Posted by Travis Nixon on March 01, 2000 at 23:09:53:

Hi there. I've got a couple of sleeping oddities that I've actually been dealing with for a number of years (11 or 12, at least) but it seems to be getting worse and worse, to the point that it's starting to cause problems in my marriage.

The first problem is that it takes me a LONG time to go to sleep. And I mean a long, long time. Last night I laid in bed for over two hours without sleeping, got up to play around on the computer a couple of hours, laid down again, and although I don't know how long it took me to go to sleep from there, I know it was at least another hour (because the alarm clock went off to wake my wife up). If it were just one night every once in a while, I'd be fine, but this happens practically every night, except for nights after I stay up all night the night before or go with very little sleep.

The second problem is that once I do manage to get to sleep, I sleep extremely deeply (even alarm clocks don't work to wake me up), and am practically impossible to wake up. I have literally slept 14 or more hours at a time for more than one day in a row before, and this is really a major point of contention with my wife right now, mostly because what she sees is that I'm staying up to play games, when 90% of the time I wouldn't have been able to go to sleep anyway, and then gets upset when I can't (or won't) get up in the morning. :)

I've tried to keep a regular sleeping schedule, but that only seems to make the going to sleep period much worse. It's almost like my body has a certain time it wants to go to sleep, and any time spent lying down before that time is just futile. That would be fine if it were consistent, but it doesn't seem to be anywhere near a 24 hour time period. For example, last night I ended up getting to sleep around 8 in the morning, the night before it was closer to 4 or 5 in the morning, and the night before that it was probably closer to midnight. Tonight I'll probably make it to bed around midnight or so, but only because I woke up today after only 5 hours of sleeping or so.

It might be interesting to note that I've had the first problem as long as I can remember (my senior year in high school, I went most of the year sleeping only every other night, and even then sleeping less than most people do, 4-6 hours), but the tiredness part is fairly recent, and has only been happening in the past 3 or 4 years. Once I do manage to wake up, I don't really have any tiredness during the day, even when I get less than 8 hours of sleep. (this morning I only slept for about 5 hours, and although I've been a little tired today, it's certainly not been anything major)

Can anybody give any insight on where I could possibly look for more information? I know there are many things I could change about my lifestyle (I smoke, drink lots of caffeinated drinks throughout the day, don't exercise regularly, etc etc), but at some point or other, I've tried fixing most of these things and it doesn't seem to have helped.

About a month and a half ago, I tried REALLY REALLY hard to get on a normal schedule (going to bed at the same time every night, and waking up at the same time in the morning), and after a week of it I was completely worn out, and quickly fell back into the irregularities.

Thanks in advance for any help or info that can be given.

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