What do you do when you can't sleep?

Spent the last few hours tossing and turning in bed. Lately I have been doing great at falling asleep when I go to bed. I used to spend a lot of time in bed before falling asleep. That hasn't been the case lately, but tonight it is. Its to the point where I'll only get a few hours of sleep before work, so I actually called off. I shouldn't be driving as tired as I will be. The wife helped make the decision. She'll be working 8, off 8, and working 16 or 17. Makes me feel kind of E36 M3ty, but I'll be working tomorrow afternoon at the store.

It wasn't worth tossing and turning in bed only to let my mind run away, so I shut off the "storm sound app" I just downloaded, got up and sat down on the living room. I'll get back to my regular sleep schedule tomorrow. I think this week I let myself stay up a little to late through the week. Time to get back on my regular schedule.

So what do you do to get to sleep when you're having trouble? My normal meditation wasn't working for me.

Some combination of drinking and executing a manual override usually works for me.
(Wait, am I allowed to talk about stuff like that under that lady's new rules?)

but yeah, not being able to get to sleep sucks, one of the upsides of being chronically under-rested is that I fall asleep at the drop of a hat.

Take a melatonin, hot shower, self complete.

Enjoy sleepy times.

Lately I've been tossing and turning a lot, which is unusual for me. Yay work/general life stress!

I find it helps a lot to just get up, get a glass of water and take a walk around the house. There's no point just laying there getting frustrated that you can't fall asleep.

I woke up around 5am and got out of bed at 6 this morning and fired up the grill. Today is a pork butt day. I usually don't have issues falling asleep, but I usually wake up early.

Getting some nookie always knocked me out.

Work stress used to keep me awake nights, but since I retired last year that hasn't been the case anymore. What I used to do was get up, go to another room, read for a half hour or so, and then go back to bed. That seemed to take my mind off the problems, and I'd usually fall asleep pretty quickly after that.

Wank. Then read a meh book.

Any of the Ken Burn's documentaries on netflix. I find them interesting but they really make me sleepy. I mean mid-cup-of-coffee, fall-asleep-during-a-rock-concert sleepy.

Reading always does it for me. The key is making the bed a place dedicated to sleeping and nothing else (scratch that - berkeley is ok too) . Don't read GRM on your laptop, don't watch TV, don't look at your phone. Just do what you need to do to sleep. For me that's reading a few pages of whatever book I'm working on.

I also read books. My wife swears by putting on the tv with a sleep timer and a show that she has seen 100 times, either friends, that 70s show, simpsons....

I fall asleep with the TV on. Lately it has been Inuyasha, but original run Futurama has me out the fastest. Ken Burns works very well, but my wife doesn't like those, and Netflix removed National Parks

Until the round of surgeries in June I used to sleep like a baby. Now in part to itchy feeling skin and having to sleep with a giant bumper sling, it sucks. It doesn't happen without an oxi, which I have a script for, but hate using unless in intense pain. Not being able to fall asleep isn't pain, it's a physical dependence. I've tried everything mentioned above without luck. I start a clinical this coming week involving controlled canabis dosing. I'm not a proponent of it or champion it as others do, but I'm willing to try just about anything at this point and feel that it's the lesser of 2 evils where compared to opiate based pain medications.

martini, knock bottom out of wife, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

When I first got divorced my sleep pattern went to E36 M3. Bad enough that my health suffered and I had to get a script for Ambien. Over the intervening years things have gotten better. I took the TV out of the bedroom and we don't "hang out" in bed until it's time for sleep and other horizontal activities.

Now (much like GPS) a good evening routine is a bit of TV with accompanying bourbon, 3-30 minutes of vigorous activity and asleep before head hits the pillow.

Take a Melotonin, then play Gran Turismo on a lapping drill with no other cars. The repetitiveness puts me to sleep. (Guess you don't want me on your Lemons team.)

I usually try to watch Ask This Old House. I'm out within 5.

Melatonin and sleepy time tea. I also fast for 12-15 hours each day, then eat something after work in the morning and within about an hour I'm ready for a nap. Like right now, am seepy. For day sleep I need a fan running and a pillow on top of my head.

I got home this morning, rudely rolled the kids out of the sack then went on a hike through the woods at a local park for a nice little bug hunt. If I didn't have more stuff to do, I'd be headed to bed right now.

Maybe try going for a walk?

I pop a benadryl and that usually works for me.

I sat down, watched the news, and browsed around the net for an hour. Fell asleep for 7 hours straight. Guess I'll work that in when needed lol. I'll take all these suggestions into account as well.

SnowMongoose wrote: executing a manual override

Added to my lexicon. Thank you sir.

JG Pasterjak wrote:

SnowMongoose wrote: executing a manual override

Added to my lexicon. Thank you sir.

I dunno, "...lapping drill with no other cars" sounds about the same

Karacticus wrote:

JG Pasterjak wrote:

SnowMongoose wrote: executing a manual override

Added to my lexicon. Thank you sir.

I dunno, "...lapping drill with no other cars" sounds about the same

Wait, are we talking about "polishing the hammer"?