Sleeping Problems?
lol
Alcohol is the Panacea for AS not only for insomnia...
I find that it has the added properties of improving my inspiration to make conversation, reducing the discomfort of making eye-contact, making my senses of taste, smell, hearing and touch less intense, allowing me to concentrate much better than usual and relieving depression.
No matter how tired I am, it seems to take me forever just to fall asleep. I move around... A LOT! I can't help it. Once I find a comfortable position, I want to stay there. But after a while it's no longer comfortable and I gotta move into a different position. Also noises and brightness tend to keep me from getting any sleep too. My ideal bedroom would be pitch-black once the lights are off and be completely sound-proof. Also my mind is always racing with random thoughts late at night. And being an artist, I have to resist my urge to draw those ideas and try to get a good night sleep so I can function at work the next day.
Unless I have a job to go or a girlfriend to visit, I do not get up in the morning ... it's not that I can't, it's just that the depression associated with being unemployed, single and unwanted makes oversleeping enormously attractive, since sleep is much more pleasurable state than depressed consciousness.
Indeed. Being unemployed is the most depressing thing there is. When I have the house to myself from time to time, I just don't get up even if I'm awake.
I have always blamed the constant inner dialogue for this lack of sleep. For a long time I thought I was some type of schizo, but now I realise that the voice in my head is my own - but I just won't shut up.
The only thing I can do is use the voice as an internal MP3 player and get it to play music to me. Yesterday I had Radiohead's "I Can;t" on in a loop, today it's Manic Street Preachers. That's not so bad. But some days it's irritating girl pop from off the radio and that's worse than when the internal voice is writing bad poetry to itself at 3am.
Again.... Is this me? Is this an AS thing?
Wow that sounds eerily familiar.
Sometimes like last night, though, the inner dialogue is relatively quiet, no known anxiety is presssing down on me, I'm tired, yet the body won't cooperate.
I think I'll try melatonin.
Alcohol is the Panacea for AS not only for insomnia...
I find that it has the added properties of improving my inspiration to make conversation, reducing the discomfort of making eye-contact, making my senses of taste, smell, hearing and touch less intense, allowing me to concentrate much better than usual and relieving depression.
Alcohol increases my sensory issues. I always wondered why when I got a bit drunk at a concert that things seemed worse for me.
As for sleep I now read one chapter of Harry Potter before bed, take sleeping pills, wear ear plugs and get under a weighted blanket but as long as my mind is thinking it takes many hours to just fall asleep.
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Hi there,
I have always been a terrible sleeper........I have been so tired that I have hallucinated. Being tired does not equate to sleep I have learnt.
I have had sleep studies done in hospital, been taught sleep hygiene so many times I know it off by heart, was almost put on narcolepsy stimulants to stay awake during the day, tried sleeping tablets, anti-psychotics, melatonin, vitamins, minerals, exercise, sleep tea, chinese medicine(which did work well, but couldn't stay on it forever), eating different foods at different times, baths, showers, meditation, breathing and the list goes on. Ridiculous......
At the moment, 2 capsules of evening primrose oil seems to help a little just before bed. Also I put my ear plugs in about an hour before bed to help with my sensory issues. It helps reduce my hyperactive brain a bit as well.
Good luck and take care.
Mics
I used to have major problems falling asleep as my mind would be thinking about one thing and then jumping to another and before I knew it, it was a couple of hours later and I was still awake. I used to think that was just how it was for everyone.
It wasn't until I started taking medication from my pain disorder (anti-seizure meds & anti-depressant) that I actually would start falling asleep about 20 minutes after I went to bed without my mind jumping around. I forgot to take my meds one night and I literally thought I was going insane.
I have had sleeping problems off and on my whole like I think. I have been having them against since November 2008. I sleep off and on and have no bedtime. I stay up all night sometimes and then go to bed and sometimes I just go to bed late. I sleep whenever I am very tired. I once stayed up for 24hrs and m husband said we are not going anywhere because I didn't sleep. He didn't want me to crash. But I was fine and wide awake but within a half hour, I started to feel sleepy. So i went to bed and slept for about eight hours. I just can't stay asleep.
