The wretchedness of insomnia

[pochercoaster]

So, I haven't slept in about 8 days.

I don't mean I've had a few nights of fitful sleep that were less than 8 hours. I mean in the past week I've at most gotten 3 hours of sleep a night, and many nights I've gotten no sleep. And I am totally losing my mind and don't know what to do besides write about it on here. Maybe this belongs in the 99 problems thread but, eh, fuck it.

I went to my doctor who prescribed me temazepam, which gave me 4 hours of sleep the first time I took it, 3 hours the second time I took it (and took a double dose), and none the third time I took it. It also gave me a serious hangover. Melatonin makes me vomit, benadryl maybe helps me relax a little, alcohol makes me more awake and is bad for sleeping anyways. I see my doctor again on Tuesday but don't know what she can do to help me.

My fatigue is so bad that it's giving me nausea and making it difficult for me to eat; in one week I have lost 8 pounds, and no it was not intentional nor is it something I'm happy about. And I don't think I realized how severe that is until I typed it out. I've lost a pound a day for a week, what the fuck? I've been trying to eat anything I can stomach, when I can, but it's hard; yesterday I spent a long time simply chewing and struggling to swallow saltine crackers. It's not like I'm not hungry either, and my severe reduction in calories is probably contributing to my insomnia, but I find it hard to stomach anything until the early afternoon, when maybe I'll eat a bowl of soup or a bagel and then it seems to sit in my stomach for hours. So I end up going to bed slightly hungry, being disturbed by the gnawing feelings in my stomach in the morning, and then struggling to tame those gnawing feelings.

I have missed 4 days of work this week and I don't think my co workers or bosses feel particularly sympathetic (I know it's frustrating for someone to miss so much work). But they'll say "oh, I have insomnia too; I get maybe 4 hours of sleep a night" and while that totally sucks, I am literally getting none for days at a time. I'm going to try and get FMLA but I don't know if it'll get approved or if it'll get approved fast enough. I am due for a second write up for my attendance, ugh. (Third one is final and anything after that is being fired.)

Earlier this week I did go to work and fight through the fatigue, thinking the physical activity would help me sleep, but it didn't. The last time I was at work I went home after an hour because I was shaking as I tried to slice vegetables.

So this is spiraling into anxiety about my job security. My husband quit his job and returned to school and we get money from the navy for his schooling but we still need my income. We just bought a house and a second car, which is great, but now I'm worried about losing my job and having to find one that pays significantly less than the one I have right now (I am an overpaid retail worker with only retail experience), or is only part-time. Also, I like my job and really don't want to lose it.

With each day that passes I feel terror. What if I lose my job, and then my husband has to quit school so he can support us because I fucked up? I want him to be able to accomplish his goals. What do my co workers and bosses think about me missing so much work (I have also gotten sick and missed a lot of work in the previous 6 months)?

This has been one of the loneliest and most isolating weeks I've experienced in, well, a long time. Staying awake through the night and then waiting for my husband to wake up is grueling.

Okay, so sleep hygiene? I'm working on it. I quit coffee four days ago (I only had one cup a day anyways, but whatever.) I use a bluelight filter on my phone and (inconsistently) avoid watching youtube before bed (this was/is one of my big addictions). My room is cool and dark, my bed is comfortable... and yet... nothing.

It's like I spend all day utterly tired, but when I lie down my brain wakes up, even if I'm on the cusp of relaxation. I'm working on meditation and breathing exercises, which are helping maybe a little bit to calm my mind but it's not enough to put me to sleep. I even tried listening to hokey sleep hypnosis videos on youtube, which relax me until they end and then I'm awake again.

I bounce between the bed and the couch. Initially, the couch seemed more conducive to sleep, probably because I didn't associate struggling to sleep with it, but after a few restless nights that association is starting to form with it too.

You're supposed to get up and read if you don't sleep, but how I am I supposed to read when I'm tired? What the heck am I supposed to do at 3am when I'm awake but sleepy?

At this point I don't know if anxiety is causing the insomnia or vice-versa.

Leading up to the weeks when I started having sleeping issues (in previous weeks I did sleep, but just fell asleep later than usual), I had some frustrations with my life. Namely, my life is too repetitive. It consists of waking up around 11am to get ready for work, which takes me awhile because I'm tired, working from 2:30-10:30, going home, and then probably watching youtube let's plays or something similar until I sleep. (When I actually sleep!) I don't get any sunlight which probably isn't helping. If I'm lucky, I will wake up earlier and run 2 miles before going to work. I know exercise is supposed to help with sleep, but it's out of the question when I can't sleep at all.

