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.
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.
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.
That was a life-changer for me.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.