New Year's Resolution: "Nothing Good Happens Past 2 AM"

[minoanmiss]

I need to become more diurnal.

My current work schedule is 3 pm - 11 pm. I may change that when I resume job-hunting, but I may not: saying that I can deal with second shift might be a good selling point, depending. At any rate, that's where I am now.

My current sleep schedule is 4am-1pm. This has not been doing well for me; I tend to leave the house an hour after I get up, which is 2pm, which leaves no real time before work to run errands such as lunches with friends, or shopping. I'm really annoyed with myself about all the things I want to do and make and eat that I can't go get supplies for because I can't get out of bed. Meanwhile, I spend half the night staring into the darkness, the Internet my only light, and that burns more often than it balms. Reading stuff online leads to insomnia leads to getting up later. Plus, the later I sleep the earlier in my sleep cycle it is that I get woken up by the rest of the household, which also contributes to getting up later and later.

So. I know what my problem is.

My plan, provisionally, is to back my sleep schedule up to 1 am-10 am or 1am-11am or 2am-11am (I seem to sleep between 9 and 10 hours a night these days but much of that may be because of being woken up and going back to sleep). Getting up around 11 means I could leave the house around 12 whIch would provide plenty of time for shopping, etc, or I could make lunch at home rather than eating out (it takes me awhile after I get up to be able to eat), which would be more economical. I can't read email at work, so I don't think I can make myself not do so when I get home, but maybe I can websurf in the morning when upsetting posts won't upset me so badly.

Now, how do I do this? I can't do the 26-hour-go-round-the-clock thing that takes about a week to drag oneself around the clock to the desired setting. Putting myself to bed early leads to staring at the ceiling while WhatIfs dance between my ears. Maybe a rigorously applied bottle of melatonin? Whatever my plan is needs to be robust enough to withstand the realities of my household and my life.

I would welcome suggestions.

Comments

[julian]

F.lux or equivalent for later night email reading, maybe.

Melatonin tends to give me vivid dreams if I take it for too long, but is quite effective for a week or so. Take it a few (2-3) hours before you need to sleep.

I find Benadryl equivalents of use, too.

Also, warm milk.

[acelightning]

Everybody reacts differently, but I find that I start to get sleepy 1 to 2 hours after taking melatonin. I use it to try to prevent my circadian rhythm from "freewheeling", because when I leave it to its own devices, I just keep staying up later and later. I wish it had been available when I was doing shift work! (Although I was generally all right with the midnight shift - I generally had enough energy left after 8 AM to get some "daytime" stuff done.)

[lilysea]

This is an ongoing issue I struggle with. So, if you find any answers, please share them!

Things that help me:

a) Taking magnesium tablets an hour before bedtime. They are a muscle relaxant, and a very very mild sedative/anti-anxiety. My Dr said to take magnesium citrate as it is much better absorbed by the body and much less likely to cause diarrhea than other forms of magnesium. I take 3 x 150 mg tablets each day - you might want to start with one tablet and see how you go, in case you have a sensitive digestive system.

(For what its worth, I have IBS and cope fine with 3 x 150mg magnesium citrate.)

b) Not watch TV that has any tension, fast pace, action or thriller elements (including the soundtrack!) too close to bedtime, as this gets my adrenalin going. So, if I want to sleep at midnight, no fast paced TV after 10pm.

c) Not read twitter or facebook too close to bedtime, because of the risk of an adrenalin spike. For midnight sleep, 10pm curfew.

d) foam earplugs

e) a really, really dark bedroom - light coming in from outside, or light from devices, makes it hard for me to fall asleep

f) I take a delayed-release SNRI, and I've learned that I need to take it at 8pm every night, because if I take it at 1am/2am/3am/4am Monday night, there is enough in my blood stream to keep me awake til 1am/2am/3am/4am the following night.

g) I haven't tried this personally, but several friends of mine with Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder say taking Modafinil in the mornings really helps them be awake and functional in the mornings. It's a prescription medication.

[darkmarcy]

I don't really have any other advice than second on the F.lux or other screen-dimming app. The blue light from computers and phones is harmful, so if you can't let go of the late night browsing, at least you can make it less straining on the eyes. Here's a wiki article with the official site link at the end.

Leaving the internet awfulness for mornings also sounds good! It's hard though, I usually check various twitters just before bedtime and too often it has bad results.. I try to log off and shut down the machinery entirely before a certain hour. Even if I don't go to bed, I'll do something analogue like read a book or try to doodle. Oh, and write little lists about Good Things of the day.

Best of luck with reclaiming the precious sleeping hours!

[gingicat]

Agreed on the light; I know you love your open window and lacy curtains, but there is an awful lot of streetlight coming through your window.

