Sleep Troubles?

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Deleted since the mods won't lock the "RAGE" thread

I can't sleep at night, just during the day. I could sleep all day if it was possible, but I just can't sleep at night. I don't know why that is. I don't know if I would want to take sleep-aids; I've been thinking about it, but I don't know if I want to.

I went to bed at 12:30 last night, even though I was still wide awake. The only reason I got to sleep at all was because I put on a CD (classical) and put it on repeat. I woke up at 4:30. I thought I wouldn't wake up then, because I didn't go to bed at 10:30 like I usually do (I've been waking up at 4:30 for at least a week). I'm still very alert. It's a little disturbing, really. But I'm paying attention in class and I actually want to do schoolwork and homework! So I guess it can't be all bad. At least it will help my grades. And I don't feel as overloaded as I usually do in school, which is great. I just don't understand why I operate more efficiently on an almost no sleep.

I can sleep OK now, but as a kid and a pre-teen, I had very severe problems with sleep. In fact, I viewed sleep as nothing more than a way of making time go faster. I saw no usefulness in sleep in and of itself.

As a kid, I would take at least an hour to fall asleep. Once actually asleep, I'd sleep very lightly. Any noise, even something as quiet as a creaking door would wake me up and make it hard to go back to sleep. Although more often than not, it was a nightmare that jarred me awake and keep me awake for the rest of the night. In the morning, I'd wake up waaaaay before the rest of my family. I saw nothing wrong with waking up at 5:00 am on a Saturday morning. Needless to say, my parents punished me to no end for waking up so early, but that didn't help.

As a pre-teen, I had a lot of trouble falling asleep. I'd lie in bed wide awake for hours, thinking about how miserable my life is. It's wasn't unusual for me to lie awake the entire night. I was really jealous of people who told me they fell asleep in under 30 minutes, since that seemed unimaginable to me. Fortunately, staying asleep was easier this time, since the nightmares that used to jar me awake ended years ago. Morning wake-ups weren't a problem anymore; I learned to wake up at a "normal" time.

I used to be awful at getting to sleep - I was lucky to sleep before 3 or 4am, and of course I had to get up at 7.30 at the latest for school. I'm generally a heavy sleeper though, so once I was asleep it was OK. I'd frequently still be awake at 6am though - it was soooooooooooo annoying! I do remember one time I finally fell asleep at 8.30am - that was the worst it got though, fortunately. Now though, I tend to go to bed late and I wear myself out during the day, so it only takes 15-30 minutes to fall asleep. Having said that, the tiniest thing knocks my body clock out - I'm an owl anyway (will happily stay up til 3am, but then I have to go because my parents would really kill me if they found out!) But at the moment I'm generally OK. I'm so glad i'm no longer such an insomniac!

I have a very hard time going to sleep and saying that way and I get cranky when tired.
I also overload much quicker. Since the beging of the year I've been on klonopin it seems to help quite a bit. It gets my mind to sleep and not worry about things as I try to fall asleep.

It sure helps to know that others know how this feels.
I've always been a light sleeper but for the last two and half months I have had wild and crazy dreams all night. The worst part is that I will wake up during the night feeling that I am glad that a bad dream is over, then fall back to sleep and the same dream continues!
Some dreams will go on for hours and hours. Most are about me searching for something and I can't find it.
I wake up in the morning feeling tired because my brain has been active all night, I haven't had any deep sleep.

I didn't know the sleeeping problem was so common among aspies, I had trouble with that all my life, couldn't stop thinking, but about a year ago I accidentally found a solution!! ! I spent a couple of months thinking about the same subject every night and from then on all I have to do is lay down, think about that and i'm asleep before 10 minutes, sometimes i'm asleep before 1 minute goes by.

I'm guessing it can work with any subject you choose to think about, but what I do is picture a story, imagine the characters going to some place, saying things and then ideas start flowing slowly and i fall asleep. Next night I pick the story from where I left it and imagine them carry on with whatever they were doing and I fall asleep again.

So next day I try to remember how much I advanced the story the last night and that's how I find out how much time it took me to fall asleep, some days I advance almost nothing at all since i'm asleep quickly and it gets frustraiting to have the story stuck for days so i purposedly keep my self awake until the episode is finished...

I really recomend you try this guys!! Just takes a month or two to get used to it.

Ive had sleeping problems on and off since my teens. Probably a mild insomniac most of the time. It takes me well over an hour to get to sleep. But once i am asleep its very deep, takes quite an effort to wake me.

Water is very useful to drink before going to sleep. It leaves you feeling healthy and scares the bed bugs away for the night.

It was very rare for me to be able to get to sleep before 2am, even when I've been working. Then I'd have to get up at maybe 7am for work, so maybe 5 hours a night on weekdays, which I'd catch up at the weekend.

Now I'm not working, and can go to bed whenever I want, as late as I want. On Monday night/Tuesday morning, I didn't even go to sleep at all. I was told that autistics and Aspies tend to have relatively low melatonin levels - low melatonin levels basically mean less need or ability to sleep. Maybe that explains the sleep problems of some of us.

I even found a Night Time Milk which I bought once, containing melatonin, supposed to help you sleep better. It didn't help me any.

My sleep patterns seemed to be slightly more 'normal' before I started working, though I probably slept later than most kids (to my parents' chagrin), and at university I had problems where I missed 9am lectures and fell asleep in the early morning classes I did attend.

I often try to go to bed early, but my OCD tendencies can keep me up for hours afterwards (often I don't actually get to bed until around 2 or 3 in the morning, even if I aim to get to bed at around 11pm). Once I'm in bed my mind wakes up too, and it doesn't shut up for a while, so that can be a pain.

In the past couple of months I have had some sleeping problems, but now I am starting to wean off of them. What I do now is that I listen to Chill on a DAB radio and read a book for about 15 minutes at the same time. It makes your eyes droop and just make you feel tired. Then I switch the radio off and get to sleep properly.

Something strange has happened to me - not being able to get to sleep before on Sundays. Have any of you had anything like this?

My sleeping troubles have been very severe in the past few years. It doesn't matter how early I go to bed, my brain won't let me sleep 'till around two. When the lights are on, and it reaches, say, 11:00 at night, then my eyes won't stay open; they want the lights off. Additionally, my body aches as though it wants to sleep. But as soon as the lights are off and I'm lying down, then my eyes won't stay shut and my body grows restless, a sort of itch that wants to move even though I feel so achey and tired whenever I do move. Meanwhile my brain won't shut up and won't stop thinking about things, usually things I don't want to think about. It's gotten worse and worse as I've gotten older.

I do sleep but I still feel very tired. I won't sleep if there is up heavel i.e. christmas, easter or birthday. I feel quite tired at the moment.