- I can't eat any junk food pretty much at all (pizza is a particular trigger food -- salt/MSG, i dunno?)
- I can't eat anything late
- I have to take a melatonin an hour before bedtime
- At least 20 minutes before bedtime I have to put on a sleep mask and just start really winding down. Often this is more like 60 minutes before bedtime. This is just lying on my back and not really trying to sleep.
- Then I have to find some program to listen to, quietly, that derails my train of thought, but isn't actually interesting to keep me awake otherwise my internal dialog will keep me awake.
- Then it takes me about 20 minutes of actually trying to sleep to sleep on a good night.
And even given all that sometimes the slightest bit of stress will completely screw up my sleep schedule.
Exercise can help, but not right before bedtime, earlier in the day, probably through addressing stress. Too much exercise and sore, hot muscles will keep me up all night.
So, yeah, we've all collectively heard nearly everything that you can suggest, and it takes all of that just to barely make me functional.
And napping is usually awful and leads to staring at the ceiling until 3am. So if I miss sleep one night I'm usually powering through the next day on sleep dep. Then if its stress that is keeping me awake I may still get not enough sleep the next night. The stress from not getting enough sleep can cause stress at night that keeps me awake.
Ultimately it tends to 'break' and I get a good night of sleep and the stress drops off and I start getting back to normal again.
And I'm probably fairly well adjusted for being a sufferer, there's a lot of people out there who are more clinically diagnosable.
> we've all collectively heard nearly everything that you can suggest
Have you heard it suggested that insomnia is frequently a symptom of ADHD?
I have ADHD. It was undiagnosed until I was 22. And, through my whole life until that point, my sleep was "delicate" in the way you're describing, requiring careful set-up to avoid insomnia.
Then I was diagnosed with, and medicated for, ADHD. Sleep is pretty easy now. No care required.
One reason for that might be the way the medication (which I take in the morning) affects me as it's wearing off in the evening—it creates a feeling which is sort of the opposite of insomnia. With insomnia, there's a grating sensation that comes from the fact that you're still awake and a weariness demanding you sleep, but your brain won't shut up, so you can't. With the stimulant dose end-phase, meanwhile, there's no sensation of tiredness at all, but your brain is very quiet, not spontaneously thinking anything (in fact it's rather hard to spontaneously think), so you can fall asleep, even though there's no compulsion to. You just decide to, and then... you do.
Another reason might be that ADHD is apparently the brain being stuck in a state below the average behavioral-arousal set-point—essentially, being always half-asleep. As such, you don't get tired when you "should", because your brain wasn't working as hard. A car that stays in neutral half the time will still have a half-full gas tank at the end of the day. (This is also why people advise exercise for insomnia, but physical exercise doesn't really cause a brain with ADHD to engage any more than usual.) Whereas, a brain with ADHD that is fed a stimulant, will have its behavioral arousal level modified toward the normal level, expending more metabolic energy throughout the day, generating more waste products, and thereby reaching a point where it demands to enter a maintenance phase (sleep) sooner.
No matter the reason, I have to say that it works.
Interestingly, according to my psychiatrist, even if you don't think you have ADHD, other neurologically-founded sleep disorders (e.g. narcolepsy) are mostly thought to be disorders of behavioural activation as well—and, as such, are treated with stimulants, just like ADHD. They may as well all be different presentations of the same underlying pathology, given that the treatments for them are interchangeable.
My experience with amp induced comedown can only be described as a sharp onset of malaise that rapidly increases in intensity to the point you feel subdued and hostage to your impulses where normal tasks like flossing your teeth are met with dread and take a ridiculous amount of willpower that is simply overridden by dopamine producing activities such as using a smartphone. This really messed with my sleep schedule cause I could not make it to bed when my brain was held hostage by depleted dopamine neurotransmitters.
The obvious solution is to prep for bed early on meds but why waste that precious, fleeting neurotypical window of mental clarity flossing my teeth when I need it to perform cognitively during the day. This is on 50mg/day
I wish my brain was neurotypical. I'm a slave to these pills now cause stopping now literally leaves you in bed for days and you never really recover and bounce back after 5+ years of dopamine down-regulation in your brain.
What drug? The come-down from Vyvanse is very gentle.
(Really, it lasts long enough for a person of average metabolism that what you experience in the evening isn't even the withdrawal, but just the tail-end of the dose, where there's slightly less of it. To experience the withdrawal, you have to stay up ~18 hours after taking it. Even then, from the few times I've had to stay awake for other reasons, it's still what I'd describe as "gentle"; but it does do interesting things to your dreams when it hits while you're sleeping, until your brain gets used to it. Personally, my dopamine-crashes-during-sleep gave me dreams with the exact visual character of Zdzisław Beksiński paintings. Oddly, no emotional affect associated—such visuals are not scary or unsettling, as they "should" be—they're just... what your brain is doing, trying to suddenly elevate noisy sensory data to salience and ignore the model saying "you're sleeping, that stuff is meaningless." Like an extremely low-light picture causing noise on a camera sensor, crossed with DeepDream processing.)
Amphetamine salts instant release (10mg x 2) and extended release beads (30mg x 1) across the whole day. Make I'll try dexadrine and then vynase, but I recall vynase is converted to a lower level of amphetamine in the body than straight amphetamine?
Vyvanse contains less amphetamine milligram for milligram, but that's offset by better absorption and higher doses. It's also all the same form, which works better for some people.
What you describe can be mostly from physical stress of being stimulated all day. Dexedrine, Vyvanse, or methylphenidate might give you a better ratio of cognitive to physical effects. Supplementing with a non-stimulant medication might help with your symptoms in the evening and also let you take a lower dose of amphetamine during the day. There's evidence that some supplements, like magnesium, can reduce adverse effects from stimulants. You probably already know this, but it's important to eat enough throughout the day and often hard to do that.
Thanks for the information, much appreciated! I'm afraid to speak with a psych cause they will take me off these meds that I rely on to perform neurotypically. Ritalin made me bipolar with severe mood swings. Wellbutrin paradoxically made me feel depressed. Only amps have allowed my brain fog to subside and slow down my racing thoughts.
Magnesium is great, I take it throughout the day. L-theanine helps with the come down as well.
- I can't eat any junk food pretty much at all (pizza is a particular trigger food -- salt/MSG, i dunno?)
- I can't eat anything late
- I have to take a melatonin an hour before bedtime
- At least 20 minutes before bedtime I have to put on a sleep mask and just start really winding down. Often this is more like 60 minutes before bedtime. This is just lying on my back and not really trying to sleep.
- Then I have to find some program to listen to, quietly, that derails my train of thought, but isn't actually interesting to keep me awake otherwise my internal dialog will keep me awake.
- Then it takes me about 20 minutes of actually trying to sleep to sleep on a good night.
And even given all that sometimes the slightest bit of stress will completely screw up my sleep schedule.
Exercise can help, but not right before bedtime, earlier in the day, probably through addressing stress. Too much exercise and sore, hot muscles will keep me up all night.
So, yeah, we've all collectively heard nearly everything that you can suggest, and it takes all of that just to barely make me functional.
And napping is usually awful and leads to staring at the ceiling until 3am. So if I miss sleep one night I'm usually powering through the next day on sleep dep. Then if its stress that is keeping me awake I may still get not enough sleep the next night. The stress from not getting enough sleep can cause stress at night that keeps me awake. Ultimately it tends to 'break' and I get a good night of sleep and the stress drops off and I start getting back to normal again.
And I'm probably fairly well adjusted for being a sufferer, there's a lot of people out there who are more clinically diagnosable.