I have a bit of a problem with sleep and it's really having a negative effect on my life.

I simply cannot fall asleep before 4AM, causing me to wake up after noon. This means that I usually miss the majority of my classes - a bit of a hassle when I need 80% attendance to pass. If my alarm manages to wake me up (a rare occurrence), I'm pretty much a zombie and chances are I won't remember half of the things I do that morning.
I was like this in high school as well, but it was never a problem. My parents would always wake me up somehow and the work was easy, so I could sleep through most of it without worrying about failing.

I've stopped drinking alcohol. I don't smoke. I eat a truckload of fruit and vegetables. I exercise and lift weights. Nothing works.

Doctor figures it's temporary insomnia and gave me a prescription for Zolpidem. Tried it last night. Took it at 10PM. I fell asleep just before 4AM. Got a weird high out of it at least.


Any advice?

I did the same thing when I was in college because it was routine. Going to class was not something I felt I had to do so I didn't get up. Now that I have a full time job I would get fired if I didn't go to work, so I get up and do it. If you actually had to get up at 5am everyday you would be able to go to sleep at night because you would get tired sooner. Right now you're just in a bad sleep cycle. You don't wake up until noon, so you're not tired until 4am. By the time you're rested it's noon and you start the same cycle over.

Thanks for the reply.

I absolutely have to get up before 8am every morning or I am going to fail :blank:

It's not like I party till 4am just because I don't get tired. I'm usually in bed by midnight, but I'll inevitably get bored trying to fall asleep and grab a book.

The doctor also said that I just have to get back into a normal schedule (obviously).
We had a string of public holidays this past week, which resulted in an off week for me, so I decided to try it out. Not that I hadn't before, but I figured I'd give it another try. Also took a sleep log this time.
Thought about writing out the sleep log, but it doesn't translate well to the forum.
Basically, I can get into a normal routine if I don't sleep every second day. And as I mentioned earlier, I'm a zombie on the day that I didn't get sleep.
This 'normal' routine lasts a day or two before I fall back into my 4am-1pm routine.

I have a bit of a problem with sleep and it's really having a negative effect on my life.

I simply cannot fall asleep before 4AM, causing me to wake up after noon. This means that I usually miss the majority of my classes - a bit of a hassle when I need 80% attendance to pass. If my alarm manages to wake me up (a rare occurrence), I'm pretty much a zombie and chances are I won't remember half of the things I do that morning.
I was like this in high school as well, but it was never a problem. My parents would always wake me up somehow and the work was easy, so I could sleep through most of it without worrying about failing.

I've stopped drinking alcohol. I don't smoke. I eat a truckload of fruit and vegetables. I exercise and lift weights. Nothing works.

Doctor figures it's temporary insomnia and gave me a prescription for Zolpidem. Tried it last night. Took it at 10PM. I fell asleep just before 4AM. Got a weird high out of it at least.


Any advice?


You may have Delayed Sleep-Phase Syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome). I'm 36 years old, and I've had this problem ever since I was a teenager. Some people just have circadian rhythms that are naturally shifted forward relative to the norm. I have this in the extreme. If I do not have any constraints on my schedule, I naturally drift to a schedule in which I go to bed around 6-7am and get up at about 2-3pm. On this schedule, I feel great. Lots of energy, good mood, and I can be very productive. Unfortunately, the world doesn't operate on this schedule, so I have to adapt the best I can.

Some common advice that I get (and that people have probably given you) is that you should force yourself to go to bed earlier, and eventually, your schedule will shift so that you can function this way. For me, this has never worked. I either wake up multiple times throughout the night when I do this, or, even if I do get a full night's sleep, I STILL feel tired, lethargic, and irritable the next day. My body just naturally wants to be inactive during certain times of the day.

