my sleep patterns are wasted.. coming off of graveyard shift.
 

i'm getting too old for working nights. chit!

recent rains made me very busy. roads are out!! i just worked a week of double shifts at night. once my body adjusted it was fairly easy going to nights.. light meals, stayed on my feet to keep awake. what SUCKED was being rained on for hours on end. i wore my hunting clothing to stay dry.

now i am back to long day shifts and i cant sleep. i tried sleep aids, like ZZZquil and all that did was make me hallucinate. i felt like i had a hole in my forehead, and i paced the kitchen all night. coming back to days is a hundred times more difficult for me.

i even stayed awake after my last night shift and zombied around town with the wife. annoying everyone with my dick attitude. but once night came, despite zero sleep..i was wide awake.

this is going to be a long week.

You might ask your doctor about some lorazepam. My doctor prescribed 1 mg tabs for me. It's one of those meds that's not exactly for promoting sleep, but is used to relax patients before some procedures. I have the habit of getting up to go to the bathroom at three to five and not getting back to sleep sometimes. If I do that a few nights, I pop one of them before going to bed, and it lets me sleep through the night. One thing is, it seems to reset my sleep pattern for a while letting me sleep through the night. I only take it once in a while since I understand you can develop a dependency with regular use. I'm not trusting of meds that change your behavior anyway, but this stuff seems to work OK for occasional use. Maybe someone with actual medical knowledge will chime in about it.

Medicinal grade MJ.
After a couple of puffs, and a bag of cheetos, you will fall right to sleep!

Photo therapy is the answer for sleep disturbances. When it is time to wake up, bright light or sunshine on your face tells your brain to do that. Melatonin might be a better choice than a benzodiazepene if you plan on being alert the next day.

Ambien.

I used to be a nite shift security officer guarding high rise office bldgs. back in the day, great for college study, bad for sleep patterns. 12 pm to 6am, then rush off to school, that would mess anybody off. Once I finished my tasks, it didn't take long to get back on a "normal" schedule.

Watch the Ambien. Works beautifully but only use it short term and in small doses. They give you 10 mg, break into 3 or 4 pieces and take one piece.

Try some melatonin and behavioral adjustments. Overseas travel where I'm 5-9 hours off, I'll stay awake for 24, travel, planned arrival is at the end of the local day. I crash, sleep my eight with a melatonin and get back to normal pretty quick. Repeat the same on the return.

The only way I got my circadian rhythms back to normal was marathon awake, then just crash in early late evening. Get back up the next day, I'm usually 80-85% and back to normal after another day.

It's harder as you get older, and don't do it too often. It does take years off your life.

Workout early in the morning. Work out HARD. Eat dinner early - 5:30 to 6pm. Shut the phone, computer, etc., OFF. by 6pm. Watching TV makes me sleepy, but for some people, it makes them wakeful. Take a melatonin about an 7 pm. Write a "grateful list." Just write down the first 7 to 10 things you are grateful for. Make this the last thing you do at night. Go to bed at 8pm. No lights in the bedroom. I mean ZERO lights especially anything that makes blue light.

Once you are back in a cycle, then you can lose the melatonin.

This is all "safe strategy". Hope it works for you as well as it works for me.

angela (former insomniac)

I find sometimes that after a coupla hours of sleep, I wake up and start thinking about all the pressure at work, family issues, money concerns, and any other drama that can slip in. I find if I play solitare on my Kindle (while laying in bed) I can somewhat turn off the random thoughts/concerns. I also try to think about planning a cool project, or vacation to make my mind wander.

I also always sleep with a fan running for the white noise (I have sensative hearing and hear every little bump in the night).

just make sure you get up when you need to and do not sleep in on weekends. Keep from napping if possible. Skip dinner and any sort of caffeine evenings to help get you going to sleep at night.

My problem was falling asleep if I sat down to watch a TV show or movie right after dinner, waking between 10 and 12pm and then being up the rest of the night. Had to keep doing things that did not involve sitting and watching anything. But not to much to get sleepy too soon.

Takes 2 months to make a habit.

Melatonin and light therapy.

So, let's recap:

Your sleep patterns are wasted: "i even stayed awake after my last night shift and zombied around town with the wife. annoying everyone with my dick attitude".

Then your wife, your frugal wife, let you buy your first pistol since you got married?

Interesting...

I did the graveyard shift at Thomas' bakery through most of my undergrad program. I was off Thurs and Friday nights working Sat thru Wednesday. Thursday night was rough but Friday was party night. I feel ya' vash.

It doesn't work for me. Took one and still up 3 hours later. Took another one and still up 5 hours later. My doc told me your mind has to be clear for the Ambien to work. If your mind is active, it'll keep you up.

The best sleep I ever had was when I had minor surgery and the doc gave me Propofol. I was out like a light and didn't remember anything. Woke up rested without a headache or grogginess.

24 years working on airplanes on midnights. i would flip my "day" around on my weekends (they rotated). never tried any of the doctor sleep aids. melatonin had a minimal effectiveness for me. i tried to block all the light from my room and always had 4 fans moving some type of air on all the time. felt like poo way too much of the time.

glad to be on day shift now. i will fight hard to stay.

thanks for all the advice.
shut off all distractions last night. light dinner.

forced myself to sleep at 8:00 pm..out like a light until 6:00 am.

GTG! now i'm hungry :)

That is great advice. When I had trouble getting to sleep it was usually because I was thinking, and thinking about things that upset me. Making myself list the things that went right or made me feel good - my blessings - helped push the upsetting thoughts out of my head. Inevitably I fell asleep with Rosemary Clooney's "Counting My Blessings" running through my head.
Better than any drug.
Now I wake up at 2 AM. Rosemary isn't any help, but half an Ambien gets me back to sleep.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/th-DlJ3XsEI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>