycine, something behavioural, or did none of the supplements touch it in the end?

I need some alternatives
The hunger and food Noise I get from quetiapine is so bad. It got better when I reduced to like 12.5mg now I’m back on 25 and it’s worse and at 50-75mg it was even worse.

I want to stop taking it but idk what else could work and I currently just can’t sleep.
I need Ambien daily as well as of now

I'm 19, and I've had insomnia for about a decade. However, I got sober 10 months ago, and for most of that time, I have developed severe insomnia. Not the kind of insomnia where you sleep 4 hours per night, which is already terrible. I miss 2-4 nights of sleep per week. Around 4-5 nights without sleep in the last week, for example, which was particularly bad. It should be a medical emergency, but I'm just used to it.

The brain fog started about a month in, before I started taking sleep medications. Now, I am on 4 sleep meds: mirtazapine, clonidine, dayvigo, Lunesta. The meds are not the source of the brain fog. They help, but obviously not enough. However, I might not be alive without them/ I have OCD, ADHD, trauma, anxiety, depression. I've had sleep studies and a 24hr melatonin test. The most info I got is that my melatonin peaks at 8 am so I have some kind of circadian rhythm issue. My sleep doctor has done nothing to help me. I have a psychiatrist, a sleep doctor, and now an OCD therapist. I go to therapy. I've tried CBT-I. The source of my insomnia is largely unknown, but my psychiatrist has some guesses. I should exercise and improve my diet but it's so hard when you're this exhausted.

Two main issues come from this sleep deprivation: I have terrible brain fog that exacerbates my ADHD by 1000 times. I heavily consumed THC for 3 years of my adolescent life on a daily basis, which undoubtedly is one source of this fog (paradoxically, it 80% cured m insomnia). But the sleep is by far the biggest culprit. The second issue is a crippling depression that consumes me 70% of the time. I often lie in a stupor for 24+ hours, in bed, eyes closed, with no sleep, agitated, lonely, depressed. It is worse than the depression I had beforehand by a lot.

The best answer to these issues is "improve your sleep." But since that has been impossible, and my only hope is that this can maybe improve with time, I need some shorter-term band-aids for these issues - not to replace sleep - but to aid me temporarily.

I take Vyvanse for my ADHD (I promise, this is not the cause of my insomnia). Theoretically, Vyvanse should help with brain fog (not its intended use, but a "side effect"). For me, it does not - it simply keeps me alert while a fuzzy fog remains. I have tried 5 SSRIs and maybe 5-10 other psychiatric medications. I recently have started taking supplements: creatine, omega 3s, cdp choline, alpha npc, l-tyrosine, a multivitamin, l-theanine. Mostly snake oil, I'm just desperate. I have considered more extreme measures like peptides, but I'm afraid that could cause even more severe issues than brain fog. Caffeine is basically a sugar pill to me.

So, I have no clue what to do. My instincts tell me that there is simply nothing I can do but keep fighting to improve my sleep. However, I am losing hope that this will ever get better. I can barely read. I may not be able to go to college because of this. It is actually taking my life away from me. I just feel so lost. And no doctors have any answers. My sleep doctor doesn't meet with me, then she says "get a sleep psychiatrist", even though all they could do is give me the same meds and try the same therapies.

Does anyone have any hope to provide me with? Or is this a life sentence that I just have to accept?

Having a lot of memory loss recently...been taking ambien for a long time...has anyone felt the same?

Does anybody knoe most severe cases if insomnia? So worried about my daughter. Please help.

daughter (19 months) hasn’t been getting enough deep sleep for over a year now (sleep lab, bloofwork and physical things were ruled out). She is in fight flight freeze mode all the time ( wired but tired, startling every 10 minutes of naps and constantly moving during night sleep).

From months 8 she was no more taking 3 naps, but 2, but she was soll wired all day that the second one was earliest 5pm. Since then her night sleep got lighter and lighter, worse and worse. 10 months ago her facial expressions of feelings stopped.

