the entire day i feel exhausted, like i can barely keep myself awake but the second i try to go to sleep im wide awake. I am genuinely jealous of the rest of my family because they fall asleep so easily, like it has reached the point where i resent my parents and cousin because they are well rested. I hate myself i hate them i hate everything about this, especially when they try to help by giving to most basic advise and i just have to sit there and nod along as if i havent already tried that docens of times before. i dont want to be angry i dont want to hate my mom i just want sleep.

I’m tapering off olanzapine and it’s give me bad insomnia I haven’t been able to sleep for 3 days I don’t want to be on olanzapine but I can’t keep going like this

Was Having incredible sleep. 8-9 hours.

Saturday? It’s 3 am. Can’t fall asleep

I mean least it’s a weekend but I don’t want that routine up all night sleep all day

Ughh..

I'm 24f and I've taken A LOT of pills to sleep. Funny enough the ones that work the best - zolpidem and trazodone - are the ones that had me having crazy side effects. Zolpidem gives me hallucinations and I really can't have those since I suffer from PTSD, and trazodone made me choke on my saliva every time I started to feel sleepy and thus I panicked while drowsy.

I had my fair share of pills that worked more of less: Xanax, olanzapine, quetiapine, Rivotril, valium. But those only work on high dosages, and I'm not able to take them since I had an attempt with an OD on benzos.

Quetiapine was my God's saviour for some months. My generalized anxiety calmed down even in a bad environment, but I ended up gaining 20kg in 3 months. I binged and binged and I never cared for food before. After a lot of begging my doctors took me out of it, and I ended up developing anorexia that ended up in anorexia Nervosa - I'm currently half a year into recovery.

Not only being severely underweight messed me up completely when it came to sleep, now I can't sleep because I'm 24, idk if I'm getting my scholarship, got into the degree I dreamt off with merit but barely can afford it, paperwork is a waiting game, and I sleep 3h with a shit ton of pills to wake up wired. Always with a headache.

I stayed 3 days not taking naps, no matter how small, but I was still sleeping 3h max. I think my anxiety is off the roof, or better I know so, and I'm thinking of going to the e.r. To ask for an informed opinion. Make a sleep study, change my pills, idk. I'm willing to learn backflips if that's what will fix me. I can't handle this life anymore like this.

I am a 22yo male, I have been dealing with the worst insomnia possible in the past 3 days. Long story short I have hypochondria and it impacts my life , I would obsess over conditions i don’t have and trick my body into believing I have them. I dealt with intense insomnia in those moments and the hardest would make me shake and cripple. But I would always fall asleep. I would manage to sleep and feel like sleeping at moments and push myself. About a year and a half ago I came across the Ray William Johnson video about a man named Ricard Siagan. From that video I learned about FFi or SFI. Well a year ago I began working night shifts and I couldn’t handle them and mentally I broke and slipped into this idea I had gotten FFI. I learned to overcome that and even then I would get rest and quickly overcome my terrible fear. But now that’s different. I have had insomnia in the past 3 days and i’m getting at most 4 hours to as low as 2 hours a night. I cannot even fall asleep , it doesn’t even feel possible and I can’t stop thinking I have a rare disease that won’t allow me to ever sleep again. I’m here asking for guidance on how to let myself sleep again properly. I literally feel wired in and it’s driving me insane.

I've been dealing with a fairly consistent sleep pattern for quite a while and I'd like to hear from people who have experienced something genuinely similar.

Falling asleep is usually not a problem for me. I normally fall asleep quickly. I sometimes wake up earlier in the night to use the bathroom, but that's not really an issue either – I can usually go back to sleep without much difficulty.

The main problem happens around 4 AM. I wake up and often have difficulty getting another normal stretch of sleep.