Right now I am tired but I don't feel like going to bed. I just want to stay on the computer.
sleeping probs are da most common maong the asd community, for me Always have, doesnt matter the drugs, the vitamins, the herbal routes, the supplements, the diet changes, the bathes, the back rubs, soft music, the bed time stories, the daily excerise u name it, nothing ever worked... i had to black out my windows and get a thing to block light from under the door, get light therapy, two noise cancelling machines, a fan, a portable heater and portable ac, two weighted blankets, ipod next to ear if needed, one sock on, one sleave on, humidifier, special sheets, special pillow and adding on body pillows, resistance bed sheet, special toe socks, also have nights where my left foot will be freezing cold but my left leg may be extremely hotthat i gotta sleep with a cold pack on my left leg in order to actually rest or ill jus scratch until blood is everywhere or punch msyefl until it goes numb( that happens with my arms and other leg too where one part will be hot or cold and drive me nuts or my ears), so cold packs are a must in our house, and after all of that i can sleep some, as long as i do exercise durin the day and am up msot of the day, if not i gotta rely on benedryl to at least get me drowsy. Sleep StINKS! i wish i had a snooze button on me and jus go click, and im out like a light haha, although knowin me id prob break the button cuz id be obsessed with it, i lvoe buttons lol, either way i know what sleeping problems are. i think it has to do with most on the spectrum because of sensory issues, i really do, i would do anything to cure sensory, id prob be more verbal, more interested in ppl rather then sensory seeking, more less prone to attacking meself, etc, sensory is what stinks!! wow i jsu rambled so ignore the last bit of my post,
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auntblabby
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in my working years, it was impossible for me to sleep on the day before i had to go back to work, i would just toss and turn and have nightmares about work, then just before the infernal alarm clock would ring i would finally sleep a few seconds before the buzzer went off. that was sooooo fatiguing. then after the first full 12+ hour day at work, i would go home and fall asleep before my head hit the pillow, and would be dead asleep until the alarm the next morning.
but after my work years, i sleep literally like a baby, on my own schedule which rotates around the clock- one week i may be nocturnal, the other week diurnal. this plays havoc with my errand-scheduling but otherwise it keeps me in restful no-drama sleep. i am mostly happy with it.
dossa
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Joined: 24 Aug 2009
Age: 46
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,590
Location: The right side of my couch...
I have always blamed the constant inner dialogue for this lack of sleep. For a long time I thought I was some type of schizo, but now I realise that the voice in my head is my own - but I just won't shut up.
The only thing I can do is use the voice as an internal MP3 player and get it to play music to me. Yesterday I had Radiohead's "I Can;t" on in a loop, today it's Manic Street Preachers. That's not so bad. But some days it's irritating girl pop from off the radio and that's worse than when the internal voice is writing bad poetry to itself at 3am.
Again.... Is this me? Is this an AS thing?
Wow that sounds eerily familiar.
Sometimes like last night, though, the inner dialogue is relatively quiet, no known anxiety is presssing down on me, I'm tired, yet the body won't cooperate.
Indeed... it does sound familiar. I am the same way.
_________________
"...don't ask me why it's just the nature of my groove..."
Then I discovered beer.
Nitey-nite.
Same here ... but then I also discovered that drinking too much before bedtime caused me to wake after 3 or 4 hours feeling totally unrefreshed. So then I discovered hashish and zopiclone.
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The panda made me do it.
Well, I had an appointment with my family doctor this morning for an unrelated matter, so I mentioned my lack of sleep to him. He gave me sleeping pills, but as soon as I mentioned my mind racing etc... he also gave me a card for a psychologist. I still doubt I'm AS (see my "stats" below), but it is interesting...
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AQ 29 , EQ 18, FQ 41, SQ 24, SQR 50/150, RDOS 75, ISTJ
I take a medicine called mirtazapine which isn't a sleeping pill but has a side effect of inducing the rem cycle more quickly than normal. So you actually get a better nights sleep. It helps more for people with a mind racing because it clears your mind and allows you to sleep.
I slept for perhaps 3 hours last night. My over the counter sleeping pill might as well of been a tic tac.
Most of the time its my "internal conversation" going over drive that keeps me awake. I stew over a conversation I had or even a hypothetical conversation that could occurr. Stress, I suppose.
On other occassions I am not stressed out about anything that I am aware of, my mind is relatively quiet, and I am tired, but sleep just doesn't come.
Now I'm at work and have to try to get through the day. Uggh.
I've experienced this before, it was the result of taking a prescription medication with a supplement, more specifically Trazodone and Melatonin, which completely botched my sleep study.
If you are taking over the counter stuff with prescription meds, better tell the doctor, those two co-mingling can be the reason behind your lack of sleep. I'm just speaking out of experience.
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