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Comment by elevensies | Hacker News Reader

Melatonin has made it possible for me to sleep much more consistently which has been a huge help, since I saw Gwern's post on it a while ago.

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Melatonin has worked wonders for me as well. However it's worth mentioning that the 3mg capsules I bought are WAAAY too strong and cause me to wake up with a dry mouth and a headache after a couple of hours of intense dreaming and nightmares. Instead now I split the caps open and take a tiny fraction of the melatonin every night. It takes me a few weeks to go through a single capsule.

Interesting, I take 3 or 6 mg per night about an hour before sleep, I've never experienced that but it does make my dreams more vivid and memorable and I wake up from the occasional nightmare as well.

Trader Joes sells 500mcg tablets.

Plus they're chewable. Probably the most convenient though a tad expensive.

I split the 3mg sublingual tabs into quarters. I often split them again and take part when I go to bed and the other part after reading and getting a bit drowsy. Seems to do some good (N=1 and all that).

I definitely think that if you're taking them under the tongue the doses they sell them in are much too high. Probably make more sense if you're swallowing them.

Melatonin in the us is weakly regulated so its hard to know hoe much, if any, you're getting.

Interesting how different doses affect different people differently.

Melatonin works great for me as well. I take 5mg. Not sure if my dreams are any more vivid than without it, as I've been taking it every night for years. I think I've always had vivid dreams, though I no longer get recurring nightmares (which I had years prior to taking melatonin; not sure when they ended).

Melatonin definitely works for me too. I can take 3/4 mg and have an effect. 3mg and I feel groggy in the morning. Of course, melatonin has been well known for decades.

You should switch to valerian root if you can. It isn't habit forming in the way that melatonin is.

edit: since everybody is asking the same question about habit forming. I am just passing on the information that I got from my doctor. She made this suggestion to me, and it was beneficial to me. Once I had started using melatonin, I would have trouble falling asleep without it. Valarian root didn't cause that issue for me.

I thought that one of the main benefits of melatonin was that it is not habit forming?

Can you elaborate on habit forming? From what I've read it's non-addictive.

Yea, pretty sure you are wrong on melatonin being habit forming. Google says it is not: https://www.google.com/search?q=is+melatonin+habit+forming

Melatonin is not addictive. You can form a psychological habit with anything, but physical dependence is not an issue.

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