Delayed sleep phase syndrome.

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Wow, that describes my sleep habits very well. If I had my druthers, I'd go to bed around 3-4am and wake up at noonish. I specifically found a second-shift job for this reason. Unfortunately there's been some personnel changes recently and I'm on 6am-2pm for about a month. I am not happy. My coworkers have remarked that I look like walking death.

In theory it's a simple change -- start going to bed around 8pm. I can't do it. Here I sit at 10:54 pm knowing I have to work at 6 am, but I couldn't sleep if I tried. I also had about a three hour nap this afternoon, so that can't be helping.

All that said though ...

I guess this rules me out. I'd be screwed if I physically couldn't wake up at any given hour, due to the unpredictable nature of my workplace.

Oh - yeah - that non 24 hour thing sounds familiar - and so does the unable to wake early in the mornings - lucky for me i work from home - afternoons and evenings...

Every so often the extra hours catch up and i skip a whole nite of sleep completely and start again with a 1am ish bedtime and a 11amish wakeup - which slowly slides later and later - until bedtime is daytime and ya cant sleep - so its time to skip another day

I dont ever plan to try and hold down a "normal job" - i couldnt do it!! !

I guess it depends on what they mean by "adjust." I can force my body to get up for classes and sit there like a zombie through them, absorbing no information and being unable to participate. I can do that every day and within less than a month I start spending hours every day crying. I become more and more ill. I can't eat anything without it tearing my stomach up and I get constant diarrhea, even to the point of publically soiling myself because it gets so bad that I lose control. A couple of months in, I start feeling suicidal. At this point, I'm still getting up for class every day but I'm experiencing "microsleeps" where I fall asleep sitting up, driving a car, in the middle of eating, etc.

So, yeah, I can "adjust" to a daytime schedule, but my life, health, cognitive abilities and eventually safety quickly disintegrate. So I don't know if that fits what they mean by "adjust" or not.

well, i'm up at 4 a.m. and no sign of being able to retire anytime soon.

but i read an article someone posted recently saying night people were smarter, so i'm going to go with that.

i think my circadian rhythm just lives in a different time zone.

For years, I was waking up at 11a-Noon and not going to bed until 2-3a. Sometimes later than that.

It changed this summer. Five days with no computer and little TV, plus a bunch of all nighters and early mornings in a row burned me out. Then I got a job from 6:30a, so I have to be up by 5:15a half the week. Now I'm in bed by 11p most nights.

I wish I were just a night person. That would make things so much easier to just be able to do night work and live within my body's means that way.

This has been for me since I was 5 years old. I sat in the dark in the window sill looking into the street, because I could not sleep and was not allowed to have the light on so that I could read. Elementry School, High School always way late, always punished, always called lazy. After High School I tried to find a afternoon or evening job.... there were none at that time. They pushed me in part time morning jobs "after all it's only a few hours a day, even you can do that" I kept them up for a few days sometimes weeks until all my energy was gone and I became ill. Time after time after time. And still told I was lazy and had no will power.
Now I'm older and even less energy. My husband mutters that he has to tiptoe in the morning. I know. But I still have and maybe even more that terrible hang over and my day is shot when I get up too early, nothing gets done that day.

I've had insomnia problems much of my life, then again I also have restless leg syndrome and occasional akasthesia (probably residual from a history of psych meds in my teens).

I was really surprised though - sleep meds wouldn't work for me but melatonin will.

The other thing, when I was maybe 25 or 26 I noticed that prior to that point I was simply able to push myself out of bed - immediately - at 6:00 AM or 7:00 AM on sheer will without having any problems. After that if I did so I'd feel like something was just about taring in my head and I'd have a really bad migraine for the rest of the day. Consequently I got in the habit of setting my alarm clock maybe a half hour early and waking up progressively over maybe three taps of the snooze button. I haven't really had to test myself recently on this but I'd like to think that the extra sleep I'm getting now with the melatonin is helping to sort this issue out.

I've been to a sleep specialist who suspects my problems have been due to some form of circadian rhythm disorder. I haven't had a follow up yet, because A) I overslept the first appointment and B) I managed to be up so early before the second that I got wrapped up in some things and forgot about it.

Anyway, what he suggested I try doing was to combat the problem of my sleep cycle shifting (ie slowly going to sleep later and later such that I'm awake all night and asleep during the day, then it reverses) was to start taking small doses of melatonin at a fairly early point in the evening, and take slightly increasing doses every so often after that. It goes like this for me:

7pm: 300mcg
8 or 9pm: 1mg
10 or 11pm: 3mg
6mg after that if I'm still up later than 1am.

I had attempted higher does after reading a thread on here about sleep disorders being so common, and that melatonin deficiencies were often a problem. This sounds plausible, as I've been pretty well OK with my sleep cycle staying on track for over 5 months now. I haven't stayed on course like that in quite some time.

How are your dreams doing on that much melatonin? I've been on 3mg for the last four or five days and have had some really bizarre, hectic, and contentually disturbing dreams which they say starts happening for most people at that dosage level. Not to say that it bothered me when I woke up but I'm noticing a fair amount of drag in the morning - thinking about taking it back to 2mg right about now.

Awesome song.

I can say the same; while I was in public school, it would take me a long time to fall asleep at night since I had to go to bed so early (10pm in middle school, earlier in elementary.), and would wake up feeling sleepy all day, even if I slept for a long time. Now I usually stay up till 12am or 2am and wake up between 10am and 11pm, and have much better quality sleep.

I am almost 100% certain I have this. The only criteria I don't meet is "Occasional noncircadian days may occur (i.e., sleep is "skipped" for an entire day and night plus some portion of the following day), followed by a sleep period lasting 12 to 18 hours."

I have pulled all-nighters on purpose before, but this has never happened to me. Although some nights I do feel like I want to stay up all night, and I would if I didn't get bored and didn't have to do school the next day.

I have always been most productive in the evening or at night too.

I was diagnosed with this a few years ago. The doctor gave me melatonin, but it took two months to shift my sleep schedule back. I think part of what helped with the diagnosis was that Ambien didn't do anything for me. I'd take it and still be wide awake at two in the morning.

Right now I'm comboing two things - Melatonin and Lipotrophin PM. A guy in my martial arts class recommended the later, mentioned that body builders take it for its effect of giving deeper sleep with better REM. Seems to work pretty well in conjunction with 3 to 6 mg of Melatonin IMO.