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[Sappho]

I'm desperately trying to find information on what might be wrong with me.  I've had troubles with sleep since I was about 5 years old.  (I'm 25 now, in case it matters.)  Mostly this means insomnia - not being able to fall asleep for hours on end regardless of how tired I am, and waking up a lot during the night.  Conversely, once I get to sleep, I never seem to be able to wake up in the morning.  No matter how many hours of sleep I've gotten, I never ever ever wake up feeling rested.  Consequently, I've always been a kind of lethargic person.  Especially as a kid, sometimes I'd get inexplicably sleepy in the middle of the day and drag myself around disoriented for hours - when I was younger, my mother would yell at me on a regular basis, telling me to stop being lazy, but I genuinely just didn't have any energy.

I tried many over-the-counter sleeping aids and was only once able to persuade a doctor to give me a prescription sleep aid (although it was a very weak one), but none of them ever worked for more than one night, and every time I managed to successfully sleep with one of these things, I'd be even groggier than ever the next day.

A few years ago I started having lucid dreams quite regularly.  To this day I am constantly frustrated by how little control I have in these dreams.  Most of them consist of repeated false awakenings - I'm in my own bed in my room and everything seems normal, but it doesn't take long for me to figure out that something is slightly off, like the location of a piece of furniture or my flatmate's hairstyle.  They are very mundane and whenever I try to do something cool like fly or picture someone naked, it just doesn't work.  I manage to wake up, and quickly realize I'm not really awake.  These dreams are extremely vivid, though, and I have a full sense of touch (including pain) which often makes me question whether I'm still asleep or not.  Often I can feel my body in its resting position in my bed, feel the pillow on my face and the blanket on me or the cat sniffing at my toes, and I can hear everything that's going on in the real world.  When I wake up from these dreams I'm usually much more exhausted than I was when I went to sleep.

These dreams have also caused me to realize just how much I dream.  Apparently a normal person only dreams for short periods during the night, alternating between this and the deep sleep which really rests your brain and first beginning after they've been asleep for a while.  Whenever I wake up, I am *always* interrupting a dream, and very often I can actually feel myself fall asleep and feel the dream begin immediately.  This leads me to believe that at the very least I dream a hell of a lot more than I am supposed to, and possibly I'm even dreaming for the entire time I'm asleep.  This would mean I never get that "deep sleep," which would explain why I'm always so exhausted, at least mentally, no matter how many hours of sleep I get.

As I said, I've dealt with this since I was five years old.  Some people suggest to me that it's somehow psychological, but although I didn't win any prizes for "happiest childhood," I also didn't experience anything so traumatic that it would mess with my sleep patterns for the rest of my life.  Little kids are not supposed to have insomnia.

Although I've managed to get by and live a pretty normal life so far, over the last six to twelve months things have gotten much worse.  I'm sleeping even less and dreaming even more.  More and more of my dreams are lucid, and more and more often I'm having the lucid nightmare of being trapped in my own dream - I know I need to wake up soon, but I just can't.  It's like my body is holding my mind prisoner, insisting that I remain asleep so it can get the rest it needs, but in reality it's not even getting it because I'm not sleeping properly.  This is made worse by the fact that I can hear and feel things going on in the real, waking world, so I know I must be close to consciousness, but no matter what I do I just can't wake up.  As I said, my sense of touch works just fine, and pinching myself, biting my fingers, or even slamming my head against the wall is plenty painful but doesn't wake me up.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been starting to hallucinate slightly while I'm awake.  I don't mean seeing monsters or talking to people who aren't there or anything, but if I look at a stationary object it will start to shift or warp, sometimes I can't understand what people are saying or text that I read, and there are often spots and swirls swimming in front of my eyes.  The last straw came this morning.  I am an English teacher (you can imagine how easy it is to be energetic and focused when you haven't slept properly in god knows how long) and my first lesson this morning was at 7:30.  I have to leave my flat by 6:45 to get there in time to set up for the students and begin the class.  I set not one, but two alarm clocks, and they've never failed to wake me up.  This morning I was having a nightmare and struggling to wake up to get away from the zombies and plague and whatnot which were chasing me, but I couldn't.  When I finally did wake up, it was already 7:45.  I missed my first lesson entirely (and will be fined by my school for it in addition to not being paid for the missed class).

This cannot happen again.  I need to figure out what the hell is wrong with me and how to fix it.  I know I need to see a doctor, but my insurance only covers emergency services and, as a teacher, I don't make enough money to pay for any expensive treatment.  I've been told there are a couple of sleep labs here in Prague, but going there is very expensive.  If anyone has any ideas about what the hell is going on with me and what I can do about it, I'd really appreciate any input.  Maybe I could save a few expensive steps by going to a doctor with a clearer idea of what's wrong and asking for a prescription for something directly rather than needing to be observed overnight.

