the one where I'm unconcious for a couple hours while vividly halucinating
Two cats at once. I get the part of the bed not taken by the cats. I'm motivated to lie very still by the cats and the obvious repercussions for moving.
If that fails, the podcast Casefile - gruesome true crime stories recited by a very slow talking Australian fellow. It almost always puts me out. In bed or on planes.
I move around so much my cat has stopped sleeping with me LOL. He just comes to wake me up in the morning.
With your mother, usually.
Mine is really weird and hard to describe. I'll try to be concise. I close my eyes (no shit Sherlock) and I imagine faces of people. It can be someone close, a star of a TV show, anything. Then I change element of their face one by one (e.g. their eyes). And I keep going. And everytime the face changes enough I question myself "I know this person, who is this ?". And when I answer the question, the face is clearer (because I've put a name on the face so it is easier to imagine it and correct it) and I can go on again until I fall asleep.
To combat jet lag, or otherwise reset your sleep schedule if it has drifted...
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Go 24 hours without eating.
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Go to bed early enough to make sure you get 8-10 hours before you normally want to wake up.
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Using an alarm, wake up a bit earlier than you usually want to wake up.
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Make a big breakfast, eating when you normally want to wake up.
Now your body will have reset its circadian rhythm, and you'll naturally wake up at that time.
How the heck you fall asleep on a 24hr empty stomach?
Yeah I find that if I don't eat enough I will have a very hard time sleeping from the hunger pangs. It can even wake me up in the middle of the night even if I've already managed to fall asleep.
Fatique.
Practice, I guess?
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If I'm having a hard time getting to sleep, I put on a podcast and that usually does the trick. Need to find something in the sweet spot where it's engaging enough that it'll hold my attention without being so interesting that it keeps me awake.
I used to have a hard time when I wanted to fall 💤. Podcast has been magical to me. I play Daily tech news show then I'm 💤.
Smoke some weed to get sleepy
My bed is exclusively for sleeping and sex. No food. No coffee. No TV. So my body has learned if we’re not doing one thing then we’re doing the other.
My mind does have a tendency to wander/worry/race though so I put on a podcast when I lay down to distract my brain. I’m usually asleep within 5-10 minutes.
That's a great idea. I tend to scroll lemmy in bed like I'm doing now. Actually associating sleep with lying in bed sounds like it'd be pretty helpful.
Don't ever read or look at a phone in bed. Just get in and immediately try to sleep.
100mg trazodone, 25mg doxylamine, 5mg melatonin, ~.5L whiskey or vodka.
Mix, inbibe, hope for the best.
.5L? You okay?
If I'm struggling to sleep because I have a lot on my mind I'll just read until I'm sleepy again - otherwise I end up getting more and more stressed.
Imagining something fantastic like living in an asteroid mine and managing things. Or trying to not think anything. Both works for me. And of course working 60h a week and spending my whole free time with my kids leaving me completely exhausted falling in coma in a second. Good night!
Concentrating on breathing using my diaphragm.
I stole this actually from sitting meditation. Laying on my back this usually puts me too sleep in a couple of minutes. It's especially useful when my mind is racing.
The App 'Calm' which is good for meditation also has sleep stories. There is a great one by Levar Burton describing the solar system.
Come to think of it, listening to the Levar Burton Reads podcast would probably work pretty good as well.
One of my favorite podcasts
I get into a state of anxiety sometimes where thinking almost anything will trigger a cascade of neurotic thoughts. This has led to many sleepless nights. Whilst it doesn't always work, I found one effective technique to make your brain sleepy is just try to think of the most boring, unstimulating ideas. For some reason, I find it really effective to think about plain flat colors like brown or grey. I'm not getting much inspiration to proceed with an inner critical monologue when I think about the colour brown or grey. Not objects in these colors, just the actual colors. I imagine myself in a sea of that color and it is calming and neutralising, for reasons I don't fully understand.
It might be weird but it works for me:
I imagine I am doing skeleton in the nude. IE sliding down an ice chute in the buff. It works especially well when I can't sleep because I'm hot.
For most nights... Just get in bed and sleep, though sometimes my brain just goes into a sorta fear episode...
Idk what it is, I just start feeling scared for no reason. If that happens, I just pull some long video on my phone and doze off watching it.
Put in earplugs, put a xylimelt lozenge against my gums so my mouth doesn't dry out, put on my CPAP mask, put pillowcase over my face to keep complete darkness while I sleep during the day. Wake up 6 hours later.
That sounds kind of nice actually. Lol
I'm out in 30-45 seconds, if having a non functional brain has one advantage, it is that it goes into sleep mode really fast.
I smoke a joint around 1h before bed, I lay down, watch some unfathomably long video about something dumb (a bad game, Elon musk, the UK etc.), then I fall asleep, wake up an hour later to my computer playing the weirdest fucking thing, close the lid and go back to sleep. Works wonders.
Staying up until I'm sleepy, then closing my eyes until I'm no longer tired.
Ambien
On my side, head sandwich between two pillows with my arm over the top pillow, and Youtube playing a long video or a playlist.
Drink sufficient alcohol, lay around in bed until I notice I fell asleep and dropped my phone. Then I can go to sleep.
Lights out and Kindle with the lowest luminosity posible. I can't barely read 10 pages.
I've conditioned myself to fall asleep after I put my CPAP mask on.
Earplugs, cold room, thick blanked and a pillow under my knees/between my legs depending on wether I'm on my back or side. If on top of all this I don't fall asleep/wake up in the middle of the night anxious about unfinished tasks that would be great.
There is a good fix for the tasks thing. Keep a notepad near your bed. As you get into bed, anything on your todo list you are worried about gets written on the notepad. Get in the habit of looking at the pad every morning. Then once you write it down, you should be able to let it go. And if you wake up because you remember something, just grab the notepad and scribble it down (doesn't need to be elaborate, just a word or two to trigger your memory in the morning.)
Watching tv and fall asleep or download ASMR of your choice, I prefer taping nails, whispering or ears stuff, put the auto close timer at 30 minutes and sleep.
Bed.
Don't get in bed until I'm sleepy.
Count backwards from 100 in my head, if I lose track start back at 100, if I actually get to zero I do it again in Spanish but usually I fall asleep.
If really wound up, put on relaxing ambient music and actually listen to it, do yin yoga poses for awhile then try again.
My computer goes into night mode a few hours before bed (reduces the blue and dims). Then I dim my light about an hour before.
I focus on feeling my heartbeat. Puts me right to sleep.