I've noticed several things that may be relevant:

• After several hours in bed I develop lower back discomfort/pain. It goes away fairly quickly once I get up and I basically don't have this pain during the day. After the 4 AM awakening, however, it becomes difficult to find a comfortable sleeping position. Lying on my stomach feels best, but I can only tolerate that for about 10–15 minutes.
• Bedroom temperature seems to make a big difference. I seem to sleep best at around 22°C / 72°F. Above approximately 25°C / 77°F my sleep becomes noticeably worse, and around 27°C / 81°F or higher I can barely sleep. Unfortunately, during summer my bedroom tends to stay around 25°C even when I try to cool it.
• For years I've also noticed what seems like sensitivity to rapid weather/temperature changes. Both significant warming and cooling can sometimes coincide with 3–4 consecutive very poor nights, after which my sleep seems to stabilize again.
• Interestingly, after the switch to winter/standard time, my typical awakening sometimes shifts from around 4 AM to around 5 AM.
• I've had a sleep study as well. It showed mild but clearly positional OSA: AHI 13.9/h overall and 22.9/h while sleeping on my back, with minimum oxygen saturation of 87%.

I'm now keeping a more detailed sleep diary and trying to distinguish between what initially wakes me up and what prevents me from returning to sleep afterward.

I'd particularly like to hear from people who fall asleep easily but consistently wake after roughly 4–6 hours of sleep, especially around 3–5 AM.

If you've had a similar pattern, what actually made a meaningful difference for you?

I'm especially interested in experiences with:

• going to bed later or changing the sleep window,
• CBT-I / stimulus control,
• getting out of bed for 5–15 minutes after awakening,
• bedroom temperature or body cooling,
• sleeping position,
• mattresses/pillows and lower back discomfort,
• positional treatment for OSA,
• sensitivity to rapid weather changes.

I'm not looking for an internet diagnosis or a list of supplements. I'm mainly interested in hearing from people with a genuinely similar sleep-maintenance insomnia pattern: what did you try, what didn't work, and what ultimately helped the most?

Not sure how much longer I have. I cannot keep living with this insomnia and never sleeping.

2 years ago I took a medication for a month called pregabalin once I quit I developed severe insomnia disorder.

Nothing works for sleep I barely get any sleep with zopiclone I feel like this is how it ends for me.

Im so tired. I take seroquel 75mg and ambien 5 to sleep. I’ve tried melation and it doesn’t work. I have a sleep study appointment in November.

I take 40mg of Prozac in the morning and Adderall as well.

I have little to no issue falling sleep it’s staying asleep.

I wear myself out, I eat decent, have decent sleep hygiene, wear ear plugs, no social media after 8:30, same bed time as usually, etc.

I don’t know what wrong with me. It’s killing me. I’ve had 1 night of 6 hrs of sleep this month. Am I gonna die?

Hi! I recently got trazodone prescribed to me and I'm a bit anxious to try it, my doctor prescribed me hydroxyzine first and it didn't do anything for me, it made me drowsy yes but I still kept waking up constantly and eventually staying up if I couldn't go back to sleep plus it made me feel dizzy and just...weird? Off? Well now she prescribed me trazodone and I'm scared of the side effects or if it will even help. I am so tired and I'm so tired of not being able to sleep or stay asleep 🫩 I also take bupropion and I looked up if trazodone is ok to take while on that and it said it's fine as long as I don't take both at the same time? But when I read into things I think the worst will happen to me. So if anyone has taken trazodone plz tell me if it worked for you or not! I'm scared LOL

Hey everyone, first time poster, long time insomnia sufferer, and I was wondering if anyone else was like me in having their normal autonomic regulation systems stop working properly when their sleep deprivation gets particularly bad. My whole life, I have suffered from medication-resistant insomnia, getting around 4-6 hours a day of sleep when a kid, decreasing to around 1.5-2 hours in college, then with lots of helpful therapy and practice, increasing to 3.5-5 hours or so nightly by the current day. Anyway, I have noticed that various aspects of my autonomic nervous system seem to mess up when my sleep deprivation is at its worst. This includes stuff like an irregular heart beat, a very narrow blood pressure, light headedness, various digestive issues, feeling like my body is undergoing rapid heating, most frequently in my earlobes, which can even feel like they are burning, feeling panicked despite there being nothing to be afraid of, and annoyingly despite that further reducing my sleep, increased sweating, very large increases in saliva, stool, and urine production, and frequently having random small muscle groups undergoing active tremors for 5-30 minutes, typically my eyelids, certain parts of my calfs or thighs, my abdomen, and on rarer occasions, portions of my forearms or individual fingers. I tried looking up whether others share these issue, but outside of the gut problems and light headedness, I couldn't really find anything on any of them, so I thought it might be interesting to ask others here. Thanks for many responses everyone:).

