Hey! You should consult your doctor first. Do not panic! Me too sick and desperate...do not see a light at the end of a tunnel anymore.. But, even if I am sick and desperate I keep doing what I have to do. You too...keep doing what you have to do, little by little.

I feel your pain, I'm taking 4 medications basically to get less sleep than most people get with no medication.

Hey Biatta. How are you? I'm just frustrated with my life and my insomnia is making it worse. My life is always a living hell.

Hi, you sound like a positive person, so that bodes well for you if you have no underlying medical or psychiatric issues causing your insomnia.

In that case, many experts suggest pills can do more harm than good, in that they reinforce the idea that the solution to sleeplessness is external and resides out of your self control.

If you have no untreated medical conditions causing insomnia, look to nonmedical root sources: typically some combination of bad sleep habits and excessive worry about the idea of sleep.

Both can be countered without drugs.

Hey! Life without adequate sleep is hell for sure! But, at least you do not have to take care of other people, like me for example. Listen, stop panicking..tell your doctor how you feel. May be you just need a break from medications , some sleepless nights will follow...prepare yourself for it. Have a plan and keep in mind that human being can survive and function on very little sleep. But, you also have to work in other directions: sport, meditation, therapy, hobby. Set some goals for you and you might be amazed at one day of how much you still can do.

I have had insomnia just about my entire life, even as a kid at 2 or 3 years old. I want to know what causes mine. I know it's not anxiety or stress so I can cross that out. I know it's not my sleeping habits either. I am going to the doctor AGAIN soon, so I'm going to ask them about it for the thousandth time.

Well, I do not know what to tell, but I really feel for you. Listen, if you can not sleep, try to just relax it still will give you some rest. If you had trouble sleeping as a child you might not need as much sleep as others. So, your goal is not 6-8 hr of sleep, but may be 4 with medication. Again, I think you may be should stop your meds and see how many nights you will go awake. If you feel you are really bad take some pills. At worse scenario, people are given Valium, or something very strong. You mention you take several doses of Xanax, I do understand why. But this misuse can keep you awake more than you naturally would be. Take care of yourself.

I agree with the others. Pills aren't the answer. Sometimes it is for the short-term. Definitely, not the long-term.

For me, I was sick and tired of it too. One day, while laying on the bed, I thought to myself I'm the best at resolving problems. They pay me $100,000 a year to resolve the toughest problems. Why am I letting Doctors screw with me? If this was an issue that showed up on my desk, what would I do????

That's when my training and instinct kicked in. First of all, I needed to understand how sleep works. So, I studied it. Then, I needed to find out what makes you stay awake. I figure that if I knew how to stay awake, the opposite would resolve the issue.

Not surprisingly, drinking coffee makes you stay awake due to the caffeine. The opposite of caffeine is Adenosine. Then, all I had to do was increase the levels of Adenosine and viola Sleep!

Here you go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP7EQ6e5d1c

Bruticus, your story is very interesting. Adenosin is the key element in a sleep process, but how you increase it?

Adenosine is a neurotransmitter that builds in the brain naturally during waking hours. It affects the function of the VLPO, which is the part of the brain responsible for sleep drive.

After about 16 hours of nonstop wakefulness, the VLPO has sufficient adenosine to send a signal to the brain that it's time to sleep. It also reinforces your circadian alerting signal, which also diminishes after about 16 hours. Both these internal systems help produce sleep.

Caffeine temporarily clears and blocks adenosine from the VLPO, and thereby reduces sleep drive. So if you don't consume caffeine 5 or more hours before bed, this shouldn't be an issue.

Otherwise, unless you have some identified medical condition that affects your ability to produce adenosine, this should be a non issue.

What's more important is consistency in sleep wake function. This helps the VLPO synchronize with your circadian rhythm. When these two internal processes are in synch, sleep can become practically effortless. Irresistible. The way it should be.

Biatta:

Has any sleep nut told you that you need to exercise at least 30 minutes a day? Well, the sleep nut (aka specialist) fails to explain to you that when you exercise, what happens is that your Adenosine-Triphosphate aka ATP is broken down to Adenosine-Diphosphate which is further broken down in to Adenosine. (This professor explains the ATP cycle well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhuqXwvFv2E)

The more adenosine you have, the more sleepy you get and the better your sleep is.

What happens is, while you sleep, your adenosine is converted back to adenosine-triphosphate (ATP). This is called the ATP cycle.

I have no way to prove it, but for me, I somehow "lost" my ATP so therefore, I was always tired (no ATP to make energy) and I could not sleep (no Adenosine to keep me sleeping). This vicious cycle nearly killed me.

I threw the doctor out the door and went to a health specialist. I said, "I need ATP." The health specialist told me that I couldn't just eat "ATP" and that I had to supplement and exercise.

I took this guy's advice. I slept good but it took a very long time to rebuild my life. The ATP didn't just come back over night or not even in a year. It took close to 5 years.

If you really want to go this route, you really need to talk to an expert in this category. Don't just read things you hear on the internet and do it on your own. That's because you need a whole bunch of vitamins and amino acids in combination to assist in producing ATP.

Actually there is a strong consensus among real sleep experts that daily exercise is one of the very best things you can do to counter insomnia.

The body responds to vigorous exercise by increasing the amount deep sleep, the most restorative kind. The documented physical benefits of course go far beyond sleep. Basically, you will live longer and be happier if you exercise.

Some say the exercise should be at least several hours before bedtime. Others say just get it whenever you can but earlier tends to be better.

The idea behind this is common sense: tire yourself out physically (and mentally) every day, and you will tend to sleep better at night.

And you can accomplish this without needing any kind of drugs or artificial supplements of any kind.

Hypnos:

It's only true if you have the ATP to burn. It's very dangerous if you don't have the ATP to burn. Such as in my case. The sleep nut kept saying I needed to exercise and failed to realize that I had no ATP.

Like I said, it nearly killed me.

and viola like I also said, exercising burns ATP and converts it to Adenosine. The more Adenosine accumulates, the better your sleep.

Bet you didn't know that huh? :)

Bruticus, I am close to having a minor in Nutrition and right now we are taking about ATP. I'm not an expert but if you don't have ATP then it is either a result of a) lack of calories(fats provide the most atp followed by carbs and as a last resort, protein) or b) you have type of disease where your body isn't synthesizing ATP or isn't doing so correctly( this could be a number of things including enzymes not functioning properly, hormones not functioning properly or specific disease). If you don't mind me asking, did this health specialist actually agree/diagnose you with having low ATP, explain how you lost the ability to make ATP, etc? What made you suspect you had no ATP?

Guys, I was told about Adenosine by a neurologist/sleep specialist. He said that I have to exercise 1 hr a day with the heart rate 180/min., it is an assumption that only when your exerciser long and hard enough your body produces Adenosin. Well, even after 2 years in gym there is no way I can run, walk or do other things for an hour with a heart rate 180/min. This is why I guess exercising does not help...it is not enough.