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Comment by Loughla | Hacker News Reader

So I feel like you exactly identified the long term problem in the same paragraph.

I learned years ago that any chemical that helps you sleep ensures that you can't sleep without it. I've used everything from thc to Benadryl to lavender and everything in between.

It all had the same effects: slowly degrading effectiveness and sleeplessness without it.

Pro-tip: find the source of your insomnia. Is it chemical or is it electrical or is it just habit? Doing a real sleep test and working with doctors was life changing. Mine was habit and anxiety. Meditation and therapy have helped.

Anecdotal, I know. But what happens when the thc runs out? You crash. That's what I did.

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Yeah. I’ve tried. My problem is that 3-4 days of no sleep and I’m just about ready to sign off from this life.

I’ve managed with 5mg THC pills for years. Never had to increase the dosage. I’ve never ever slept well. But back before kids it was easier to just sleep in if I had to.

As best as I can tell, the cause is my adhd or related. My brain will simply. Not. Stop. Racing.

Have you tried exercising (>2h before you go to bed, IME), staying away from screens 4h before bed, and dimming the lights 1h before bed?

That was a life-changer for me.

Having to quarantine in a small sauna house after travelling introduced me to the delights of crappy internet, multiple daily cold river swims, and no real lighting outside of a few candles.

Needless to say I went from awful sleep to going to bed as the sun went down (in summer), and not waking up until sunrise, all in the matter of days.

Thinking back on it, I really should get back into that.

Almost as if we’re not really built to do anything else :)

I highly recommend the podcast Sleep With Me. It’s extremely weird and the guy’s voice isn’t exactly “comforting” the way most sleep-inducing things try to be, but give it a few tries.

It’s basically bedtime “stories” that are more like improvised narrative mazes that are just interesting enough to keep your interest (and exhaust your brain) but not interesting or meaningful enough to keep you awake.

I went from laying awake for hours and hours as a general nightly routine to falling asleep reliably in 10-20 minutes. I didn’t even know it was possible to fall asleep that fast.

As a tip: There’s nothing to “get” about the podcast. It’s just a treadmill for the overactive parts of your brain.

This sounds right down my alley!

> just interesting enough to keep your interest (and exhaust your brain) but not interesting or meaningful enough to keep you awake

Exactly. Back when I read more, I would have books to stimulate (daytime/commute reading) and 'bedtime books', which had to be interesting enough to read, but also effortful and ultimately tiring enough to promote sleep.

Now I do the same with TV shows in Plex, late at night. Unusually, it's the documentaries that stop me sleeping, and the classic US TV shows (that I like) that help me drift away.

I’m loving this podcast. The only thing I wish is that I could turn on an effect to make it sound like he’s on a medium quality FM radio signal as I’m driving.

I used to have the same sleep problem (head won't stop racing), and mindfulness exercises throughout the day have greatly improved things for me. In a way it feels like the ability to turn it down for a time, long enough to get so tired it doesn't start back up again.

One trick I found myself is to visualise things in the noise from your closed eyes. Try to interpret something you can vaguely see, and then try to visualise it. This imposes a kind of clear image for a short duration for me, from which I try to see and visualise something else in there and so on, kind of like a visual association chain. That really gets me sleepy after a couple of minutes!

> visualise things in the noise from your closed eyes

Ooh, the visualization whirlwind. This is the first time I’ve ever hear anyone talk about it or had to give it a name. At least for me it’s just tons of images flashing before my eyes, rapidly changing, only tenuously guided by my mind.

That's a great name!

Imposing the images works for me similarly to when you "can't unsee" something. Like when you start seeing something specific in a generic shape or pattern, like with clouds. I tell myself that I see something, which makes me actually visualise it.

Body scan meditation is one particular form of meditation that I’ve found effective for sleep.

I was in the same boat with the racing mind at bedtime preventing me from getting much if any sleep. I have been a pretty aggressive exerciser but that only improved things part way. I finally got a prescription for a 50mg dose of Seroquel (https://www.drugs.com/seroquel.html) which i was told is an anti psychotic but at the 'low' dose of 50mg i would only get the 'side effect' of being drowsy. It was a lifesaver (literally). At least for me it got me off the no sleep hamster wheel which made just getting through every day such a challenge because i was tired and groggy. Everything felt very difficult to deal with. I got immediate benefit from taking the generic version of this med nightly. Now not being able to fall asleep or waking up in the middle of the night and not getting back to sleep are anomalies instead of normal. I also try to keep a consistent sleep/wake up time so my body is trained to expect these things to happen at a specific time. Obviously YMMV but for me this was a spring board to a new chapter in my life. I'm not super creative so i just called it 'Chapter 2'.

This sounds familiar, I got to a point a few years ago where even if I could get to sleep I'd wake up at 3-4am with every last problem racing around my mind, but have never felt good with any amount of sleep.

In the end I went to the GP for anxiety and came out with a depression diagnosis and a bottle of Lexapro. Lucky for me I didn't get the crazy side effects and in combination with melatonin at least getting to sleep is no longer a problem.

In the past I've also found that deliberately clearing my thoughts is a way to slip from 'day mode' to those dozy random thoughts, but its often hard to remember in the moment and doesn't always work.

See my profile if you'd like to create a tiny support group. I have had horrifically bad insomnia for half a century. At the moment I'm having luck with 600mg gabapentin + 20mg Belsomra but that's only a couple weeks gold.

I'm with you - I have a few hits of some low-grade stuff maybe an hour or two before bed, and then I doze off naturally when it's dark out.

i also eat well, and make sure to not have blue light exposure for the last hour of my day.

But what really helped me, especially since I have crazy ADHD, is exercise. I lift when I get up, and do 1-2 hours of hard HIIT in the evenings after work. My body is absolutely shot by the time I'm done so I really don't have the energy to have my brain go all over the place. This coupled with a nice cold plunge in the evenings after said workouts (and another cold shower before I sleep), and good nutrition has helped me big time.

The THC does help, especially if I do it at the right time. If I smoke in the afternoons I am absolutely destroyed by sundown. I do fear it's creating an addiction or a physical dependence, but I value my sleep considerably.

Getting to the source certainly sounds ideal, but I wonder - if you find a variety of substances help though develop tolerance, couldn't you rotate them to try and keep them effective?

> any chemical that helps you sleep ensures that you can't sleep without it

Except melatonin, because that's what your body natural produces as a signal for sleep.

I’m getting a kick out of how this is the same “because” for every drug that becomes a dependency for the exact same reason

Not really. Melatonin has decades of long-term studies behind it, no serious issues. The biggest problems are dosing. Many supplements include way too much.

it wasn't a rebuttal, it was an observation

do people really not know how to debate anymore? your argument would get an F at Harvard Debate Club because of the strength of your argument, not the accuracy of it.

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