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I can’t answer the alcohol part of your question Roy but I am congratulating you on your success with SR. What size Sleep Window did you start out at? How long have you been doing SR? How do you manage to stay awake during the day? And evening for that matter? Don/t worry about the one off night. It happens to everyone. How you react to it is the most important thing.
You have to be careful Dragon. Many anti-depressants have a side effect of actually causing insomnia. That’s why many doctors prescribe two drugs. The anti-depressant and a sleep aid, like a Benzo, to counteract the insomnia that the anti-depressant causes.
I have tried them all. 3 5 and 10mg extended release and 3mg regular. Hangover effect was the same.
I doubt it damages it. We are just stressed because we can’t sleep and the more we can’t sleep, we stress. It’s a vicious circle.
Rion,
Yes, I have had insomnia since October of last year. It sucks to say the least. Especially when I remember that just a year ago, I was still functioning normally and doing anything I felt like doing. Like sleeping when I wanted to. Mine was triggered by stress including a divorce, surgery, expensive truck repair bill and the death of a family pet. I guess emotionally, it was too hard to handle all of those within a relatively short period of time. And then by the time I was ready to handle, I had anxiety about not sleeping and the insomnia just stayed with me.
I tried several meds over a period of two months. Most of them just made me more nervous and one of their side effects was insomnia. That’s why a doctor usually prescribes another med, like a benzo, along with the anti-depressant because the anti-depressant he prescribed has a side effect of insomnia. Benzos are very addictive so I didn’t want to take them. And sleeping pills, like Ambien, just never worked for me. I tried Melatonin but the hangover effect was just too much for me.
Hi Rion,
Unfortunately, the fact that you slept a couple extra hours Friday does not mean that your insomnia is ready to end. I have read that insomniacs do sleep some extra hours every third or fourth night in order to get some sleep. I know from my own experience that that is probably true. By now, insomnia is so ingrained in your subconscious that you have anxiety over not being able to sleep. You could try pills but for a lot of people, they don’t work. Also, you have to think of the side effects. The best way to beat it is with CBT-i. Martin can explain that more in detail.
Rion,
You can try taking Martin’s free sleep course here or even his paid one. He is a good teacher by all accounts. Just be forewarned that neither one is an easy course and it could take a couple months to get you sleeping again. Martin should be on here Tuesday or thereabouts and he will tell you more about it.
You can be diagnosed by a sleep doctor. But you can also Google it and get the symptoms online. That should tell you if you probably don’t have it.
Don’t beat yourself up over it Mac. It happens. Today I came home from my Mother’s to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day and started reading a book. Next thing I know, the book is falling out of my hands. I probably lost some hard earned sleep drive there. I don’t know how long I was so sleepy. I should have gooten up out of the chair but was so tired, I just didn’t think of it. Live and learn.
I stopped using prescription sleep aids awhile back Matt. They either never worked for me or gave me fitful sleep for a couple hours. For the time it put me to sleep, it wasn’t worth taking and risking the side effects. I am concentrating on CBT-i but it is extremely difficult.
Yes Matt. It certainly sounds like insomnia to me. If you want to know how sleep restriction or CBT-i in general works, go to the top menu on the page and click on Resources. You’ll find tabs devoted to it. And yes, I also get blurry vision. I now have what’s called dry eyes from it and have to use eye drops. Yes, let’s keep in touch. Feel free to post on here or answer one of my posts and we can do it that way.
Strange SR night last night. I was really exhausted before my third night of doing SR and was looking forward to a relatively good sleep like I got on Night 2. All through the day if I sat in a chair I had to watch it as I might have dozed off I was so tired. Then, when I was watching TV in the evening around 8 or 9 o’clock, my sleep drive just disappeared. It was there and then it wasn’t. I don’t know what happened to it as I didn’t take any naps. I was just watching TV. It was just like I was exhausted and then I wasn’t.The beginning of my SW is 11:45pm. However, I used to go to bed around 9:00pm. I’m wondering if my body still thinks that is my bedtime and the “Sleep/Bed Anxiety” kicked in and made it vanish. Because of that, I didn’t get to sleep until 2:15 and only slept 2 and a half hours. Plus, it was a very fitful sleep with lots of awakenings. I ended up getting up at 4:45 because I couldn’t sleep any more. (My SW ends at 5:15.)
Has anything like that happened to anybody else who did SR? I hear a lot of people telling me how exhausted they are because of SR and I was like that for the first two days. But starting with that incident last night, I don’t feel exhausted anymore. Can a person get used to SR that fast? I’ll see what happens tonight.
@KarenP – Hi Karen. Quick question for you. I am on my third day of sleep restriction tonight. I have read a lot about SR. In your experience, when was the hardest time? First week? 2nd week? 3rd week? And when did you start to notice results? The only thing I am really worried about is doing SR and my job but I have no other choice than to do it. My 1st night I only slept 45 minutes. Last night, I slept for about 4 1/4 hours. But I know it is going to go up and down for awhile.
Hi Matt. I am from New York State. I didn’t do anything to get those hours back. I think I just realized I had insomnia and not some incurable disease and the stress left me some, although I still have stress about insomnia. I have just started the sleep restriction program so I am very tired. I only have a 5.5 hour window to get my sleep and the first night, I only got 45 minutes of sleep. Last night, which was the second night, I got about 4 to 4.25 hours of sleep in. I am really exhausted right now and that is what the sleep reduction program is supposed to do. Make you so tired you sleep and retrain your brain to be able to sleep in your bed again. It’s going to be tough to do this and also go to work this coming week. I now know a lot of my symptoms are from lack of sleep because when I got up this morning, I felt like my old self for a couple hours. But 4 hours of sleep doesn’t last long and a couple hours later, all of my symptoms (the hand tremors, shaking, inability to focus, the headaches) came back again. So I’m presuming if I had a medical condition, I would have felt that way as soon as I got up. I hope I can get more sleep soon to get rid of these symptoms for good. Good luck with your appointment and I hope you start getting better sleep as well, although you are probably going to have to do CBT-i and its sleep reduction as well.
