h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I thought about this last night when I couldn't get to sleep...

Counting sheep - very tradional method of combatting sleeplessness. Just as ineffective as all the others.

Counting something else - just if you really hate sheep, or really like something else.

Reading - but make sure you find something really long/boring, or even better, something complicated, if you don't understand you just switch right off.

Music - listening to the same song over and over and over until you are lulled into some kind of quasi-hynotic trance (or you really start to hate the song).

The internet - I'm not sure if it makes you feel tired or just makes your eyes feel really heavy...

The only true cure I've ever found is the arrival of whatever time your meant to get up. As soon as you should be waking up, you want to be falling asleep...

Crossword puzzles - as an alternative cure - can exhaust the eyes and lull one to sleep.

I liked this article. It needs some cleaning up for typos and what-not of course, but as an insomniac, I enjoyed it. I just don't think it belongs in peer review since it is very personal. Now by that I mean that it is written in the first person (which is 'usually' a big no no for edited entrys, see the Writing-Guidelines from the peer review page) and probably wouldn't work as well if you changed it. It should probably go to the Alternative Writing Workshop as it would make a nice entry to the UnderGuide. I recommend you take a little more time tweaking it (you even have a typo in the title 'Maybe') and resubmit it there. Of course even if you don't it will still be part of the Guide.

Of course I can't help but give you a couple of other 'cures'. One is just a variant to the exhaustion method. It does have some validity as long as you stick to it. (The bed avoidance thing is to try to keep from associating your bed with fitfulness.) But the idea is to figure out how much sleep you are averaging first. 2 hours? three? Then for the first few days you don't go to bed untill that much time before you need to get up in the morning. Then over the next few weeks you slowly start moving your bedtime up. This method mostly only works for people who's circadian rhythm is skewed (like mine). For people with other causes for their insomnia, this don't work. And for me, while I agree with it, I can't practice it because every weekend I mess it up again by staying up till 4:00 or 5:00.

I do know what would cure me of insomnia, but I can't find anyway to bring my workstation home with me and set it up vertically above my bed.

You're absolutely correct. There ain't no such thing as a 'Cure' for insomnia.

Count Zero, Yawning as he's typing this.

Hi there Yashya -

You may have tried listening to white noise already. If not I very much recommend it. Just turn the radio to a dead station, turn the volume up, close eyes, and bye-bye.

I find the action of yawning in bed too. Even a fake yawn is good.

At the moment I'm training to run a marathon - it's one of the most knackering things I've done and more importantly it makes you want 10 hours a night.

Cheers

BB

I have to agree with the first post in that I can be in and out of sleep all night and when the alarm goes off in the morning

There's always the infuriating joke people insist on - on the edge of the bed and sooner or later you'll "drop off"