[Edgar]

So I tried once again to ditch alcohol, which resulted in another night of no sleep. I expected this, but am still a little disappointed. I rode a bicycle for three hours, had just one coffee in the morning, and generally spent a lot of time outdoors.
I went to bed at a reasonable time, and there are no obligations tomorrow.
I got out of bed, did some reading, got a little sleepy, went back to bed, but my fixation with sleep is just too big. Like I’ve said in the past, I don’t really fall asleep, I have to literally PASS OUT.
So I guess the answer is to try again the next night, and that the sleep drive has to prevail in the end? I hope so. I am just so afraid of those horror stories, days on end of no sleep, hallucinations and even psychoses.
It’s just that when I TRY to fall asleep, it backfires, and when I start to get sleepy my brain still doesn’t let me.
I feel like I will end up needing propofol like Michael Jackson.
It’s like I have OCD, anxiety and general insomnia. In fact, I’m nit even sure I have insomnia, maybe just the first two, overfixation with insomnia and anxiety around it.
If I just had plain insomnia, I would be able to nap, I would be able to get out of bed, do something else, get sleepy and fall asleep. This overfixation with sleep is far worse. Like Chee said, my feeling that I MUST sleep at any cost is costing me sleep.
God, it’s so hard.
I can try the free two week course, but I feel it’s for insomniacs, not neurotics like me. I don’t know?

[Chee2308]

As I read your post, I wonder if you ever felt true and pure sleepiness? I have and when I get it, there’s no space inside my head for anxiety, worry, hyperarousal or whatever; the craving for sleep is so intense and I just want to sleep and that’s it. Maybe your frequent alcohol binges to knock yourself out has made you forgotten what it really feels like to be extremely sleepy. Yawning endlessly doesn’t cut it. I think you have conditioned yourself to be this way after years of trying to control sleep and not letting your body decide when it wants to. You know what, have zero rules, go to bed when extremely sleepy and get out whenever you feel like you’ve got enough. My cats do this and seem happy. Nobody is making this any difficult than it has to other than yourself trying to actively interfere in a core biological process.

[Edgar]

Yeah, I am definitely prone to conditioning. Though, isn’t every insomniac kinda like that.

As for true sleepy, I don’t know, the line used to be quite clear. Sleepy at night, and fatigued during the day when I don’t get enough sleep.
I used to be the regular run-of-the-mill kind of insomniac. A bad night leads to overthinking and anxiety, ruins the next few nights until things return to normal. Now with this early morning awakening, I don’t know what I am anymore.
I have tried going back to no rules, and I will try again soon, but it isn’t easy. Being fully awake at times for 40+ hours with no naps or snoozes is literally torture.
There are a lot of issues here, I know. Some anxiety, some OCD, some insomnia. My only wish at this point is the right therapy, a safer alternative to booze, but since a psychologist is out of the picture it will have to be back to no rules, that is the only way. Time will tell.
Thanks for your patience and responses.

[Manfred]

@Edgar – welcome to the club. Struggling with OCD around sleep anxiety.

Check out OCD recovery – website, youtube, instagram, facebook.

All the best

Manfred

[Edgar]

Thanks, Manfred.

[Jodi]

Hi Edgar,

I remember your story and replying to you on another thread and I wanted to update you on what has happened with me in the hopes that what I say might be helpful.

Like you, I have been suffering from “early awakening insomnia” and specifically, I would wake up after 4 or 4.5 hours and not be able to fall back asleep.

I was on two sleeping pills, one in the beginning of the night (I couldn’t fall asleep without one) and one in the middle of the night that I took when I got up in the middle of the night. Long and short of it, I discovered as I have been tapering off both of them, that the sleeping pills themselves were actually perpetuating the early morning awakening problem. My problem started in 2016 when I was suffering from a physical health issue that made it difficult to sleep as well as going through some very stressful life events. I imagine that if I had done nothing, that the insomnia would have disappeared after the initial factors that caused it abated, in other words, within months. Instead, I was put on this stupid medication regimen, which caused it to last 4-5 years. I’m still not out of the clear yet — I still awaken every night in the middle of the night, but I am increasingly falling right back to sleep when I do awaken.

Here is my advice— it seems like you have multiple things going on that is contributing to your poor sleep. I am no psychiatrist nor have I, even as a layperson, talked to you extensively, so I don’t know if you have OCD. I do know, from what you have described, that you in the very least, have a considerable amount of sleep anxiety. You also have a problem where you seem to need both Valium and/or alcohol in order to fall asleep, and you’ve admitted that you take Valium after your early morning awakening in an attempt to get more sleep.

So I think you need to tackle this from multiple angles. You need to get a handle on the sleep anxiety, but keep in mind, as my example illustrates, that decreasing the anxiety is a necessary but not necessarily sufficient factor toward restoring normal sleep. You probably also have to address the substance abuse issue –it’s been shown that both benzodiazepines and alcohol contribute to highly fragmented sleep.

You are probably at this point physically dependent on the Benzos so I would suggest you search out a physician that has the knowledge necessary to assist you with tapering off the Valium (as well as the alcohol). It is also necessary to shift your thinking — you will, as I did, as you are tapering off the medication and alcohol, experience some very bad nights — even nights of zero sleep. However, you need to shift your thinking and think about not what would be comfortable and get you possibly more sleep in the short run, but what would improve your sleep the most in the long run. I realize, that that must be extremely anxiety provoking (anticipating zero sleep nights) esp. when you are working full-time.

That is why I wanted to get back to you now, because as I recall, you are a teacher???? Maybe you could get a start on this process in the summer so it won’t be as difficult or anxiety-provoking as it would be when you have a heavier work schedule.

[Author]

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