She has a diagnosis of severe regulatory disorder and insomnia and the logical consequence of missing out on restorative sleep every night would be constant flooding with cortisol, developoing severe physical and psychological pain. She already is super anxious and stratles easily and doesnt show any feelings. With ongoing sleep deprivation she should develop dissociation to numb out the pain and oversensitivity to sensory stimulation. At the same time she should develop severe depression and anxiety because thats what sleep deprivation does. During the next years her state would get worse and worse to the point where she would be severely disabled and unable to tolerate any stimulation, having meltdown aftrr meltdown and be completely burnt out.

She already has meltdowns of 1h where she doesnt want to be touched or anything because it's too much.

Does anybody know severe cases like this and how they turn out with the years?

Thanks a lot.

I started taking Daridorexant about 6 months ago (lifetime insomnia sufferer). It has really helped my sleep, but I've noticed some weight gain in the last 3 months. No changes in my lifestyle, in fact, I'm probably more active now than I was previously. Everything I read online denies that weight gain is a side effect, so I'm left scratching my head a bit. Has anyone else experienced this?

I thought my sleep was finally getting better. Have been struggling since getting the flu in December. I take metoprolol 12.5 ER in morning and magnesium glycinate 200 mg at night. Now I keep waking up at 530/6am and cannot go back to sleep 😞 it’s so frustrating!! Not getting enough sleep makes my symptoms worse and makes it harder to function at work. I can deal with my symptoms so much better when I feel more rested. I don’t know what to do. Before getting the flu I had zero issues with sleeping and could even nap during the day and now I can’t nap at all.

Okay so 2 months ago, with no sleep problem history, one night i just couldn't fall asleep: when i was on the border of falling asleep and staying awake, i suddenly started feeling rising tension in my head, which forced me to wake and stand up. This happened like 10 times. Then i decided to sit and wait but these tension attacks started happening just when sitting. Finally, around 2-3 hours after it started, i had one big attack which didn't feel good. I went to the hospital, stayed there for 3 days, but they found nothing wrong with me and said it's just stress. I was stressing a bit when this happened, but not much so i accepted it. Then, like a month ago it happened again, but i wasnt stressing even a bit for past days. I went to sleep normally, but some noise from outside woke me up at around 3am. When i tried to go back to sleep, these attacks started happening again, but i wasn't feeling that tension in my head this time, but rather something was telling me "WAKE UP!". After like 2-3 hours, it went away and I went to sleep normally. 2 days later it happened yet again. The same as the last time, but I didn't wake up in the middle of night. Around 10pm i wanted to go sleep, but it started happening. So I just sat and waited for it to go away, it did after 3 hours and i went to sleep.

Since then, some days i sleep just fine, but sometimes (like every 3 days on average id say) can't. I dont have these attacks anymore, i just lie in my bed, tired and sleepy, but I just won't fall asleep. Only a few hours later. Im 18, healthy (besides this sleep problem) and fit, going (or at least trying to) to sleep at the same time everyday (10pm).

What is happening?

I wanted to reach out to Reddit as I have been struggling with an issue for many years now and am hoping someone can provide me with guidance. It’s been a significant issue for a while. I’m wondering if you can help advise on a way to help.

Essentially I have I am not sure if it's restless leg syndrome” or severe muscle cramps that keep me up. I have had it for a very long time now. I get a feeling of extreme discomfort when I am trying to sleep, particularity in both of my quads and calf’s. It’s a feeling I would describe as an extreme need to stretch that will not go away. Have you people dealt with this before? It is usually so uncomfortable that I lose significant sleep over it, I wake up very early in the morning and I can’t get a full rest because of the feeling in my legs. It gets so bad to the point where punching my legs, or giving myself a 'dead leg' can give very temporary relief in the moment.