I've never really been able to fix the problem, so instead, I've managed by scheduling my life around my sleeping pattern. I go to bed as early as I possibly can (usually can't sleep at all before 3am), and I am lucky enough to have a job where I don't HAVE to be at work super early. I can show up at 11am and its all good -- but like I said, I still have extreme sleepiness throughout the day, and I really don't become alert until about 9-10pm. About a year ago, I started taking provigil (anti-narcoleptic drug) when I get up in the morning, and it has helped me immensely. While obviously, drug intervention should be a last resort, but if you simply can't function during the day, you might look into it. Otherwise, I'd suggest that you go to bed as early as you can, and if possible, try to avoid obligations that force you to be up at really early hours.

Thank you for pasting that link, JoeSchmo.

I read the article and my face exploded. I am certain that is what I have.
Going to read up on it a bit.

Some common advice that I get (and that people have probably given you) is that you should force yourself to go to bed earlier, and eventually, your schedule will shift so that you can function this way.


I've heard one guy online say to only go to bed when you're tired, but make sure you get up every single day at a specific time. This guy recommends practicing waking up to an alarm clock until it becomes an automatic part of your routine. I don't know if it will work for you, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to try. I'll link the details if you want to give it a shot.

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-early-riser/

I've heard one guy online say to only go to bed when you're tired, but make sure you get up every single day at a specific time. This guy recommends practicing waking up to an alarm clock until it becomes an automatic part of your routine. I don't know if it will work for you, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to try. I'll link the details if you want to give it a shot.

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-early-riser/

Oh yeah...I've definitely tried all that (I've had this problem for a good 20 years). If I get up early (really early), I'll be tired at 10-11pm, but what happens is, I'll sleep for an hour or two, and then wake up totally wired -- and then won't be able to get back to sleep until 5-6am. Or....I'll sleep through the night, get a good 8-9 hours sleep and STILL feel terrible the next day. Even if I do this day in and day out, I just never adapt. In the same way that shift workers often can't fully adapt no matter what they try, I've learned that while I can improve things, I'll never totally adapt to a normal sleep/wake cycle.

I don't think most people are as extreme as I am however, so your suggestions may work for the OP. He should definitely give them a shot, because they DO work for many people.

Thank you for pasting that link, JoeSchmo.

I read the article and my face exploded. I am certain that is what I have.
Going to read up on it a bit.

Yeah....I've found that I can shift my schedule back about 3 hours max. That means, instead of going to bed at 6am, I can manage to get to bed by 3am, but usually never earlier than that (consistently). If, however, your normal tendency is to sleep at 4am, you may be able to shift it back to 1am or so.....which, if so, that wouldn't be so bad. You could still get a good 6-7 hours of sleep before having to get up (even for 8am classes). Good luck!

Edit: You might also take a look at the link that mustbesix posted. It might help you.....

I also have an extremely tough time setting a consistent bed time before 4 AM. And, like Joe, I can, at most, shift that up a few hours and will naturally shift it back a few if I'm not careful. My mind just does not shut down before those hours -- no matter how little sleep I've had the night before.

My solution has also been to make my schedule work for me. So, I try not to schedule classes before 11:30 AM, so that I get at least 6-7 hours of sleep per night. For the most part, I haven't had to schedule important classes before 1:30 PM. For some reason, my majors (Math and English) rarely have morning classes in the first place.

I don't drink, smoke, do drugs, or party either.

I know that's not a very helpful response, but I can at least say that I understand what you're going through. Good luck, man. :tu:

I've suffered from sleep problems for years.

(long, rambling, and potentially boring story, skip down if you want :))

In high school I started doing double workouts for swim team -- 5:30-7:00am and 3:00-5:00pm; factor in school and homework and I was probably getting 6-7 hours of sleep a night (sometimes as little as 5) when, based on recent studies, I should have as a teenager been getting 8.5-9 hours. Then came freshman year of college and my sleep schedule was destroyed -- my first class wasn't until 12:30pm, so obviously I wouldn't get up until 10:30 or 11:00. I mean, why not?

I started having trouble waking up to my alarm. I went to using 2 alarms. Then I put one of the alarms clear across the room so that I would have to get up to turn it off. That worked for 6 months until my body adapted and I was quite literally able to jump out of bed, shut off the alarm, and jump back in and fall asleep without ever really gaining complete awareness. Quite a talent.

