I've had bad sleep patterns my whole life, being the uncontested World's Lightest Sleeper, now exacerbated by living with a relatively frequent snorer. My pattern for the past few weeks has been as follows: sleep restlessly if at all and wake up tired. Collapse into bed around 10:30 - 11. Even if sleep is achieved, wake up at 5 or so and find it impossible to go back to sleep. Therefore, become extremely tired and need to go to bed between 10:30 - 11. Rinse and repeat. Not as bad as insomnia so I won't claim I feel your pain but still annoying. Hang in there.

Yeah, I'm a light sleeper, though not as bad as I once was. Also familar with the pattern you mention here, though it's less of an issue post-stroke. Yay!

But knowing my pain or not, anything that screws with your sleep sucks.

Sharon snores, but I like her snores, they aren't too loud.

I suggest valerian too. It won't put you to sleep as such, but it does make those inner voices/thoughts shut up so you can. I use the Blackmores ones. The tablets smell like feet, but they do the trick :)

Apparently going to bed and getting up at the same time each day, regardless of how tired you are or how much sleep you get is supposed to help get your sleeping patterns under control, but I'm not convinced.

And yes, I'm in the "taking more than an hour or two to get to sleep" crew too. I average 45-60min to drop off and wake up at least once during the night, usually 2-3, so my "9 hours in bed" usually results in about 7 hours sleep.

Considering I've seen defintions of insomina that include 'taking more than an hour or two to get to sleep', I've had insomina since I was about 11. But it's been worse the last couple of years - an earthquake saw to that.

Brought to you by 2 hours of sleep. Waiting for the purple monkeys any minute now.

Btw, I want to throw scads of money at you, but need to know how much postage will be for those DVDs.

*need cheeta peopleeeeeeeeeeeeeee*

> Waiting for the purple monkeys any minute now.

Will a gutter monkey do?

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I've been having sleep problems lately as well, but of a different sort. Opening night for the play I'm working for is less than a week away and we still haven't finished at least half of the props and puppets. Some nights when I'm making stuff I allow myself 3 or 4 hours of sleep, some nights I work straight through and get no sleep.

For the TARDIS i went over 48 hrs without sleep.

Damn I hate short deadlines.

> Will a gutter monkey do?

*looks for the purple paint*

I've given up thinking I'll ever sleep well. Broken sleep is my problem. I'm not a fan of sleep these days anyway. Too much time in the past when I spent for 12 hour stretches in bed just because I didn't want to be awake and aware. Sleep feels like wasted time.

I sometimes use non-sleeping stretches as meditation time. But mostly I just get annoyed at it.

It's the frustrating thing that my brain is kicking into gear and getting filled with cool ideas to write about, but when I'm up and about, I'm too tired to do much writing.

You need a pad by the bed or a voice recorder.

sometimes I just have to write stuff. I cannot sleep till I do Usually I wake at 3 am and go back to sleep about 4. Total garbage on Tv at that time, but these days I can waste time doing Youtube. One night I upgraded my computer to an an untried version of Linux. couple of problems, but I kept downloading updates and It settled down. amazing what seems like a good idea at 3.30am. I think you have seen two or three fanzines from those nights, although the weirdest stuff came from Phil and I having three of four milos and going where it took us. good times--don't dare drink Milo these days, afraid of the chocloate in it.