[x2yzh9]

I have the Same problem, except it's much more milder

[smigenboger]

Caffeine and melatonin aid overuse? Rule out any physical self-ailments before going into psychology. Go into psychology before exceptions and pseudoscience.

[x2yzh9]

Yea, I just realized, it started to go away when I stopped drinking so many caffeinated drinks(ie. Dr. Peppers. I used to drink 8 a day but just drink one or two a day now.) Also depression may be a problem. I take anti-depressants and I don't have a problem going to sleep now, whereas before I did. It helps.

[Sappho]

I almost never drink caffeine or take any stimulants of any kind.  Occasionally a coffee or cup of soda in the morning so I can be awake enough for my lessons, but only now and then and never in the afternoon or evening.  The only thing I regularly have before bed is a beer or two, but far from every night and my drinking patterns haven't changed over the past few years, so that couldn't possibly account for the recent massive change (and certainly not for the troubles I had as a kid since I didn't start drinking til I was 18).

I saw a shrink for 14 years by the way.  The only result (and it took way the hell too many years to figure this out) was the determination that I am high-functioning autistic (asperger syndrome) and my mother didn't show enough affection when I was a kid (probably a universal determination by every shrink in the world).  Autism accounts for 90% of the problems and confusion I've had in my life, but not sleep disorders.  They could never find any reason for that other than I "think too much."  I was prescribed antidepressants a few times but they never helped and I always hated the way they made me feel.

I'm not sure what you mean by pseudoscience.  Sleep disorders are a well-documented neurological problem.  I just don't know if I can afford the necessary observation time in a sleep lab to conclusively determine what mine is.  If I were to name anything pseudoscience it would be the psychological nonsense all those shrinks gave me when I was younger.

[Vector]

Autism accounts for 90% of the problems and confusion I've had in my life, but not sleep disorders.

Seriously?  It's been linked to higher cortisol levels and lower cortisol tolerance--stress hormones--as well as a tendency to have disturbed sleep with nightmares, weird sleep patterns (particularly early rising), and so on.  If you've become more stressed recently, that might do it.  I know that under high stress I can wind up sleeping two hours in a night and jumping out of bed antsy and ready to go, or needing to sleep 12 hours straight to feel at all rested--and still waking up tired.  I also used to have pretty bad insomnia where I couldn't sleep until maybe 3, 4 in the morning and kept waking up over and over again when I finally got to sleep.  It can really fuck with you.

You might try meditation, yoga, something like that.  Running can work, too.  I found that just slowing down the unimportant parts of my life and working less at conforming in areas that really didn't need it helped a lot with the nightmares/nested dreams, as did making sure I had something interesting, but calming, to think about before going to bed.  Same goes for not looking at the computer for a few hours before you try to sleep every night, and not eating either.

[Sappho]

I have heard that autistic people sometimes have problems getting to sleep or have nightmares more frequently than average, but I've never heard anything about dreams beginning instantly upon falling asleep or lasting all night, or about a lack of deep sleep that begins in childhood and lasts into adulthood.  Just because I haven't heard of it doesn't mean it isn't true, of course.

I've never had a problem with early rising.  I can't remember a single time in my entire life that I woke up feeling energetic.  Mornings for me (or even waking up after a nap) are hardwired to be cloudy, hazy, and difficult, with every fiber of my being crying out to me to just lie back down and sleep some more, even if I've been out for 14 hours straight.  When I was a kid I used to wake up a lot during the night, but that stopped a long time ago and in recent years my problem has been not being able to wake up.  I do still have trouble actually falling asleep though, no matter how tired I am (unless I've just woken up, in which case it's easy).  It generally takes anywhere from thirty minutes on a good night to three or four hours on a bad night for me to get to sleep.  And if I don't have a reason why I have to get out of bed, I have a tendency to sleep until at least noon, often later, before I can finally get myself out of bed.  Since I tend to go to bed by midnight, this means I'm missing out on a big chunk of my life here.

I tried meditation for several years but wound up frustrated by it rather than relaxed so I gave it up.  I would like to try some form of exercise, especially during the winter when I tend to get that seasonal depression, but a few things keep stopping me.  The biggest one recently is a sprained ankle - I injured it over a month ago (walking down the stairs - yay for athleticism!) and it still hasn't healed, so it's tough to do so much as walk.  The other is a simple lack of motivation stemming both from physical exhaustion (from not sleeping) and emotional exhaustion (from my job mostly) which makes me want to spend the bits of spare time I do have doing something relaxing like watching a movie or playing a game instead of getting exercise.  I know this is a poor excuse, but it can be really tough to motivate myself to do pushups when I've been working from 7 am until 9 pm.

