Stages of Insomnia

When you initially start to suffer from insomnia, you try the first line of cures: Tylenol PM, hot tea or milk, over-the-counter sleeping pills, and melatonin. Maybe you try one at a time, maybe you do them all, but if things don't get better, those "cures" start to seem useless.

I'm to the point where hypnosis starts to sound like a possible solution. Probably that's nearly four and a half years of insomnia talking. Tonight I went down the road of reducing light for the hour before bed. I went to the local Target and spent well over an hour in the lamp section.

I may be a child of the 80's, but they don't sell halogen lamps anymore? I wanted a dimmer switch that apparently no longer exists. I started to feel ancient when I asked the sales people where it was. So these days, apparently people use "3 way" lights. Nice name, I really have to say. They're just three different light levels, and use a Type A (again, are these names the best they could come up with...) light bulb. That took about 15 minutes to find the lowest 3 way bulb wattage, and then one with soft white light instead of hard core bright light. I then returned to the lamp post and lamp shade section and spent probably a good 45-50 minutes mixing and matching options until I found two that didn't look totally cheap.

I'm sitting in my condo with all the lights off, and my two new Target lamps at their lowest, 30 watt level. I'm not really feeling as sleepy as I hoped, but I wonder if some of these tips are for people who have a hard time falling asleep. At this point though, I think it makes sense to pretty much try everything.

I've been taking melatonin on and off. It helps me sleep, but I have intense nightmares, a common side effect. I also wake up feeling extremely groggy. Insomnia blog had some additional information on why that might be:

As melatonin levels in the blood rise, you begin to feel less alert and sleep becomes more inviting. Melatonin levels stay elevated for about 12 hours, falling back to low daytime levels by about 9 a.m.

Twelve hours? The blog goes on to say that melatonin supplements provide several times the amount of melatonin produced in the body. In effect then, depending on when you take it, grogginess could be a significant factor if your triple shot of melatonin hasn't cleared your body by the time you need to wake up.

My next step is to buy a new bed. I think this is the final stage of insomnia before you take a second job during the time you can't sleep and give up.