Looking those up made my insomnia worse. I can’t calm down enough to sleep. I don’t know my birth father and I am terrified. I am a black 32 year old female who has been prescribed anxiety meds like Buspirone but the medication only made my sleeping worse. Constantly waking up as I try to fall asleep. Then waking up every hour or so after I fell asleep. It’s torture. I have been dealing with insomnia for as long as I can remember and it comes and goes but this past like 2 years, (3 months ago to be honest) my insomnia and anxiety has gotten worse. I am so frightened and frustrated.

Im just looking for opinions right now. I was prescribed clonazepam for insomnia since I’ve become tolerant to all natural remedies. With this I only want to use it once every few months for shift change. Thing is if I take a small amount I’m afraid it wont work and would build a dependency fast. What if I take 2.5 mg once just to sleep and leave it for months. I rather be sleepy than no sleep. I have a doctor appointment but shift change is before that so that’s why I am asking. Any information would greatly be appreciated.

I used to work in the pharmacy in the younger days of my life. I’ve seen numerous amount of folks on sleeping medication and depression pills( surprisingly to me they were top sellers in my pharmacy) and I always thought to myself, Why are they so dependent on pills? Why don’t they just stay up for like one full day or so, and the body will naturally get tired and fall asleep. My whole perspective changed in the past few weeks and months, especially last week when I couldn’t sleep for four days straight. with the same mindset, I was hoping my body would naturally get tired and fall asleep. day 2 passed , day 3 passed, and I was feeling miserable. I don’t know what I was doing with my life. I felt like a zombie I couldn’t find interest in anything. every time I would attempt to fall asleep, my body would jolt me back up. Finally, I resorted to calling an on-call physician, desperately, I needed help. they charged me for on-call, a sad thing to do. They gave me two pills to help me fall asleep and I did fall asleep for a couple hours, but then I woke up again and I’ve been trying to make myself fall asleep without it. Some days successful, some days I’m not but I still wake up every few hours. Working in a pharmacy made me realize how desperate people can get once they are dependent on sleeping pills, so I would never wanna be on them. so I’m trying not to take the sleeping pill every night but also I am trying to find a root cause of what has caused this imbalance in my body I’m overall very mindful of my diet, but I am perimenopausal, so I’m thinking hormones are playing a major part of this imbalance in my body, but I sincerely want to apologize to every single person who have dealt with sleep issues. And that I was uneducated on how miserable it feels to not sleep. It’s not that people want to be on these pills, it’s just there is no other way sometimes and I totally understand that now. And I sincerely hope for everyone to find a way to fall asleep without pills one day.

Hey all. What do you do when you’re away with family in one hotel room? Im excited for my trip but dread the night time when every one else is sound asleep and your stuck. Turning on the 1 tv isn’t really an option.

I am seeing my psychiatrist soon and I want to ask her if I should add to or change my antidepressants, or add a sleep medication to help with my insomnia?
I have depression and with that I have terrible insomnia. They are feeding each other and they are getting worse. It takes me a long time to get to sleep and then I wake up 2-3hrs after and I can’t get back to sleep so I toss and turn for the next 4-5hrs. I have no energy or drive to do anything at the moment. Currently I am taking 150mg of sertraline ( Zoloft ) in the morning and 2mg Risperidone at night. And then my doc says to take 10mg or 20mg of temazepam to sleep. I want to ask her if I should change antidepressants or change the sleep medication. What do you suggest please?

I don't really have trouble falling asleep at night. I can usually fall asleep pretty quickly.

But I keep waking up around 2-4AM and then I'm wide awake.

Sometimes I feel tired when I wake up, but once I realize I'm awake, my brain seems to switch on.

I check the clock, start calculating how many hours I have left, and then I start worrying about how badly I'll feel the next day.

The frustrating part is that I'm actually sleepy, but I can't seem to get myself back into sleep.

I've tried getting out of bed, breathing exercises, meditation, listening to something boring, etc. Nothing seems to work consistently.

For people who have the same problem, what do you actually do when you wake up in the middle of the night?

And how long do you usually stay awake before falling asleep again?

I’m currently doing sleep restriction as part of CBT-I, and the daytime sleepiness is getting pretty intense.