I recently contacted an Aikido school near me which says they can give lessons in English (I don't speak nearly enough Czech to take part in most group classes and activities here).  Unfortunately I injured my ankle just after I contacted them and I have to wait until it's completely healed before I can start classes.  Apparently the injury is severe enough that this could take several more months.  I think this would work better than independent exercise though (as long as I can fit the class into my schedule) because it gives me some accountability.  I've paid for the course so I have to go and do it.

I'm no more stressed recently than I've ever been.  My job can be stressful of course, but so were all the jobs I had before this one.  I'm a pretty calm person overall, pretty laid-back, and the friends I have are all at least as weird as I am and not at all bothered by any variance in my behavior, so there's very little stress over conforming.  I'm not really sure what I think about before bed.  Wondering what I'll dream about sometimes I guess.  Sometimes I probably think about work, double-checking I have everything prepared for the next day.  Often I think about my friends, especially my flatmate who is like my little brother.  I normally spend the last few hours before bed with him (he works until 11 pm most nights) talking and/or watching How I Met Your Mother episodes on the computer with Czech subtitles for him.  This is the only time we normally get to spend together and I can't imagine forbidding computer use before bed.  As it is he often begs me to stay up twenty more minutes so we can watch one more episode before I go to sleep.  And if I don't eat before bed then I go to bed really hungry and I can't sleep.  I don't stuff myself or anything, but quite often I'll have a couple handfuls of musli or a small amount of leftovers from dinner to quiet the rumbling in my tummy.  I've never heard of that causing difficulty sleeping.  Hunger, on the other hand, certainly makes it hard for me to sleep.

Sorry for the wall of text here.  I'm not very good at being succinct.

Something has to change though.  If I continue to oversleep and miss classes, I will eventually lose my job.  Being an English speaker, my employment options are pretty limited in this country, so I really have to do something about this soon.

[smigenboger]

I'm not sure what you mean by pseudoscience.  Sleep disorders are a well-documented neurological problem.

I trust fully that you have a sleep disorder, I mean don't jump to pseudo-science before other things in diagnosing it. As in don't think a lavender candle would fix a PTSD disorder because lavender tends to calm people down.

I can't sleep right after drinking a beer, unless I'm too drunk to begin with, but that's just me. Are you willing to take 4-5 days off of alcohol to see if it affects your schedule? I don't have any experience with Autism, but a former friend who had Aspergers did not have any sleep-related problems.

I was going to recommend exercise. When I work, or if I work out, I can sleep like a rock when I decide to go to sleep. On days where I sit around all day, it's hard for me to sleep.This doesn't seem to be the case for you.

[x2yzh9]

Well, I have Aspergers as well, and some of the things you describe affect me as well, except much more milder. I used to wake up during the night when I was very small as well, and my dreams are..Unique, to say the least. Thinking about it now, a good thing to do that worked for me would be,

weightlifting. I find that this helps me sleep more than just running.
Try and find activities. Ie. some type of sport or..  horseback riding, archery, whatever.
Also, staying off the alcohol might really help.

[Vector]

I have heard that autistic people sometimes have problems getting to sleep or have nightmares more frequently than average, but I've never heard anything about dreams beginning instantly upon falling asleep or lasting all night, or about a lack of deep sleep that begins in childhood and lasts into adulthood.  Just because I haven't heard of it doesn't mean it isn't true, of course.

I don't know about the lack of deep sleep bit, but I do know that some of the people with autism tend to have a lot of heavy-duty, extremely memorable lucid dreams.  The probability of your actually dreaming all night is pretty low, though it may seem like it.  I'm almost wondering if you should use a couple of weekends to experiment with when you wake up naturally, because that will help you figure out how to stop waking up in the middle of dreams.

I'm not really sure what I think about before bed.  Wondering what I'll dream about sometimes I guess.  Sometimes I probably think about work, double-checking I have everything prepared for the next day.  Often I think about my friends, especially my flatmate who is like my little brother.  I normally spend the last few hours before bed with him (he works until 11 pm most nights) talking and/or watching How I Met Your Mother episodes on the computer with Czech subtitles for him.  This is the only time we normally get to spend together and I can't imagine forbidding computer use before bed.  As it is he often begs me to stay up twenty more minutes so we can watch one more episode before I go to sleep.  And if I don't eat before bed then I go to bed really hungry and I can't sleep.  I don't stuff myself or anything, but quite often I'll have a couple handfuls of musli or a small amount of leftovers from dinner to quiet the rumbling in my tummy.  I've never heard of that causing difficulty sleeping.  Hunger, on the other hand, certainly makes it hard for me to sleep.

