Limit screen time before bed! And/or download f.lux and set it really low and warm.
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I have no doubt others will find this useful. For me turning off the screens after dark has some impact, but wasn’t the slam dunk I’d hoped it would be. For me the biggest impact is curtailing all the ‘food drugs’ I indulge in.
I used to remember doctors handing out Stilinox if you told him you couldn’t sleep. Works but it makes you sleep walk. I avoid it after that.
I don’t know if they do it anymore and I’m hearing that doctors won’t hand out benzos unless they really checked you out. People abuse these things.
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Still real easy to get.
That’s not a cure for insomnia now is it?
I have never had trouble sleeping (for unexplained reasons; sometimes nervousness about the following day has kept me up) in my whole life and I think it has a lot to do with me disliking coffee.
I never perceived that to be true for me, although I probably consumed 8 or more cups of coffee before noon each day, plus one more after lunch. I did have to be careful not to drink coffee after 2pm, though. That was my only rule: no coffee after 2pm.
I would be interested to know how coffee interacts with my body’s endogenous, chemical reactions to stress, however. I was always able to go to sleep, a very full sleep. My problem was that I lost out on the last hour or so of crucial REM sleep, where lots things get wrapped up in time for awakening.
I have been prone to nocturnal rumination all my life. I didn’t even know that I had suffered from bruxism likely all my life (according to my dentist) until I was well into my 50s.
I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was in my late 20s, but it’s still interesting.
According to the people who have slept next to or in the same room as me I have this issue, too. I know it to be true because sometimes I wake up and my jaw feels tight and weary. But I’ve never gotten a mouth guard for it because they’re so egregiously expensive. I wonder if they are more affordable in Taiwan?
That’s too bad, wouldn’t wish it on anybody. I never had a hint of muscle soreness or any idea, and I also had two wives and lots of gf’s who never said a thing.
If you see a dentist about it, try to get a trainer not a guard. I’ve had both, and while the trainer was US$500 (after dental insurance), and much smaller than the guard, I think it actually works much better. Trainer is a very small guard that, for me, goes over my two (top) front teeth with a kind of very short ramp extending back into my mouth to rest on my upper palate. The effect of this small ramp is that it makes it impossible to grind my upper and lower teeth against each other no matter how far back or side-to-side I (unconsciously) move my bottom jaw at night.
I think it’s the best $500 I’ve ever spent in a dentist’s office. Hopefully they’re much cheaper in Taiwan. Or Thailand; you might check with dentists at Bumrungrad in Bangkok.
Why not just get one of those sports mouth guards that custom fit after being heated? They are really cheap.
They did block contact and thereby prevent damage, but I actually chewed completely through a dental mouthguard within two years. The trainer I have now is one I’ve had for five or six years, and it’s fine.
Still, a sports mouthguard might last for a month or so (maybe longer). You can pick up a youth sports mouthguard for less than US$8. If you destroy one a month, then $500 can buy you more than 5 years of protection, and maybe you can save up for a more expensive one in, say 3 years. Or something like that.
At least it’s some protection. Bruxism is extremely damaging if left untreated. My bottom front teeth are all beat down because of it, and I have permanent grooves worn into the backs of my upper front teeth by the lower ones.
It’s a drug free method of getting some long needed sleep!
Funny you bring this up. Sunday night through Tuesday night I probably got a total of 12 hours of sleep. Guess last night it all caught up with me. Closed my eyes at 2:30am and the next thing I knew it was 12:45pm today. I’m not sure I moved all night. I haven’t slept like that in a long time. Definitely worked for me last night.
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For men , sex, then rolling over and going to sleep.
A little general, but seems to be about improving sleep and stress:
I can’t really fall asleep at regular schedules without drugs. If I go to the shrink about this they will usually prescribe Benzos, the dosage is low and I use them every other day (not daily) but I have no idea if there will be long term problems. The days I don’t use benzos I find benedryl to be very effective but its effectiveness drops off when you use them for more than 3 consecutive nights.
I really need this:
Without drugs I go on 36 hour days where one day I can’t sleep until 5am, wake up 4 hours later, and then the following nights I sleep normally, and rinse and repeat. It seems if I ever got a good nights sleep I couldn’t sleep the following day at normal times and need drugs to sleep normally.
The article I linked is not an original idea, but it is in summary saying some of use are so chronically overstimulated, that we need to suffer it out a little bit to bring down our stimulation baselines. Suffer it out is to say, at the very most extreme, sit in a dark room for a day. Happy for someone willing to conduct this experiment and report back 
Well, try going to prison and request protective custody.
You’ll do nothing but sleep.
Then eventually you will develop permanent psychological damage.
Temazepam?
I had some horrible insomnia for quite a while due to people at work being dicks. Listening to Norah Jones’ first two albums tends to conk me out about halfway through the first one. Slows my brain down or something
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