I'm an extreme introvert and find going out and interacting with the world tiring unless I'm in a really good mood. Also the reduction in my spending money has made it less appealing to go outside anywhere. But the lack of variety and stimulation in my life might be turning my head inside out.

I spent most of my life until I moved in with my husband on survival mode. The only thing that mattered was that I was alive and eliminating toxic shit/people from my life, which was a lengthy task. Relaxing and fun were something I would experience afterwards. I don't want to go all “first world problems” or “oh look at me my life is so perfect feel bad for me” but I feel like I'm stuck, like I spent so much time trying to construct a functional life that I don't actually know what to feel or do now that I have it. Coincidentally I started having sleeping problems when I moved into my house in May, which I envisioned as the last step in constructing the life I wanted. (I know life is an ongoing process but I kind of have problems with being present in the moment I guess.)

I suppose my subconscious brain's answer is to simply explode in suffering and anxiety.

Or maybe it's just my thyroid and I'll find out when I get my blood work back on Tuesday. I doubt it, though.

If you read all of my rambling up there, thank you. If you have anything to share please offer it. I feel alone and desperate and I'm losing hope that this has an end to it.

All I want is to get some rest and get back to work, and enjoy my weekends.

[mauve]

I'm so sorry to hear you're having these problems, poch. You certainly don't deserve them. That sounds like absolute hell. I wish I could offer better advice.

My mom has thyroid issues too, and she says sometimes when her thyroid levels are off she feels like she's had a caffiene overload. So maybe that's the issue and your doctor can change your prescription.

I hope you get answers soon and are able to find a solution. You're in my prayers.

[rpgdemon]

Okay, time for One Weird Trick.

This will sound like pseudo-scientific drivel if you don't experience it. That said, I'm okay with sounding like a loon, if this could actually help you. It's put me to sleep plenty of times when I was suffering from insomnia.

There is a condition (for lack of a better word) called ASMR. This is a completely nonsense term with no meaning behind it: Auto-Sensory Mediterranean Response, or something like that. If you have experienced it before, the following description will make sense; If you have not experienced it, this may make no sense at all. When someone is explaining something to you in detail, or performing some simple task, but giving it their concentration, you might feel a relaxing/tingling sensation going through your head.

How does this help you? It seriously conks you out. If you experience it, you can go from fully awake and unable to even fathom how sleep (I've had nights where I was laying awake in bed for hours literally unsure how the heck one starts falling asleep) to drooling on your pillow in minutes.

It turns out that people actually make videos to try to put people into that relaxed/tingling/quickly conking out state. Supposedly, these same videos can help people who do not get this sensation to fall asleep. I experience (and I shudder to type this idiotic term) "ASMR" and conk out immediately, so I can't speak for the effectiveness of it for people who don't.

Now here is where I put a huge disclaimer on all of this: There are a lot of seriously creep-esque gross people who are attracted to these, treat these videos as fetish fap material, and get seriously gross in the comment section. Avoid anything at all related to this "community" if you value your sanity. People also make gross fetish fap-ey videos and label them as ASMR-related content, because of this misunderstanding. It is a minefield of gross men out there.

Disclaimer out of the way.

Time for legitimate examples. (They're still super weird and out there though) If they do get you to fall asleep, great! If not, that's all I got for my One Weird Trick, sorry. It's not a sure-fire thing - Cursory googling says only about 2 in 5 people experience shudder ASMR, and even if you do, you may not experience it from any particular video. I personally seem to experience it most often not when I'm looking for it, but when watching some low production-quality tutorial someone put up on Youtube about how to do something, which can be super inconvenient if trying to actually learn how to do something.

Example videos specifically made targeting ASMR:







This guy teaching while doing a sort of casual/slip-shod animating job is an example of what I mean by a low production value Youtube tutorial:



Hopefully that helps - As I said, it's One Weird Trick, and there is an unfortunately high Creep to Normal Person ratio, to the point where I am incredibly hesitant to even bring it up at all, because it's like, you don't want to be associated with the creep contingent at all, even if the thing itself is benign. Incredibly fucking weird, but benign.

[phil_]

All I can say is that, given that sleep is down there with food and air in the physiological part of human needs, not getting any of it is not a First-world problem. Problems that can kill you dead don't go in that category, and the people around you whose thoughtless responses to your problem are making you consider it a First-world problem probably need to practice actually listening to what someone is saying.

Man, that sucks, though. Good luck.