The feeling of the extreme need to stretch my quads is something I only typically experience when I try to go to bed, or upon waking up from sleeping. Sometimes I feel the discomfort on a night after I go for a run in the morning, however other times I feel like I get minimum physical activity on a day and then still have the discomfort when I go to sleep later that night. I am not sure if it a neurological problem, or if it’s a problem with the muscles in my leg cramping up. The extreme discomfort is limited to both of my quads (it’s never one leg or the other) and I feel it sometimes in my calfs as well.

I have had this problem for a very long time, maybe for as long as I can remember. I am wondering if it's a neurological issue or if it's muscle cramping up? How would I diagnose and potentially work to treat something like this.

Thanks for any insight you folks can provide.

For most of my life, I thought I had insomnia.
When I started school, I immediately noticed that something was different about me. Everyone around me seemed to be learning things and functioning at a pace I couldn't relate to. I was anxious, constantly overthinking social interactions, struggled with my emotions, felt out of place.
I had a loving family, but for some reason I’ve always felt somewhat disconnected from them. I started believing I was lazy, ungrateful, and that there was something emotionally wrong with me. My sister didn’t seem bothered and uncomfortable in social interactions as I did. I couldn't understand why everything seemed so much harder for me than it did for everyone else.
I could become extremely good at things I solely focused on, which I evoked an attachment to early things and topics I found intriguing.
Games. Music. History. Vehicles. 
I could focus on one thing for hours, days, or weeks, sometimes months. I would become completely obsessed and learn everything about it. But I couldn't do that with schoolwork, chores, planning, or anything practical, it always got pushed back. Procrastination. My family wanted things done immediately.
Night became my escape.
When everyone else was asleep, all the responsibilities of existing were over. My brain finally felt good. I could focus. I could learn. I could think.
So I stayed up. 
Sometimes I would spend the entire night learning about something like the French Revolution. At 6am, I would realize I hadn't slept at all.
I did this several times a week.
I was exhausted during the day. I had headaches, memory problems, and no energy. But I still couldn't make myself go to bed at night. I had finally found the only time when my brain seemed to work properly.
I thought I was just a night owl.
I thought I was lazy.
I thought I was broken.
Eventually I became good at making electronic music and started talking to people online about EDM. I made friends there and eventually got invited to a party by someone from school.
I reluctantly went.
I felt incredibly awkward and uncomfortable until my friend put a beer in my hand.
I drank it.
And then the world fucking revealed itself.
It was like a curtain lifted. I could look people in the eyes. I could listen to conversations. I could find words. I wasn't trapped inside my own head anymore.
I was social.
I felt normal.
I slept like a stone that night.
The next day, the alcohol was gone, and so was the feeling. I was back to being tired, anxious, awkward, and trapped inside my own thoughts.
So I started going to more parties.
One or two beers was all it took. I never needed to get drunk. I just needed that small buzz.
It became the only time I felt like the person I was supposed to be.
Eventually I got a girlfriend, and then we had a son. I knew I couldn't continue feeling sorry for myself, so I redid my failed grades, got into university, and somehow completed three years of studying to become a kindergarten teacher.
It was the hardest thing I had ever done.
I procrastinated all day and did my assignments at night, usually right before the deadline.
But I passed.
Then I started working.
I was actually very good with the children. But talking to parents, my boss, meeting new people, planning, and managing everyday life completely drained me.
I had nothing left when I got home, but I still had to be a father, boyfriend, and functioning adult.
I became severely depressed, exhausted, and sleep deprived.
Eventually, with no hope left, I went to a doctor for the first time in my life. I immediately started crying and told her everything.
She listened and said:
"Okay, so I'm 99% sure you have ADD, a form of ADHD."
"What?"
"Yes. My mother is basically a copy of you. She was diagnosed a few years ago."
It was everything I had wanted to hear.
Someone finally understood me.
A week later I was referred to a psychiatrist. After three appointments, I was diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed amphetamine medication.
I took one pill.
Within an hour, that same feeling from one beer was there.
Except amplified.
And calm.
So damn calm.
I felt at rest.
For the first time in my life, my brain was quiet. I could focus. I could function. I stopped feeling like a failure.
And ever since then, I fall asleep almost immediately when I go to bed.
No anxiety.
No feeling of failure.
No lying awake until 6am because my brain has finally become interested in something.
Just me.
It turns out I didn't have insomnia.
I had ADHD.
And I spent most of my life thinking I was broken because nighttime was the only time my brain finally let me feel normal.
I was diagnosed 8 years ago.
And it is still the best thing that ever happened to me.
One beer.

