I sleep at odd hours, help!
 

So i've pulled the typical unemployed thing and started sleeping at really weird hours. It's 6:37am right now and I havn't slept all night. Ussually i'll pass out around 9:00am and be out til 5:00pm.

I know it's simply a structure problem. When college is going on this is never a problem (although then I ussually only get around 5 hours of sleep per night).

I'm afraid i'm just looking for a quick fix right now. School starts back up in a couple of weeks, so I just need a solution to tide me over until then.

Anyone have a good sleeping aid, or perhaps some techniques? I know I asked for just a quick fix, but if anyone has some long term solutions i'm sure we'd all love to hear them.

Thanks,

Durr286

Don't have much advice durr, if it were me I would do something, anything to keep myself awake at the normal 9:00 A.M. crash time. You may not make it all day, but try your best. When you do finally play out, you should sleep the 8 hours you have been sleeping during the day. Even if you finally let go at 3:00 P.M., that will get you to 11:00 at night. Eventually you should be able to keep pushing the crashing time back, until things are half way back to normal.

Normally, If my sleep pattern gets disrupted, I'll just not sleep until I would have if it was normal, rather than try to make up for it. I feel worse if I don't sleep well, or long enough, or even too long, so I just find it easier to stay awake for 30 hours, and then get back to normal sleep patterns. But everyone is different, I know a lot of people who could never do what I do in terms of sleep habits.

You yourself said that it's simply a structure problem. Suffer it out, go to sleep at a normal time, and in a few days, your normal pattern should be restored.

Well, I used to do something very similar - I worked 3rd shift in the summer and on some weekends but had school in the morning....

Basically, what I usually did is stayed up until I was "supposed" to go to bed, even if it was only a few hours. If you wake up at 5:00 pm and need to go to bed at 11:00, just take a sleeping pill at 10:30

The reason, however, that I had to do that is because my schedule switched so quickly, it would be better to do it the natural way and just force yourself to stay up as long as you can in order to get your bedtime where it should be.

As far as sleeping pills go, I'd recommend Unisom. It's a tiny little blue pill that knocks you on your ass, but providing you sleep 7-8 hours, leave no ill effects the next day.

I find that a higher-than-normal dose of Benadryl knowcks me out after about an hour. I take a triple dose, which is safe for my size, but I wouldn't reccomend that for you. Try taking three 25mg pills instead of two and see if it helps.

Tylenol PM should do wonders for you. It puts me in a friggin coma

When I was unemployed I used to do the same thing, I'd play video games, watch tv, etc until 4 or 5am sleep a majority of the day wake up around 5ish than do it all again, but I suggest you try to set a routine, I actually started falling into a slight depression, got that taken care of and now I feel great.!

Thanks for the advice. I've taken some of your guys advice and stayed up as late as I could. I got until about 10:30pm tonite. However, I woke up at 4:30am. It's a definate improvement. We'll see how it goes.

Everyone, thanks for the drug suggestions too. I know certain sleeping pills are often not a good thing to blindly take.

I hear ya on the messed up sleeping..I used to werk shift werk..12 hour shifts..2 days on 2 days off 3 days on 2 days off 2 days on 3 days off..

It was 8am to 8pm, one shift was day next set was night, back and forth..

That really messed my sleeping up..I had to basically force my self to go to sleep..as much as i hated it I had to or I was not getting any sleep..

Haven't werked shift werk in 5 years but I still wake up in the middle of the night wide awake..but I really had to force myself to do it..

I'd make myself stay awake till that night..and be so dead tired..that when 9 or 10 came along i had to crash..eventually i started sleeping at night and not the days