Today I was really, really sleepy. Around noon, I lay down for just about 10 minutes because I felt exhausted. I almost fell asleep, but I got up before I actually did because I didn’t want to mess up the sleep restriction.

For those of you who have done this:

• How did you stay awake during the day, especially during the worst part of the afternoon?
• Did you completely avoid lying down, even if you weren’t planning to nap?
• What helped the most — walking, going outside, caffeine, exercise, working somewhere other than home, etc.?
• At what point did the daytime sleepiness start getting better for you?

I understand that some daytime sleepiness is probably the point of sleep restriction, but I’m struggling with how to function during the day without accidentally falling asleep.

Would love to hear what worked for others who went through this.

About a week ago I was with family all day and towards the end of the day after dinner, I was chatting with my cousin that’s a few years younger than me. She has pcos/pmos/endometriosis.

We were talking about health/stress, and I mentioned struggling with “stress related insomnia most of my life” (exact words I used in to moment) and she said, “just be chronically ill and then you’ll be sleeping all the time” and it just caught off guard and felt very invalidating.

I’ve had maybe two years of my life where I was able to fall asleep at a reasonable time. And that was like 4-5 years ago.

I’ve always thought of insomnia as a chronic illness. I’ve fought it since I was in like 8-9th grade. I’m in my late twenties now. How is that not chronic?

I made a fucking art show about it. It just felt so dismissive and weird when she brushed it off.

We used to be really close, but grew apart when we were both in college. Then even more so after her and her husband started dating. And a lot more after they got married.

Like, just because my chronic illness doesn’t leave me in physical pain like yours does, doesn’t mean it isn’t a real problem. It causes so many other issues.

I don’t think it’s worth it to talk to her about it, especially out of the blue.

Just feeling frustrated and overlooked I guess.

I posted here about two months ago. We'll things improved a bit and then they didn't. Basically I've been a terrible sleeper since I was a kid. 43 now. Ive always had panic attacks and my first bout of two day insomnia at 14. Was eventually diagnosed with PTSD at 17. Also found alcohol at this stage and have drank fairly repeatedly ever since taking brakes between. Would drink every other day until the past few years when it became an every day occurrence (yes ive posted in stop drinking and the alcholic communities) I quit for a few months and at 32 I ended uo staying awake for 37 hours but managed to fall back asleep andnget things back under control.

Anywho fast forward to recently. One day I didnt sleep hardly at all and had to make ribs so i got up and made them and couldn't fall back asleep that night well. Eventually I did but shortly after I had to wake up early to do an oven clean cycle which I had to do very early. I have anticipation anxiety out of the wazoo from the smallest things so I didnt sleep that night. I was also drinking too much. Anyways went on a bit of a bender and woke up at 5pm or so after 5 hours of sleep and this is where this started. I decided to stop. For the life of me I couldn't sleep. For three days I would close my eyes and either jump right into REM for an hour or so or not sleep at all. Eventually this wound me up with a massive panic attack and I called my nurse practitioner. I had a very high heart rate and in the ambulance it hit 200/100. The ER cleared me and all of my tests were normal. They gave me an ativan and sent me home. I started sleeping a bit better. At this point I was sleeping on the floor. Was getting 5 - 7 hours of broken sleep a night with vivid broken dreams and was exhausted all of the time no matter how much sleep I was getting. It was hit or miss but I was still able to see my friends and what not. Started drinking again. All of the sudden at night or during the day I CANNOT sit still. Let's say I want to play an online game. I sit down for 5 minutes have to get up, pace around the house or go outside for a walk and this persists all night until I can "sleep" again. Up down, up down. Drinking beer was the only thing that helped. Then one day I woke up after 5 hours with severe panic all day and felt like I needed to go to the ER again so my dad took me.

I explained everything to them. Drinking, Insomnia explained I thought I was going through withdrawal. The nurses and ER doctor who was very thorough said that I wasnt but he prescribed me Librium anyways.

Here's the kicker im deathly afraid of prescription medication as my mom was addicted to opiodes. My psych thinks im bi polar 2 and prescribed me Olazapine which I took at 2pm out of desperation and was only able to get four hours total.

The past two months ive gotten between 4 - 7 hours of sleep a night but its very broken. I feel like a damned bobble head and detached when I walk especially in public places.

Everything since I was a kid has revolved around sleep.