I was having trouble getting in to work by 10:00am some days, although like Joe my company/team had a pretty liberal policy about hours. Still, I would shamble in having not had time to eat breakfast and just sort of try to get through things until lunch came. Making time to eat breakfast, or even just bringing a Clif Bar or something if I was running late was a huge advance in being able to function from 10:00 to 12:00. :D

Eventually I moved to 3 alarms, and finally in a stroke of insanity/genius I decided to put one of the alarms in an adjacent room and CRANKED the volume. That solved the issue of waking up. Trust me, when you have to get out of bed, throw some clothes on, run into the next room and turn the very loud alarm off, you're not going back to sleep (although I avoid my bed at all costs after this, just in case :)). I know all the alarm stuff sounds insane but historically I had extreme difficulty actually making myself get out of bed each morning.

At this point I've been able to establish some normality at least in terms of waking up. My first alarm (cell phone, repeat alarm/vibration, turned up quite high) tends to wake me up. The next alarm is basically just there to say "If you're still in bed, the really loud alarm in the next room is about to go off, so get up". That final alarm is there to make sure I wake up if I manage to sleep through the other 2 alarms. It's only gone off twice in the last 2 months. :tucool:

My big problem right now is getting to sleep on time. I'm not someone who starts to nod off at the end of the evening, and even if I have had a full day I have no problem blowing way past my bedtime and staying up an extra 4+ hours (hence adding sleep/wake times to my goals for the May "100 Challenge").





I hesitate to recommend this because it's a bit extreme, and you have to be careful about alertness if you're going to be driving the next day and so forth, but... here's a trick I learned from a friend if you need to alter your sleep schedule a significant amount, say more than 2 hours. Basically you just stay up one night. I've had to load myself with caffeine, and generally I try to engage in some activity where I won't be tempted to fall asleep (video games work well, movies also if you aren't one to sleep during a movie). You stay up the entire night, and all through the next day, and then you go to bed at your target time the next day. Obviously you'll be tired and feel like crap, and it is imperative that you actually follow through and go to sleep at the appointed time. Again, be sensible, and YMMV, but for me it helped break out of the cycle of going to bed at 5-6am.


I've heard one guy online say to only go to bed when you're tired, but make sure you get up every single day at a specific time. This guy recommends practicing waking up to an alarm clock until it becomes an automatic part of your routine. I don't know if it will work for you, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to try. I'll link the details if you want to give it a shot.

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-early-riser/

My psych professor in college recommended that practice as well; he said to do it for one week and your schedule should realign itself. I've never tried it, to be honest.


Anyway, the usual advice for so-called "proper sleep hygiene" is to avoid caffeine (it can linger 12 hours; some say no caffeine after lunch, others say 4-6 hours before bed, I usually set (my bed time - 12 hours) as the last time I'll have caffeine, unless it's a special occasion); have a dark, quiet, cool bedroom; only use your bedroom for sleeping (ie: don't read in bed); get rid of distractions like a TV (move it out of the bedroom, particularly important if you share a bed); keep a consistent pre-sleep ritual as you wind down for the night; keep a consistent sleep and wake time; don't exercise late ("after dinner" according to some). Lastly, make sure you are actually winding down at the end of the night. :) Anything engaging (internet, video games, TV, etc.) right before bed is generally a bad idea.

Assuming the above is in order, you could try some supplements. I use melatonin (thanks to Bluestreak for the suggestion) to help establish a new sleep time. No more than 3mg a day; I bought a 3-pack off of Amazon of 5mg pills and I just cut/break them in half to get ~2.5mg. I use it only to establish a new time. If you're more concerned with quality of sleep then ZMA can also help.