[vass]

I'm struggling with this myself. It is hard, and a lot of it (for me) comes under the category of "you don't have a problem, you have a solution you don't like."

In your case, I can imagine that after a stressful shift at work you might need three things in particular:
- to eat (not having had the opportunity at work, which is its own issue)
- to reconnect with people you care about and who care about you (having expended a lot of social energy on people who do not care about you)
- to wind down (having been in a high stress environment and now needing to sleep)

Does that sound accurate?

If so, maybe gear your plan around how to get those things without being on the net half the night.

Another thing: like me, I think you probably feel a strong compulsion/obligation/duty/thing to educate/inform yourself about social issues, even when it distresses you. And that clashes with a need to get enough sleep.

If that's the case, can you save those posts/articles/etc for later? Like, make a "no social justice at night" rule? Bookmark them or use Pocket or Instapaper or something?

[cellio]

This all sounds like good advice to me. Especially sticking links in tabs (or similar) for later instead of diving in when it's not a good time. Some of them you won't get back to, and that's fine too. When you have time, you can decide what's most important and start there.

[minoanmiss]

Heh. I was going to reply appreciatively and precisely to your thoughtful comment but right now my brain is vibrating inside my skull from ambient hollering.

hugs you gratefully Thank you for this good advice.

[princessofgeeks]

I would echo the light thing.... Reading from a screen definitely interferes with the brain's wind-down mechanism.

Perhaps you could do your current events/social justice reading once a week, on your day off? I know you love keeping current, but once a week is plenty to be kept up with.

And even go to reading printed books at night, or writing in longhand?

It's crucial to have a wind down period after you get off work... away from screens and stimulating things like politics or action movies. Hot baths and comfort reading instead.

Then maybe you could go to bed by two and get up earlier. Answering emails in the morning sounds like a better time for sure.

Also maybe focus on snacks you can carry with you, if you don't like eating soon after you wake up.

Second shift is hard. I did it for years but never really warmed to it. Good luck!

[redbird]

I use f.lux, with the "backwards alarm clock" option turned on: At a pre-programmed time, if I'm at my computer, it tells me "you're getting up in 9 hours" and, if I'm still there an hour later, "you're getting up in 8 hours." That helps remind me to do my own going to bed stuff, which includes walking away from the computer (and cell phone).

I try to give myself at least half an hour of not looking at a glowing screen before bed. That time can be reading a paper book, or on my non-backlit kindle; conversation or cuddling with someone; doing crosswords (in a printed book, not online); playing Scrabble... basically, something that is neither looking at a screen, nor having lain down to bed with the lights off and closed my eyes with the intention of going to sleep.

I've been thinking of that as useful in terms of not having the blue light right before I sleep, but it may also be giving my brain something other than the what-ifs or deliberately boring numbers to focus on. Deiiberately boring numbers: things I sometimes use to stop the brooding, or the lying awake for long periods not brooding, include counting backwards slowly from 200, and playing with arithmetic like checking which numbers are prime (that starts from memory, and at some point has me dividing 253 by 7), or calculating numbers in the Fibonacci sequence. (I mentioned this recently to a friend whose expression was somewhere between horror at the idea of being expected to do that sort of mental arithmetic and "you're weird, but if it works." Numbers have patterns for me, and are purely arbitrary for her.)

[tibicina]

Similar to the number trick - I mentally sing myself lullabies that I know really well. Bonus points when I can use the rhythm of them to slow down my breathing. It gives my brain something to focus on that doesn't really take up a lot of my attention, but seems to cut down on it instead focusing on upsetting things.

[sabotabby]

I've never been able to adjust my sleep schedule to work hours (which are not as crazy as yours!) but melatonin definitely helps!

[eustaciavye77]

Night mode on your devices helps; it's also better for your eyes.
Are there any scents that make you sleepy? You could make yourself a microwavable "rice sock" neckwarmer and add some of that scent to it. Just the warmer alone might help.

[mdlbear]

I looked into this a week or two ago, to see if I could deal with my insomnia. The most common advice I saw was to get up at the same time every day -- don't sleep in even when you don't have anything to do -- and avoid glowing screens for an hour before bedtime.

The most interesting suggestion was to start out getting a couple of hours less sleep than you need. That ensures that when you finally get to bed, you're sleepy enough to fall asleep quickly. Then gradually increase your sleep time until you're getting enough.

Another suggestion I've seen is not to stay in bed more than about half an hour if you can't sleep. Get up and read something, and go back to bed when you're sleepy. That's especially useful if you tend to wake up in the middle of the night. It sometimes results in my not getting back to bed at all, but that just means I'll fall asleep faster the next night.