[Bard The 5th LW]

I can't say much about the insomnia other than that it sounds pretty horrible. I will say that melatonin helps me, but you already mentioned that it makes you throw up. Maybe try jogging/something of the sort if the lack of sleep hasn't racked your stamina too badly? =/

All I can say about ASMR videos are that they creep me out. Don't make me feel especially tired or relaxed, but more like someone is whispering in my ear and about to slit my throat or a bunch of spiders are crawling up my back.

[Solid Snake]

It's weird how different people have different triggers for sleep; I tried RPG's ASMR videos and boy, that technique does not work for me at all. The first video actually nearly did make me sleepy until the person running his imaginary poker game placed coins into some container (apparently everyone's 'wagers'), completely waking me back up because the awful sound of coins clanking against stuff is an instant wake-up trigger for me. The second video was disastrous as I actually found myself engaged in criticizing the person's drawing as he progressed. The third video had me engrossed enough in listening to her sleeping tips (as generic as they were), agreeing and disagreeing at various intervals, which had the opposite of the intended effect.

For me personally, I need complete silence -- complete silence -- and complete darkness as well in order to sleep. Even the slightest noises can distract me, let alone conversations or dialogue, which immediately demand some sort of mental engagement from me. The bad news is that, as a light sleeper, even comparatively light sounds from my roommate can wake me from a slumber. The good news is, so long as it's silent and dark, I can sleep anywhere, and get eight hours easy. Sometimes even more than eight hours. I like sleep a bit more than I probably should.

I did, however, suffer from nearly month-long bouts of insomnia triggered by the insane stress of cramming for law school finals two consecutive winters in 2009 and 2010. (Probably posted about it here. It was a miserable time for me.) My mind was working at a hundred miles a minute and I couldn't find a way to shut it off. I had very similar problems -- couldn't eat anything, lost weight (and I don't exactly have much extra weight to lose), perpetually exhausted but couldn't fall asleep for more than two or three hours at a time.

One thing that helped me: Scented candles. While I require darkness -- so much so that I'd even place the candle in such a way that the candlelight was obscured from my vision as I attempted to sleep -- I found that the smell of certain scents (vanilla and pumpkin, as well as candles that emulated the smell of rain or thunderstorms) really made me sleepy. I think a part of my brain subconsciously associates rain with sleep? I can't explain it otherwise.

In the absence of complete silence, white noise machines are also phenomenal in masking sounds and faking your brain into believing it's silent. I now have two white noise machines and run 'em constantly, I think by now my mind associates the sound of white noise machines with sleeping as even listening to it in the middle of the day will make me tired.

Another tip: Engage in sex or masturbation before bed! No, seriously. Orgasms release hormones like vasopressin and prolactin naturally in your body, which is better than taking artificial pills to emulate the same effect, and the released hormones relax you, reduces anxiety levels and makes you sleepy naturally. While the effect is more pronounced in men (hence all the jokes about men falling asleep automatically after orgasming), women experience it too.

Finally, I sleep with a few stuffed animals. (Yes, even at my age.) They're cuddly and soft and hugging them often has a certain therapeutic value, but beyond that, I also think they help me sleep. I haven't read anything that confirms why or how that'd be the case, but it is something I do believe, as on a few trips when I haven't had them with me, I've found it more difficult to sleep. Unless I have my family's dog around -- she seems to have an effect equal to stuffed animals in the sleeping department. I don't know if it'd work for everyone, but as someone who loves dogs, I enjoy having them with me on the bed as I'm sleepin' -- on top of the covers, of course, get your filthy minds outta the gutter. They're cute and cuddly and loyal and noble protectors and also a great source of stress relief in general.

I can't wait until I own my own dog...this thread is about dogs, right? Every thread should be about dogs. Dogs are the best.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Have you tried reading? I often find that is a good way to zone out and eventually drop off, even if you don't intend to. I mean, assuming your concentration levels aren't already all kinds of fucked up after 8 days with almost no sleep that is, but forcing your brain to concentrate on something that doesn't require physical, but mental effort instead and which is also relaxing and un-stressful to get your mind off other problems might be the way to go.

[pochercoaster]

First of all, thank you everyone for your thoughtful responses. I was in a really tough spot mentally yesterday.

I managed to get 4 hours of sleep -in my own bed- last night, which is progress. I realized since that the sleeping pills only work for a few hours at a time it's better to take them sooner to when I want to wake up, so after a few hours of tossing and turning I took one around 3:30, woke around 7:30 and then dozed a bit until 9am. I'm glad I was able to get some rest in my own bed; I needed to know it was possible to rest normally.

