Trouble falling asleep?

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Is this a symptom of AS? I heard it mentioned before. Since I was a baby, I've had trouble falling asleep. I haven't napped since I was 18 months old. Unless I've gone many days with only a little sleep, it regularly takes me around 2 hours to fall asleep, and if I've been sleeping a lot, it can take 4. Now that I'm in college, I take like Benadryl and non-prescription sleep aids more and more, and I hate it, but it's often the only way can fall asleep even relatively quickly. I hate opting out of activities because I know if I don't get home till 2 or 3, I might not be asleep till 6 AM, and then I'm really messed up sleepwise. It's my overactive mind, I think. To go to sleep I have to think about things until I exhaust myself - I can't keep my mind blank. Does anyone else have this problem? It really sucks, and I'm always stressing about it.

Yeah, the overactive mind...it's like the bane of my existence. I've had pretty much everything that doesn't induce zombie-ness: melatonin (lots), homeopathic stuff, rozerem....Melatonin worked for the first four months or so, then it stopped working (you're supposed to take breaks if you take it regularly), so I stopped it for a while and used rozerem instead, which doesn't work at all. I hope when I go back to melatonin it works, because I don't want sedatives.

You shouldn't take benadryl to go to sleep.

If it's one sense that is causing your overactive mind, you can try to deal with that. I've got hyper-auditory problems, so I listen to music.

I can be awake until 3am-ish, having gone to bed at 11pm, but it doesn't happen every night. If I fall asleep relatively easily I can wake at 4 or 5am, but again, not every night.

As a teenager, my parents despaired - it wasn't unusual to find me cooking a big fried breakfast at 2.30am as I was hungry and bored in bed. Unfortunately I wasn't particularly quiet with the frying pan.

I've given up worrying about how much I do or don't sleep. If I'm awake I read or cook and then go back to bed. If I've had a few days of foreshortened sleep I will take a sleeping pill or else I end up exhausted.

I also sleep-walk, which can be a nuisance, and I have been told that I talk quite a lot in my sleep.

I just don't ever get enough sleep, so it's not a huge problem. Otherwise, it takes me between 30 min - 1 hour to fall asleep.

I'm much the same way. I can't really fall asleep unless I feel like I'm going to pass out, otherwise I will toss and turn for several hours.

I'm on ambien which seems to put me out well enough so I've getting some of my sleep back.

I tend 2 sleep quite a lot n i settle 2 my sleep very quickly once im in 2 my bed fast asleep.

You're blessed if it only takes you 2 hours to fall asleep. If I had to keep regular hours, I would be a wreck because I rarely get tired before about 3 or 4am. Freelancing helps, because I can work according to a night schedule. Not only do I find it difficult to switch off at night, once asleep, I will wake up at the slightest noise. So, sleeping tablets are an unfortunate part of my life.

I work 3rd shift and ever since then I have had a difficult time sleeping. By the time I get home its starting to get sunny out .

Now, I take sleeping pills to enshure I get the sleep I need for the day + demanding job at night.

That's the story of my life. I'm both slow to get sleepy at night and slow to wake up in the morning. When I have to get up early I'm constantly sleep deprived. If I let myself go too long without forcing myself to get up in the morning I can get into a pattern of getting to sleep around 6 AM and sleeping until 2-3 PM in the afternoon. Once that happens it's absolute hell getting back into a morning pattern.

My mind becomes active at night even if my body is tired. Sometimes if I'm sleep deprived I'll be nodding off all day feeling like total crap. Then the strange part is that if I have to do homework or something engaging in the evening the tiredness will pass. Then I won't be able to get to sleep till late yet again. A couple days like this in a row and I'm forced to call in sick and miss work/class. It quickly gets to the point where it's impossible to stay awake in the morning even with many cups of coffee. It's so miserable and maddening.

I've also tried medication. The problem with benadryl is that it's hard to know how much to take. If I take too little it doesn't help me get to sleep at all. Take too much and I feel like I need to sleep 12 hours or more.

I took a low dose of the anti-depressant trazadone before bed for a long time. It knocks me out very quick at first but the effect diminishes after taking it for more than a few days straight. That medication also has side effects that linger into the next day if I take any more than the lowest dose. Now I take Ambien which works better than trazadone. However I eventually get used to the Ambien too (after a couple months or so) and then if I try to stop taking it I have horrible rebound insomnia. I guess the only thing I can do is just use the medication when I absolutely need a good nights sleep rather than all the time.

i have been getting some exellent sleep lately. i think its because ive been so mute

I know that. My mind keeps going and going when I want to fall asleep. It just won't shut up, even if my thought move in circles endlessly.

It took me hours to go to sleep last night... but that might have been the horrid amound of coffee I drank yesterday

Although in fact an antidepressant, Seroquel for me works as a sleeping pill. I HAVE to take a Seroquel just before going to bed, otherwise I will have nightmares and get awake at night several times and by the morning I feel like I did not sleep at all. If I take Seroquel however (the prescribed dose of 150 mg) then I sleep well.

In the past I had other sleeping pills but nowadays Seroquel does the trick for me.

Without sleeping pills of some sort, I cannot sleep well. So in a way I have sleeping problems, but I luckily enough have found a solution for them.

Once Im asleep, I have no problem staying asleep, and I can sleep forever. I don't want to become dependent on sleeping pills because i know I'll never get off them. I can also be tired all day, but once I get into bed, even if my body is exhausted, my mind goes crazy. i think not watching any tv or going on the computer for hours before bed might help, but that's what I do at night and I can't break the habit.

Yes, sometimes I have terrible insomnia. I try to go to bed early (about 8 or 9 p.m.), but sometimes I lie awake forever. I also have three feline alarm clocks who wake me up with regularity at 4 a.m. They are more dependable than any mechanical one.

I find that I have a hard time, falling asleep, sometimes. It takes me an hour to fall asleep. I sleep for three hours, and than I'm up for an hour doing some computer art, or posting on here. I'll get back into bed, after an hour and a half. I'm thinking about taking sleeping pills.

I do not have much trouble falling asleep in itself. My video games and tv however keep me from falling asleep for a few hours. After a time though, sleep gets the best of me and my nintendo DS runs out of battery in my hands while I'm sleeping.

Based on just me, I don't think trouble falling asleep is a side effect of Asperger's. But then again, perhaps it has different effects for everyone.