Irregular Sleep Pattern Ruining My Life

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I have an extremely irregular sleep pattern: I may sleep during the night, day, afternoon, or morning; I may sleep for three hours or twenty; I may be tired six hours or twenty-four hours after getting up. As far as I can tell, there is no connection to any sort of manic state when I stay up; I simply don't feel tired enough to go to bed, though I may feel sleepy or yawn a little. OTC sleeping pills generally work, but only when I'm already sleepy. If I'm not tired, they will simply dull my mind without letting me sleep, until they wear off.

The problem with this is that my brain never quite knows when to be fully alert. When I sleep, my dreams are lucid (I know I'm dreaming, though I'm not thinking as clearly as I am when awake); when I'm awake, I'm often lethargic, unable to focus, unable to get anything done, unmotivated.

And, on top of that, I'm often crushingly tired when I need to be somewhere; when I'm tired, going out in public is much more of a daunting task than it usually is. Naturally, this results in absenteeism.

Example: Today I am supposed to go to three classes and an appointment. I woke up 12 hours ago and feel extremely tired now. If I went to bed, I would miss all those things I need to go to... but if I go, it will be much harder to handle these things than it usually is. On top of that, I have been tired ever since I woke, with about two hours of alertness total out of twelve; and been unable to study for an important calculus exam. When I am lethargic like this, I am unsuccessful even at entertainments like computer games, much less calculus.

I need to get on a schedule--six to eight hours of sleep, every day at the same time. I have tried this in the past, but one day of being unable to sleep despite a sleeping pill is enough to set the whole thing askew, the schedule collapses as I am unable to get to sleep within four to six hours of going to bed, and suddenly everything is a mishmash again.

Has anyone had this problem and solved it, or partially solved it?

I can sympathize with your situation. How the hell is a person suppose to get on with their life? How are we suppose to be self-supporting functional beings when we either can't sleep or have to be somewhere when we need to sleep?

I posted my own sleep problems a couple hours ago in a thread titled: Insomnia. Your situation is probably a greater challenge than is mine Callista. Here it is anyway:


I normally fall asleep without too much trouble. The problem for me is staying asleep. More often then not I will wake up sometime between 2 and 4 am after only sleeping four or five hours. I will wake up and still be tired and wanting to sleep but I can't. It usually takes another four to five hours for the tiredness to build up enough so I can go back to bed and sleep a few more hours. I wouldn't mind so much except it makes employment difficult.

Last edited by Jacob_Landshire on 24 Apr 2006, 9:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

I take something called Rhemeron

Saturday: worked 9:30 until 14:00, watched TV, napped whilst watching it, went to friend's house at 21:00, and left at 22:00. Started pile of college work at 23:00 and didn't finish until just before my 14:30 until 18:00 shift on Sunday. I felt like the walking dead when I was working...it looks like I am going to have to pull of a similar stunt tonight.

Of course it gets to the point where you get hyper-active, and in the early hours of the morning you find yourself taking more breaks than work. You are in a really good mood until about twelve hours later, when everything seems to go downhill...

During a tough time in the Summer I ended up on things that practically tranquilized me, I came off them after a couple of nights and I am glad I did. Getting regularly 'fixed' on them should be avoided at all costs I have been told, because they are addictive. Despite the amount you sleep always try to wake up at the same time every day because your body clock depends on WHAT time you get up at, rather than how MUCH time you get.

General rule: up early on weekdays for school/college/uni/work and attempt to be up before lunch-time in the weekends/holidays and so on and so forth.

I hope that helped.

I have the exact same problem...

Perhaps you could try a sleeping pill at bed time?

I'm not sure sleeping problems are symptoms of autism, but I can sympathise with your situation. My sleeping pattern is erratic as yours, and despite many efforts to get in to a healthy routine I keep failing. The question I want to ask you Calista, and anyone else with a similar problem is this: when you can't sleep and stay up several hours past when you expected to have dozed off, do you feel more creative and sociable? It's very strange but I feel able to think more clearly and feel much more sociable when I'm knackered. That's not to say that I would do this prior to an exam (which I have!) because it would result in a poor grade, but when it comes to being sociable I notice a big improvement, and others have told me this, so it's not me imagining things.