[summercomfort]

What I did when I had to adjust from a "wake up ~ 9:30am" summer schedule to a "wake up ~6:30am" school schedule was to first spend a week just forcing myself to wake up between 8:30-9am -- it's only a half hour adjustment, but it gave me a sense of accomplishment ("yay I can wake up before 9am!") and also got my body to start recognizing that I wanted a schedule change (which made me more conscientious about starting to change my bedtime habits.)

Then I scheduled about a weeks' worth of stuff that required me go get up 7:30-8am -- meetings and some such that I can't miss. (Other people are counting on me!! vaguely job-related stuff!) That's an hour jump ahead, and it means I'm slightly miserable the first morning that I do this (since of course I don't go to bed early enough). But my body knows how much sleep it needs, and after a day of planned activities starting earlier, it's just ... more *tired*, so.... bed earlier.

And then it's the week of school starting and pure adrenaline gets me up between 6:30-7am.

I don't know if that's at all helpful???

My husband benefits a lot from not having a screen in bed the hour before he wants to sleep, because otherwise he'd be reading news and wikipedia for far too long. I benefit from *having* a screen in bed before I sleep, because I just check the trashmeme, read what I find, and then go to bed. (I've found that if I make lists of to-dos or check tumblr before going to bed, it makes me stay awake.) So: find a reliable wind-down activity.

Also, if you want to catch up on the internet, but have to choose between food and internet catch-up when you get home ... is it possible to start catching up on the internet on your commute home, via your phone? I have a friend who only checks tumblr on her phone, as a way of restricting her tumblr usage.

[lb_lee]

Not sure how useful it is, but I try to make a rule to be off the Internet a couple hours before bed. (Exceptions are ASMR videos.) And since I can't drag my damn desktop into bed with me, it guarantees I won't be thinking about the Internet while going to sleep. (Seriously, I can't imagine anything less restful. Kinda horrifies me that that's a thing people do, read the Internet in bed. It's a bright fucking glowing screen radiating clickbait and stress and misery! WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO SLEEP WITH IT. HOW IS THAT GOING TO MAKE YOUR BRAIN GO, "Why yes, it is totally sleep and recharge time now.")

--Rogan

[chochiyo_sama]

My niece struggles with insomnia--my sister bought her a weighted blanket and she says it is a miracle cure. She got it from Amazon.

[annonynous.livejournal.com]

The Comments above pretty much cover everything I might have to offer. Still, a few thoughts -

I have one of Lois's bumper stickers - "I get more done after 2 AM than most people do all day!". But then again she was a nightshift nurse. When she had to choose between being a day - evening rotator (Gah!) and a night shifter, she chose the lesser of 2 evils.

The brain has two modes - awake and asleep. There are things one can do to encourage the brain to make the shift from awake to asleep - no planning ahead for the next day, no going back over the day just ending's problems, no protein-heavy meal for a couple of hours and, yes, no blue screen time.

If these and various over-the-counter substances do not help enough, both Lois and I had prescription sleep meds. Mine is quetiapine, which is in the cheapest insurance tier.

Ann O.

[rosefox]

When I stay up until 4 a.m., it's mostly because that's time I get to myself. Everyone who might want anything from me is asleep. It's safe to just do whatever I want to do. (And sometimes I make bad choices for how to spend that time, but part of being an adult is being free to make bad choices.)

When I constantly refresh the internet, I'm hungering for something—the next dopamine hit, human connection, being admired for my wit and cleverness, being welcomed into a community, being cared for and valued.

If similar things are true for you, then your difficulty going to sleep earlier is not really going to go away until you find other sources for the things you get when you stay up late. You can brute-force it for a bit, but that's a patch, not a solution.

Whatever my plan is needs to be robust enough to withstand the realities of my household and my life.

I wish you the very best of luck with this, but you're in an environment that's hostile to rest, so I don't know how achievable it is.

The best cure I found for bedtime what-ifs was a round of SSRIs. The second-best is taurine, 500 mg at a time. (You can get it from any Vitamin Shoppe; I like their store brand.) Be warned that it does make some people jittery, so try it the first time not when you're about to go to sleep, but most people I know who've tried it find it calming. It won't make you sleepy. It just dials down the anxious brain-noise a bit.

Best of luck.

[minoanmiss]

Your reponse is really astute. wry smile

I like the middle of the night when I'm not freaking out about something. I like having the house to myself. I need to remember that if I get up early enough I can (at lest 75% of the time) have the house to myself in daylight.

[med_cat]

Everyone else here already gave excellent advice, so I will just say: best of luck with implementing your sensible plans.

*Hugs*

[minoanmiss]

HAHAHA YOU FAILED..