This, right here, might be a large part of your problem.  You don't think about relaxing stuff before you sleep, you keep your mind thinking it's daylight with the computer (seriously, there are loads of studies on this.  They usually recommend having it off for a full three hours before you go to sleep, IIRC).  Plus, when you eat stuff soon before bed, that starts up your metabolism again and tells your brain "Okay, we're going to be doing more of that moving around stuff."

Dunno, man.  Good luck.

[Sappho]

Thanks for the tips so far. I'm still trying to figure things out.

I have experimented on weekends to find out when I wake up naturally.  The answer seems to be: I don't.  I sleep until something wakes me up.  I think my record is something like 15 hours before construction noise outside got me up around 3 pm.

I can't imagine not using the computer before bed.  It's the only real time I get to myself, and watching shows with my flatmate is a big chunk of my social life.  I don't know what else I would do with that time.

As for eating, I've never really believed that idea that eating before bed keeps you awake or gives you nightmares.  Maybe for some people, but...  If eating keeps you awake, why does overeating make you sleepy?  I present my entire family, which passes out from overeating every Thanksgiving, as evidence of this.  I tend to be sleepier when I've eaten than when I haven't.  Many a night I've lain awake feeling hungry and eventually had to get up and eat something before I was able to fall asleep.

I'm starting to think that my current apartment is a big part of the problem (or at least its recent worsening).  I'm living in a basement apartment now because I can't afford anything better.  (I'm seriously incredibly broke.)  There is a window in my room but it opens into a ventilation shaft.  It does get brighter in my room when the sun comes up, but except in the middle of summer, no direct sunlight enters the room.  And in the rest of the apartment, no light comes through at all.  It's artificial light all day.  Now, during the week, I'm often not home until after dark anyway, but on the weekends I often stay in all day in artificial light.  I know this isn't helping matters.  There's also a problem with damp air down there (which will be alleviated when we finally turn on the heaters, but since all we have are electric space heaters and they're massively expensive to run, we're waiting until it's frigid cold - right now it's averaging around 17 degrees during the day, which is uncomfortable but not unhealthy).  I have mild asthma and pretty bad allergies, so that's probably not helping either.

I'd love to move out of this place and into somewhere healthier, but I don't see how I can.  I just don't have the money to live anywhere better.  I'll keep looking for somewhere else that I can afford, but it'll be tough.  Also my flatmate can't move out until he's paid his back rent (he still owes a lot of money and he's only slowly catching up) and I don't know anyone else who's interested in or able to move to a new place, so I'd have to move out on my own - even more expensive and also I don't really want to live alone.  I'd be too lonely and bored I think.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I can make my basement flat healthier and more sleep-friendly?

EDIT: By the way, can anyone give me some examples of these "calming" things you think about before sleep?  I can't come up with any ideas for stuff I could think about.  The most successful thing to think about in terms of actually falling asleep seems to be video games.  I imagine my perfect game or think about one that I play a lot and enjoy, and it seems to put me closer to dream-mode, which in turn makes it easier to sleep.

[Vector]

I usually play around with math problems or think up story details--usually I invent characters, or something like that.  Sometimes I play music to myself or think about practicing some physical activity (martial arts, violin practice, cooking, whatever).  It's just about using the imagination.

[Ricky]

As for eating, I've never really believed that idea that eating before bed keeps you awake or gives you nightmares.  Maybe for some people, but...  If eating keeps you awake, why does overeating make you sleepy?  I present my entire family, which passes out from overeating every Thanksgiving, as evidence of this.  I tend to be sleepier when I've eaten than when I haven't.  Many a night I've lain awake feeling hungry and eventually had to get up and eat something before I was able to fall asleep.

not much help, but i remember reading somewhere that turkey makes you tired when you eat it.


as for calming things... think about stuff you like, i guess. like you said, i think about games, plans for the next day, or i sing "i'm henry the eighth i am" until i fall asleep. i usually just sing that song lately, though

[Vector]

I present my entire family, which passes out from overeating every Thanksgiving, as evidence of this.

Turkey is full of tryptophan, which makes you pass out and apparently also destroys your mathematical abilities (... according to a teacher I had in high school).

[Sappho]

Yes, tryptophan makes you sleep, but the amount found in turkey is so minuscule that is has no effect.  The reason people get tired on thanksgiving is the overeating - the tryptophan is just an excuse.

I'm off to bed now (man, US time is confusing...) so I'll give some of these thoughts a try. Jet lag isn't helping but we'll see how it goes. Wish me luck!