How do you sleep

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Me too, I absolutely hate it. I actually didn't realize this happened to other people until now.

As far as sleeping goes, I'm on meds to make me not only fall asleep but make me stay asleep. It feels like a sedative. Now my sleep is uninterrupted and I fall asleep relatively quickly. Before this, though, it would take me hours to fall asleep, and I'd wake up around 10 times per night. Here's an example of what sleep is like for me without the meds: a couple of weeks ago I forgot to take them, I went to bed at 11 PM, and I didn't fall asleep until 4 AM.

It takes me about an hour to fall asleep. For ages I thought this was normally and it was only when I went to uni that I realised people fall asleep quickly! On the plus side Once I'm asleep it's a deeps sleep for about 6 hours. After that I'm easily woken again, but I'm quite happy with that.

Recently I've seen to hit an odd pattern where my body and mind have disconnected and now my body goes tries to go to sleep before my mind and it feels weird and disturbing and briefly wakes be back up!

Sounds like I was, do you have a link to the article - I would like to see it. I am now on melatonin (quick acting to fall asleep and slow acting to keep me asleep and help me fall asleep quickly after I wake up). I am on a low dose of an antidepressant at night which enables me to relax more which seems to have calmed down my thoughts. And when things in my life result in the melatonin+antidepressant being inadequate for sleep, I use a strong sleep drug for a few nights.

I toss and turn a lot, suffer from occasional insomnia, and wake up often. My wife's hates it.

I hadn't heard that, but it would make sense, as taking Melatonin is the ONLY way I can get to sleep before 3/4/5AM. I usually fall asleep in the middle of doing something, because I can't sleep typically until I'm literally crashing. I often wake up with my laptop open next to me and the lights on.

Oddly, I'm always able to get to sleep when I take a nap in the middle of the day. Also, I tend to fall asleep if I sit on the couch, doesn't matter if I'm tired or not, but as soon as I get up to go to bed, I'm wide awake!

I also have to keep black out curtains on my windows, or else I'd wake up at first light.

To cogs or anyone else who would like a look here are some sites about aspergers/autism and sleeping

http://www.myaspergerschild.com/2011/03 ... sleep.html
http://www.circleofmoms.com/autismasper ... asd-520739
http://asdhelp.wordpress.com/tag/melatonin/

Before, it took me anywhere between thirty minutes to 3 hours to sleep. Now, I just wait until I'm so tired I can't go on, and sleep within 10-20 minutes of going to bed; but than can happen at 10 PM just as often as at 3 AM, or 8 AM, or never. I also have sleep medication, which helps, but it makes me sleepy the next day.

That is really my greatest talent in life. I am the best sleeper I've ever met.

- I can sleep anywhere, anytime (unless someone is having a phone conversation next to me, that is my cryptonite).
- I can even decide when I want to wake up and automatically only sleep that long, so I don't need an alarm clock.
- I always dream, even if I only sleep for five minutes.

I think I should go pro.

Weighted blankets are amazing!

I stopped taking melatonin when I made my weighted blanket.

Other than that, I've taught myself the strict rule that I must always have at least a sheet on me in order to be able to sleep. If I don't have that I can't fall asleep.

Thanks. What they say about inadequate melatonin production fits with my experiences, the first time I used melatonin was the first time I felt sleepy, previously I would just go, go, go until I crashed from exhaustion.

I don't have trouble falling asleep when I'm tired, but I often have trouble getting tired That was a huge problem back in my working days, but now that I'm retired, I just go to bed and get up whenever I feel like it. Some of my days have 40 hours, because I stay up for 24 hours and sleep for 16 hours afterwards.

My doctors constantly ask me if I have sleeping troubles—mostly because of the meds I'm on.

But nope! I rarely have trouble getting to sleep. Most nights it's just lights out, turn onto right side, arm under pillow, and voila! I only wake up if I need to go to the bathroom.

There are, however, different outside things that could prevent me from sleeping. Such as light, or certain noises. I can only get to sleep if I see absolutely NO LIGHT behind my eyelids. It has to be BLACK. And also, beeping sounds or snoring. UGH, I HATE snoring you just have no idea. But, I can get to sleep to music. It's all I could do when I was younger because otherwise I was afraid of the dark.

After a good (or half-good) night's sleep of going to bed at either 10pm or 12am, my internal clock will wake me up around 8am, because on school days I always wake up around 6:30am. In summer when I get back into the routine of staying up even later, I tend to wake up at 12pm.

I have actually on a few occasions though woken up at 7pm after staying up obscenely late.

I have a lot of trouble sleeping and always have. My mom says she used to have to drive me around town in the car as a baby in order to get me to sleep. Something about the movement helped me.

Nowadays it takes me at least 2 hours to fall asleep. I sleep much better under many blankets (right now I am using 5). I also leave the TV on to help me stop hearing my own thoughts. I generally sleep from 4am-11:30 or so.

There are some nights that I sleep for only 4 hours and than some nights that I sleep for 10 hours. My sleep is all over the map. I also go to bed when I'm tired. If I get tired around 7:30, I go to bed than. If it takes me until 11 to get tired, I go to bed than. There are times that I wake up in the middle of my night and than there are times that I sleep all the way through.

I'm NOCTOURNAL. I stay up all night most nights, and go to bed at 11am. And get up at about 2:00, 3:00, 4:45pm. I'm sure it's not because of Asperger's but because of all the stress and pain my parents put me through every day!

Last edited by AspieAshley on 22 Mar 2012, 10:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I sleep on my stomach and under blankets, like my own cave. I tend to be nocturnal. As an adult, I have started to get nighttime anxiety, making it difficult to get good quality sleep without anti anxiety medication. Buspar works nicely.