:gl:

I hesitate to recommend this because it's a bit extreme, and you have to be careful about alertness if you're going to be driving the next day and so forth, but... here's a trick I learned from a friend if you need to alter your sleep schedule a significant amount, say more than 2 hours. Basically you just stay up one night. I've had to load myself with caffeine, and generally I try to engage in some activity where I won't be tempted to fall asleep (video games work well, movies also if you aren't one to sleep during a movie). You stay up the entire night, and all through the next day, and then you go to bed at your target time the next day. Obviously you'll be tired and feel like crap, and it is imperative that you actually follow through and go to sleep at the appointed time. Again, be sensible, and YMMV, but for me it helped break out of the cycle of going to bed at 5-6am.
I did this last quarter, basically trying to invert my sleeping and waking hours (6 AM to 4 PM sleeping to waking with the target being to attend classes in the morning and early afternoon).

After the initial stay up all night, I would fall asleep in the early afternoon at 2 PM and then wake up at about 2 AM. I would be lucid for the first couple hours (e.g. until about 6 AM) and then my function would rapidly drop off such that, by the time school arrived, I was barely capable of learning and absolutely fighting to stay awake. I think I might as well have not been in class I was able to retain so little. Eventually, the schedule starting shifting up, so that I would wake up around 4 AM and fall asleep around 6 PM with a short break in the middle. In other words, since this was winter, I would fall asleep almost exactly when it would get dark, but then I would wake up for a few hours around midnight before falling back asleep until a few hours before sunrise, which is basically a pre-Industrialization schedule and kind of nice. The bad side was that, as I adjusted to this, it started getting harder and harder to fall asleep, as I became less and less tired around bedtime. I would lay in bed longer and longer each night until, eventually, the witching hour gap disappeared and my sleep time naturally shifted back to 4 AM. Throughout this entire period, I only had one wake up time on my alarm clock (8 AM), so, while I would make it to class, the only time I was actually lucid enough to learn effectively was in the middle of the transition.

This had profoundly negative effects on pretty much every aspect of my life -- sleep (obviously), nutrition, training, learning, psychology. I will never attempt this method again.

I did this last quarter, basically trying to invert my sleeping and waking hours (6 AM to 4 PM sleeping to waking with the target being to attend classes in the morning and early afternoon).

After the initial stay up all night, I would fall asleep in the early afternoon at 2 PM and then wake up at about 2 AM. I would be lucid for the first couple hours (e.g. until about 6 AM) and then my function would rapidly drop off such that, by the time school arrived, I was barely capable of learning and absolutely fighting to stay awake. I think I might as well have not been in class I was able to retain so little. Eventually, the schedule starting shifting up, so that I would wake up around 4 AM and fall asleep around 6 PM with a short break in the middle. In other words, since this was winter, I would fall asleep almost exactly when it would get dark, but then I would wake up for a few hours around midnight before falling back asleep until a few hours before sunrise, which is basically a pre-Industrialization schedule and kind of nice. The bad side was that, as I adjusted to this, it started getting harder and harder to fall asleep, as I became less and less tired around bedtime. I would lay in bed longer and longer each night until, eventually, the witching hour gap disappeared and my sleep time naturally shifted back to 4 AM. Throughout this entire period, I only had one wake up time on my alarm clock (8 AM), so, while I would make it to class, the only time I was actually lucid enough to learn effectively was in the middle of the transition.

This had profoundly negative effects on pretty much every aspect of my life -- sleep (obviously), nutrition, training, learning, psychology. I will never attempt this method again.


Interesting. I never tried such a drastic shift (if I'm understanding correctly); I think I did -6 hours max, although the night after not sleeping I would usually fall asleep around 9-10pm, completely exhausted. One time I wasn't able to make it through staying up and ended up going to sleep around 8am. BAD. The entire next day (after staying up) is usually a wash. It's definitely an "expensive" technique, in many respects.

I should also note that I did this on break so I didn't have to deal with school or work. I doubt I'll use it again, 1.) because I think it accomplished what it was meant to the first few rounds, and 2.) it's brutal and just not worth it as a longterm solution. After breaking the 6am cycle I swore I wouldn't let it get that bad again. :)

I have tried that, but I find that the adjusted sleep schedule only lasts for a day or two. I only do it if I have an important class in the morning. Makes me useless for a few days, though.

Seems like today is going to be one of those days. It's 7AM over here. Bedtime for me, but class starts in an hour. Sigh.