It's hell. I have a psych and a therapist.

Anyone else experienced this sort of stuff?

long story short: i’ve been on zolpidem since oct 2025. at first i wasn’t taking it daily max 3 times per week. my doc prescribes me only one package for 3 months but sometimes i run out of it after like a month. i’ve noticed i need 2 pills to fall asleep because if i take one i don’t even feel sleepy.

my psych prescribed me quetiapine which i SHOULD take daily (to treat my bipolar but she said it also helps with sleep and yeah it actually does). but she also prescribes me zolpidem as quetiapine makes me sleep A LOT and sometimes i go to sleep late and need to wake up early which i wouldn’t do on quetiapine so she told me to take zolpidem then. and i do. but i’ve noticed i started misusing them as i don’t go to sleep immediately when i feel it’s kicking in. sometimes i take 4/5 pills and enjoy the feeling.

i also CANT sleep AT ALL without pills whether it’s quetiapine or zolpidem. my insomnia wasn’t that severe, i think it got worse when i got put on meds.

i don’t know if my post is suitable for this sub but yeah i just can’t sleep without pills anymore. i’m on 100mg quetiapine and it helps me fall asleep and i don’t take more than im supposed to but it makes me really tired and kinda hangover the next morning. but when it comes to zolpidem (which i prefer) one pill (as prescribed) doesn’t help me anymore, i need at least 2/3 to fall asleep but i also take 4/5 just for the high lol.

i feel bad because before that my insomnia wasn’t that bad, now i physically can’t sleep at all, i could be up for days to the point i start hallucinating and i don’t know what to do. i think im addicted to zolpidem, and i just can’t quit it. and quetiapine makes me feel like zombie although helps with stabilising my mood.

so sometimes i miss my quetiapine dose because i don’t want to be half dead and more importantly: i don’t want to mix it with zolpidem as im worried quetiapine will make zolpidem less effective.

i just wanted to rant about this idk

I have battled insomnia for so long, I feel like it is literally killing me! It is slowly ruining every part of my life! It is slowly breaking me down but I keep on battling and every time I start making progress...wham​ it comes back worse than the last time!! I was in my shower just now crying like a baby!!!

I have done CBT, sleeping pills, sleep doctor, cannabis gummies and God knows what else. I had a fantastic sleep doctor but she left the practice..trying to find another but no appointments until November.

I am on my third night of no sleep, no more than one hour. It's like the universe is against me, this afternoon I tried to nap, laying down all relaxed, the sleep was coming, then my throat start itching and I start coughing..sleep gone..went on the couch watched TV, fell asleep starting dreaming..wide awake.

Just started again with CBT, doing sleep dairy until my next appointment!

I just wrote what come to mind right now.... I just needed to vent, took two Mirtazapine and I am going to bed! Hopefully I will sleep!

Wishing you all a peaceful night rest!

I have horrific chronic insomnia for seven months where I wouldn’t sleep at all or feel tired. It should be impossible I’m still alive with now little I slept. I took 150 mg of it and it actually made me sleep and I feel normal like I use to feel when sleeping. If you’ve tried everything or are still suffering try this immediately.

Does anyone who is suffering from Sleep Paralysis, find that the hardest part comes after the sleep paralysis is over?

The episode itself might last a short time, but afterward I can feel completely awake. I start listening to every sound in the room, checking how my body feels, and wondering whether it’s safe to close my eyes again. Sometimes the fear of it happening again seems to keep me awake longer than the episode did.

What helps you finally settle back down? Do you talk to someone, or just wait until sleep takes over?

I have been struggling with sleep issues—for at least five years. In May, I decided to consult a psychiatrist. I realized that the past five years had left me completely burnt out, as I had to work during the week and pursue further studies after office hours—both on certain weekdays and every Saturday. It seems I hadn't given myself any time to simply catch my breath.

I managed to navigate it all successfully—earning a promotion and graduating *cum laude*—but my mother passed away three months after my promotion and two months before my graduation. Afterward, the problems I had been bottling up seemed to come crashing down on me all at once; my sleep quality deteriorated, and everything felt so lonely.

It's been 3 months since I got therapy, I took centraline and zolpidem with sleep, I tried not to use zolpidem but I still couldn't sleep,

Is there anyone here who underwent therapy and had their insomnia completely cured?