Yay!

[baratron]

Woohoo: I've just bought two tickets to go and see the Wildhearts on Tuesday. (Long-time readers of this journal will know that they've been my favourite band for a very long time.) I have sorted out a nice chap from the Wildhearts mailing list to give me a lift down to Portsmouth, and more importantly, back again; whilst getting to Portsmouth should be easy 'cos there's direct trains from Surbiton (which is 5 minutes on the bus from here), it seems there's engineering work on Tuesday 30th and the last train from Portsmouth back to London will leave at 22:24, which would mean leaving the gig ridiculously early. Eep. All hail Chris, person with a car.

Now I have to make sure I get to bed at a sensible time: I have a long day at work tomorrow and I can't afford to be late. I have to get up at 11am, which is quite reasonable really - thousands of people are happily awake by then - almost in the middle of their working day, some of them. But that means going to bed by, oh, 3am or something - and how am I going to guarantee being tired by then? let alone tired and able to sleep? Argh. I need to get a new body clock - there must be one available for download somewhere...

Comments

[the-maenad.livejournal.com]

Well, I shan't bother asking if you want to meet for dinner on Tuesday night again then :)

Have a great time.

Can you ring me sometime -- there's something I want to discuss which isn't really suitable fare for LJ.

to work on sleep...

[kixie.livejournal.com]

it's the strangest idea to me - sleep is usually something that's just supposed to come to you, or at least I always thought of it that way.

The disturbance that EMDR brought was bad, but understandable. My brain's memories and dream logs were being accessed and muddled around, but now I'm going to have to try to get a full sleep cycle, as in usually go to bed at xxxx hours, and wake up at xxxx hours.

Easiest way - do you take sleeping pills? I hate the things, most just don't work, and the one - *one* - that does makes me feel SHITE the next day.

Trazodone - it's the only effective sleeping pill (and it's technically and antidepressant, but at 50mg-100mg it's just a sleeping pill). take it on a Friday night so you dont have to work or do anything big the next day.

Wake up at a specified time on Sat morning, get up, do stuff, light stuff, go for lunch, see a movie, shop a bit - whatever. You'll probably feel groggy all day, but you WILL be asleep at the same time the next night.

Easiest way to get a cycle together. Even if you use the pills for three or so days, it actaully does work.

Almost as good as downloading a body clock.

Re: to work on sleep...

[baratron.livejournal.com]

sleep is usually something that's just supposed to come to you, or at least I always thought of it that way.

Yep - I've written something along those lines myself in the past. But buggered if I can find it now! I wish I'd kept my livejournal memories page up to date - having to plough through my calendar to find things I've written is so annoying!

Not sure how long you've been reading my journal - I think you added me to your friends first, and then I noticed, worked out who you were and started reading yours too - but I think it's only been since about August or September. So you probably missed all the things I wrote about the sleep disorder I have back when I first found out about it.

It's something called Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder, and the web site I found that explained it simply was on geocities, and isn't there any more. Most annoying. Basically, it's a circadian rhythm disorder that's like permanent jetlag. My natural sleep patterns, left to themselves, involve going to bed sometime between 3 and 5am and getting up sometime in the early afternoon. The only sleeping pill that has any hope of working is melatonin - drugs just don't touch it.

Unfortunately, I have a problem with melatonin. I wrote about it in June, back when I first found out about it. I was working on the assumption that I was obviously not producing enough melatonin and this was what was screwing up my body clock, so I brought some melatonin tablets back with me when I came back from the USA... it's recommended as a good way to reset wonky body clocks, so I expected it to help. Wrong. I'd taken it a few times when I couldn't sleep, but never when I was in the desperation of the sort of insomnia where you're utterly exhausted but can't, can't, can't get your brain to switch off and let you sleep.

It would appear that taking melatonin when I'm utterly exhausted but stressed out causes me to go into a "fight or flight" situation and start producing huge amounts of adrenaline. I found myself totally awake in the sense of heart pounding and blood racing around my body, yet I ached all over through needing to rest and my eyes and head were hurting like mad. I can only assume that my problem is actually not about not producing melatonin, but that my body has been trained to ignore the signal. I've spent so many years at school and university sitting up late working beyond the point when I should really have gone to sleep that it would seem I've lost the ability to notice when I'm ready to sleep. The stress of having to get something finished for the morning is what would produce an adrenaline surge, and it would make sense that I'd get the adrenaline surge at the point where I'd otherwise have fallen asleep - so somehow the instinct to sleep has got linked with waking myself up again... My well-known bizarre caffeine intolerance really doesn't help, as most people would simply self-medicate by pouring themselves a bit more coffee. Because caffeine even in small doses gives me migraines, hallucinations and fits, I've had to evolve my own personal chemistry for dealing with late nights. Great.

Re: to work on sleep...

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Anyway, the way I'm dealing with the sleep problems now is that I have a job where I work afternoons and evenings. I've decided there is absolutely no point me even trying to work in the morning with my brain chemistry in the state it's in. I'm doing a low paid job that totally underuses my abilities and qualifications - but I enjoy it and it doesn't stress me out too much. I've decided I'm just going to stick with this for the time being - it's menial and the money's crap, but it's good for me to get out of the house, and the small amount that I bring in does make the difference between us having a net deficit and a net credit at the end of each month. Maybe one day I won't be depressed any more, and then I can "do something with my life". Heh.

No, I'm managing ok most of the time. It just gets me down when my sleep cycles start drifting to the extent that even getting to work in the afternoon is hard... y'know? Ah well. I'll get there in the end.

Hey, I would really appreciate your advice with what I just posted about (http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=baratron&itemid=75680). Let me know on that journal entry if you've got any ideas... I'm totally stumped.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Oh bollocks - I saw your message but didn't actually take in the bit about you wanting me to ring you. Will you be about tomorrow night after I finish work? I could ring sometime after 9pm. Er... well, actually, I won't be reading LJ again before then, so I'll just try to call you and leave a message if you're out. Take care.

Re: to work on sleep...

[kixie.livejournal.com]

Caffeine causes me to panic almost immediately, actually. I can't touch it.

My mother has horrid sleep problems, and apparently lacks melatonin - sounds very much like you really. She's been to sleep clinics and doctors, taken all the pills, none of it will work on her.

I guess with a problem like yours it's doubly important to keep, or try to keep, a proper schedule and try to keep it. Although it's hard not to take what little sleep you can actaully get, or it is for me. This includes putting my head down and falling asleep at dinner tables.

Have you ever tried trazodone? It's a long shot, but it really will probably help you sleep, at least for a little while.