I hear of erratic sleeping patterns a lot from people with autism. I have them too. I sometimes have trouble going to sleep or I wake up way too early in the moring and cannot get to sleep again. Often feel sleepy to at odd times of the day as well.
The worst thing I took was a medication called Aurorix. Glad I am off them now. They really compounded my sleeping patterns and made them worse.

I usually just cope with them now just by listening to a walkman of mp3 player in bed.

No; generally feeling tired makes me want to withdraw... I only feel ready to handle social situations when I'm well-rested.

before i was diagnosed with asperger's syndrome in 2000, we thought i might have narcolepsy because i have similar problems that a person with narcolepsy has.

they did a sleep study and decided i wasn't narcoleptic. but i do have similar sleep disturbances.

they told me to go back to the county psychiatrist i had been seeing. he was no help at all. he kept giving me drugs like zyprexa or depakote or risperdal or neurontin or trazadone and other stuff. all those drugs made my condition worse.

i figured if the drugs they were giving me were making me worse then i needed to see an expert. after a long grievance process with my insurance, i was evaluated by a couple specialists.

i was then diagnosed with asperger's syndrome.

i've learned that people with autism have many sleep problems/disturbances. it is a common problem.

i don't have any answers for you. just wanted to let you know that you're not alone.

I should have been in bed 4 hours ago.

Goodnight.

I seem to not be able to sleep at night half the time.
At certain points my sleeping patterns would switch pretty much around in the past.
Like every night i slept an hour later and got up an hour laters.
Not a verry healthy habit.
But until i got sleeping pills there wasn't really anything i could do to stop this.

Above describes my pattern.
I once wrote down my hours over a summer vacation, and it took about 4 weeks or a month for my sleep to cycle around again. Meaning I'd sleep 2-10 a.m. on day 1. Would go to sleep & get up an hour later each successive "day", like 3-11 a.m., 4-12, etc. On day 28 (more or less), I'd sleep 2-10 a.m. again.
I'm a night owl, but I'm awake during day sometimes, being this way feels natural to me. Causes some problems, but it's worth it to me. Have read that 25-hour (not 24-hour) clock/cycle is what people revert to when studied, if cues as to day & night are removed from environment.
Haven't been able to alter my pattern-only temporarily & unpleasantly disobeyed it. Made school awful, in that respect-I'd be half-asleep in anything scheduled before noon. Not employed, so I appreciate the luxury of following what my body needs most of the time. Naps help me get through bad moods, when all else fails.

Erratic sleep schedules didn't matter when I was doing consulting work. Now that I'm back on a regular job, it became an issue. My primary care doctor started me on Restoril a month ago. It generally works but I wake up groggy. I'm going to give Ambien a try.

I also have sleeping problems, but nowhere near that extent. I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, even though I am young and not at all overweight. I cannot tolerate the CPAP machine. When using it, I tend not to sleep at all (or very little) due to the pressure and noise.

I'll stay awake for a few hours at a time when trying to get to sleep (occasionally as low as 1 hour), and I've been waking up very early afterwards. I only function well when I get around 10 hours of sleep, and with my current problems, I'm only getting about 5. As a result, I have serious problems staying awake all day and during class.

At the beginning of the semester, I was recommended Sominex. The stuff worked wonderfully for the first two weeks. After that, its effects diminished to the point of being worse than before I even started. It also made me feel very drunk.


After that, the doctor put me on a muscle relaxant. It never worked very well at all, and after about a week and a half it had the effect of driving me "bat **** insane"


After that incident, I decided to take something for anxiety/depression, rather than just attempting to treat one of the symptoms of it. I was given Paxil, which did nothing except making me very sick and unable to remember much at all.

Then, I talked to a different doctor who put me on Lorazepam and Buspar. The Buspar was causing serious focus and fatigue issues in the day, and the Lorazepam, while helping me sleep, was causing some very serious side effects (including some short term memory loss). The doctor eventually changed the Buspar dosage to 30MG once a day (at night), and I just stopped the Lorazepam.

Even with all that, the sleep problems continue. Though at least now my insomnia follows a predictable pattern: Go to bed at 11:00, fall asleep at 12:00 - 1:00, wake up at 5:00, then fall asleep during class.


I've been drugged up by doctors for most of my life, and in very few instances has any of it helped me.