The tough part now is not having any coffee while feeling hungover from sleeping pills. Even though it's early in the morning and I could probably get away with it I am not going to have any caffeinne at all, nope. Also making sure that I don't build a tolerance to sleeping pills. :/

Mauve Mage: I'm kind of hoping that my blood work comes back saying "woah you have way too much thyroid hormone so let's cut your supplements down" because that would be an easy solution and I would feel less silly about the whole thing.

RPG: I came across ASMR as I looked up sleep hypnosis videos (they overlap); there are also some fetish videos for sleep hypnosis which I avoided, lol. Anyways, ASMR does nothing for me; to me it's just people whispering about things. In fact, I find whispering irritating because then I start struggling to understand what the person is saying, and that wakes me up more. Nonetheless, I appreciate the suggestion.

_phil: Thanks. No one actually minimized my problems like that except me, though. I am fortunate to be around nice people.

Bard: I do want to exercise but with the way my body is right now I can't. Well, some light exercise, like cleaning up my house, is probably beneficial and what I aim to do today, but anything that's beyond walking is a big nope. Also, I have this weird thing where sometimes exercise makes it harder for me to sleep, even though I only do vigorous exercise in the mornings. IDK?

Snake: I'm very similar to you. I need absolute darkness and silence, and even the tiniest noises or light will disrupt my sleep, but as long as I have those I can usually sleep 8-9 hours.

Not sure about scented candles- at the least, they'd have to be very high quality, because anything that smells even slightly perfumey/fake bothers me. I have a really sensitive nose and can't recall scents ever soothing me- except perhaps the smell of dryer sheets on freshly washed bedding. (I suppose that's an exception to the perfumey scents.)

White noise machines do sound like something worth looking into. Part of the reason I've preferred the couch over the last week is because it has an overhead fan that makes a pleasant whirring noise (though the cool breeze helps too.) However, it looks like they're $30-$40 which would be tough to spare right now.

I've had this weird thing in the last month where music gets REALLY stuck in my head. I mean REALLY stuck, and meditation or visualization techniques or listening to the song all the way through usually don't work at un-sticking it. It's gotten to the point where I avoid listening to music that is even slightly catchy because I'm afraid of it getting into my head for the next 12 hours, and it's most pronounced at bedtime. White noise helps with this a little bit, though, as do sleeping pills.

I'm not a fan of clutter in my bed, so usually a cuddly blanket does it for me. But, yes, dogs are awesome. Right now I'm a fan of the Shiba Inu, though I wouldn't own one because they are for more experienced dog owners/trainers. Erick and I are looking into getting a cat when we have the extra funds.

OT CUDDLY ANIMAL STORY TIME: So when I was a kid I had a cat named Mittens and I was her favourite family member to hang around. Then one day she gave birth (we didn't know she was pregnant) to 3 kittens. Anyways, after the initial newborn phase, at night she would pick her kittens up by the scruff of their necks and put them in my bed, by my feet, as I was sleeping. So the next day I'd wake up to a pile of kittens in my bed. Best way to wake up ever. (Though I wouldn't do that now for fear of injuring them, of course).

Hawk: I find reading stimulating, actually. When I've tried to read to relax I just end up absorbed in the book for hours. Admittedly, I don't read very much and maybe if I found some easy literature it might help. It's almost certainly better than a screen.

BTW, despite explaining why some things don't work for me I still appreciate everyone's suggestions/thoughts. Thank you.

I'm going to try and lead my days as normally as possible, because I'm getting stuck in a cycle of lying in bed/on the couch when I'm "sleeping" and then being too tired to stray far from them during the day. Right now I think that's my best shot, though it's kind of tough with how tired I am.

[mauve]

You might be able to find white noise on youtube, in lieu of a white noise machine.

As for silence/darkness, would an eye mask and/or earplugs help? Since this has been happening since you moved to the new house, maybe there's like a low or high frequency noise you're not used to that's keeping you awake?

As for ASMR videos, I don't find them sleep-inducing, but I do think they're relaxing. There's a few channels of people making do-it-yourself candy kits that are pleasant to listen to/watch-- check out youtuber decocookie.

[pochercoaster]

Youtube was a good idea, thanks. I got some white noise videos favorited; I'll give em a shot.

My house is actually very quiet and very dark, so that hasn't been a problem so far. Well, except sometimes me nieghbour's air conditioner emits a low frequency humming noise, but it's not that intrusive and I think I'm used to it by now.