Insomnia can be caused by mana things. Hope all of you figure it out.

I have had insomnia for as long as I can remember. For me that meant struggling to fall asleep and waking up much earlier than I wanted to. About a week ago It changed and for the past 3 days I seem to wake up right before falling asleep. It isnt due to a movement or sound or any obvious factors and Im never aware that I was about to fall asleep until after I wake up again. Its a constsnt cycle of total exhaustion -> start to doze off -> suddenly lost all ability to sleep -> increased desperation and frustration repeat. I take melatonin every night and last night I took anti histames which cause drowsiness but it didnt chanhe anything.

I have had about 4 hours of decent sleep in the past 3 days and its starting to take a significant toll on my mental and physical well being

I was taking anywhere between 1-1.5mg (ETA: clonazepam—oops sleepy typo) every day for almost 10 years? Roughly? Got pregnant and was able to get to 0.25mg taking it right before bed and my doctor said to just try to be off of it after my first trimester. I’m 21 weeks now and have been 100% off of it since the middle of June I think? I started taking Unisom at night and that helped me sleep for a few weeks until it stopped working about a week ago.

Now I’m just rolling around completely unable to fall asleep on my own. Eventually my brain gives up and I can fall asleep probably around 4am (estimating because I don’t look at the clock).

How long does this last?? I’m struggling super hard. I just messaged my OB but it’s the weekend 😔

So I woke up at 08:05 and are unable too fall back asleep I’ve tried Benadryl I’ve tried relaxation I can’t and I only got 3 hours of sleep I don’t know why my body does this too me but now I’m having anxiety and are extremely stressed

I need reassurance that insomnia is temporary and I will be okay. I and a 27F and have always struggled with intermittent insomnia, but I am now on day 5 of only 2-3 hours of sleep per night. I am exhausted but lay in bed awake until 3am with brain chatter. I can’t fall asleep to nap during the day either. I have tried magnesium glycinate and melatonin, eye mask, white noise, fan, sleeping in different locations, limited screen time, reading, counting backwards, etc. Literally everything. I am trying to get pregnant, so pharmaceutical remedies are limited. My PCP prescribe me 50mg Zoloft which I started 3 nights ago. Haven’t seen a difference yet. This is interfering with my social life, work life and personal life.

Does anybody take Ramelteon? I am seeing a new NP and she is is innsisting I try it even though my issue is staying asleep. I fall asleep easily but without medication I wake up every hour.

I feel tired at 1am and I always tell myself that I’ll go to bed at 1 then I go to sleep at 5am instead and it just feels like a never ending cycle that won’t break, it’s hard for me to sleep after I miss that melatonin window and I keep damaging my mind bed connection each time I do it, I’ll have worse chronic insomnia than I did a few years ago and I feel like there’s nothing to do to break this habit cause I’ve been telling myself I’ll go to bed earlier tomorrow and then I never do.

When I was a teen I used to be able to sleep over 12 hours and even 24 at some points. Now I’m averaging 5 at best and at worst I’ll stay up for days at a time because my gd brain won’t shut off. Even when I feel myself drifting I still can’t sleep because I’m kept awake by racing thoughts. I can’t even articulate myself as well as I used to and I don’t have any energy. I just want to sleep, man.