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It's 1:53 am here in wisconsin as I sit and type this, another night in which I cannot seem to fall asleep, I wonder if I might not have a sleeping disorder too. I hear about how some people can fall asleep right when their heads hit the pillows, or after 15 minutes or so.

But I can never seem to fall asleep that fast. No matter how tired I get, it takes me at least 1hr to fall asleep, sometimes even longer, and on nights like tonight, not at all.

Does anybody else here have trouble falling asleep at night?

Yeah! I have had trouble sleeping falling asleep at night for a long time. It took me a long time to get to sleep and I usually woke up tired in the morning, even when I did get some sleep. Dan Grover has some tips for sleeping in the articles section on this site, and I recommend it to those Aspies who have trouble sleeping. I have used some of the tips and they have seemed to help me recently, and I don't seem to have as many sleepless nights as I used to and I am getting to sleep more quickly which I am thankful for.

Hi, Scoots5012,

It's the same hour here in Texas. My brain wanted to go to sleep an hour ago, but I won over just to write yet another post, and then yet another. Talk about obsessions!

I usually have trouble falling asleep, waking up and staying asleep (I wake up several times each night). Recently my sleep became completely irregular: one day I would go to bed at 8 pm, the next day I will be perfectly alert till 5 am, and so on. I attribute this to my discovery of Asperger's Syndrome and associated thoughts (and partly also to neighbor's howling dog, to which I had to call the police). The situation has since stabilized a little, fortunately.

I have one interesting story which demonstrates that the process of falling asleep is governed by many areas of the brain, which can go out of sync. I once went to Europe for the funeral of my grandfather. Time difference is 7 hours and it usually takes me 3 to 4 days to recover from jetlag and switch to local time zone. But I went there only for 3 days and then, while in the process of switching to European time, I returned to the US. My mind got completely desynchronized. Around 4 pm that day my eyes closed, and it was impossible to open them. Yet I remained otherwise perfectly awake until around 11 pm. I thought I would go nuts - during those 7 hours I couldn't watch TV or read, or go anywhere, but I couldn't fall asleep either!

My sleep cycle is messed up right now. I'm normally a heavy sleeper but my cycle is muxed, I've been taking one too many long naps (and not catnaps) mid-day and falling into deep sleeps when I shouldn't. Alas, I'll have to break this cycle!

Ah, I stupidly and recklessly missed the opportunity to fall asleep at 1 am, now it's almost 5 am and no go...

I used to have frequent bouts with insomnia. I'd either not fall asleep or wake up several times in the middle of the night. Sometimes I used to wake up in the middle of the night and go stare out the window at the quiet streets around. It was part of a fantasy I had, of how the whole world was asleep, therefore none of them could hurt me. Sometimes it was like the world was mine.

I think alot of it was unhappiness of where I was, having few friends, etc. I always wanted to find people with whom I could share my interests but never could. I moved several years ago and have made some things, not all, better.

I frequently stay awake at night (or toss and turn) becuase of my insomnia. I don't know if it is due to my RLS or AS though, so I can't really get help for it.

I am not an insomniac, I just have gotten used to being online overnight, thus going to be around 5:00 am. I don't usually have anywhere to go in the morning.

My parents don't like it, but I just turned 27 last week. The more they make a big deal about it the more annoyed and perhaps stressed I become.

Last edited by Tom_FL_MA on 21 Jul 2004, 5:50 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I haven't been big on sleep since I was a little kid, but I don't know if not sleeping makes me an insomniac or not, since I can run quite comfortably on 3 hours sleep per night.

I used to love sleeping, it was like my 'real' life when I was young, later I became a night person, sleeping during the day, then in my thirties I developed chronic sleeping problems, partly because of leg muscle spasms, partly because of stress. Once I had to go to work without sleeping for 6 weeks. Now I'm not working so I just accept that I don't get a lot of sleep. It's ok I spose.

I'm not sure if I'm an insomniac or not, but I usually toss and turn a lot (but just not[?] when I'm dreaming) in bed. I used to sleep with the light on, but one night, I decided to try sleeping with the light off and I stuck to that. If anybody has trouble sleeping, just check out the article about it (by Nuttdan). Here's a direct link to it.

I've read that particular article in question, but that dosen't seem to help me at all. The biggest problem I have is I can't shut my brain off at night when I try to fall asleep. I'll run through a million random different thoughts and visualzations in my mind. The besy way do describe it is when freud would ask someone to name off the first thing that would come to your mind, and when you can't come up with something else, that would be your problem. Well my brain does that same kind of dance, only it never ends.

Another problem I have is when I finally start to come down and begin to reach the point of sleep, my brain starts to misfire. I'll be reaching the point of sleep and all my cells in my brain will fire at all at once, I'll hear a bang of sound and a flash of light, and my whole body will jerk in the bed.

I know everyone else has these too, but I'll have them two or three times a night.

Scoots5012, I don't think that everyone has such sensations - I for sure don't. I obseved several people fall asleep in front of TV, and I never noticed their bodies jerking.

To cheer you up I will add that my brain also does strange things when falling asleep. Not always, but quite often, I experience short but vivid auditory hallucinations, usually a voice or music. Voices could be male or female, and what they say makes sense but appears to be selected randomly. It is as if somebody would turn the radio on, and then off after two seconds. Although these hallucinations have good sound quality, I have no problem distinguishing them from real sounds. They can appear when I am falling asleep and when I wake up. I find them quite cool, actually.

No, some people do get this sensation on occasion. I believe it occurs when you start to fall into a dream right as you are falling asleep- you may either move in the dream or hear a sound in the dream that will cause you to twitch and wake yourself up, because the chemical in your brain that inhibits excess movement during sleep has not yet been secreted. You are also in a much lighter sleep, so it's easier to be woken up. This is also when night terrors occur. I've had this problem a bit, but not nearly so often as you say, Scoots, so maybe you should look into it and see if there's anything you can do. From what I understand, stress and overtiredness/exhaustion can be one of the triggers for this type of problem.




I occasionally get this, as well, but unlike you I find it extremely irritating. I'm not able to tell if it is real or not, because it will sound like someone is playing music in the next room or something. It's only when I put in my earplugs or check the next room do I realize that it's definitely in my head. Fortunately, it doesn't happen very often.

Interesting! I often dream that I fall or trip, and my desire to prevent this usually results in a muscle spasm which wakes me up. But this happens at the end of the dream (probably half of my dreams end this way). However, my dreams are ofren very short and appear just when I fall asleep or when I wake up. I think that your theory of the chemical inhibitor may be valid.


I can usually figure out that my hallucinations are just that, because they are unusually vivid and loud, and also completely out of context. Imagine somebody shouting in your ear "Your brother told Mr. X!", when you have never before heard the name X, you don't have a brother, and you don't recognize the voice. It must therefore be a hallucination! It is somewhat more difficult to determine when such a hallucination happens while I am waking up, as at that time I am usually unable to think straight. Once it frightened me so much that I went into an overload that lasted half an hour and nearly knocked me unconscious. It could have been a real sound, as well.

Bringing back an old thread here.

For all of you currently here at WP, how many of you have toruble falling asleep?