Insomnia Sufferers in here!

I find that I can get a sleep pattern that feels like I’m awake but it’s a very scattered pattern of deep/light/awake. Quite often at 4-6am I’ll just get up, have a coffee and start the day.

i don’t get enough exercise and often find myself too hot in bed due to not keeping hydrated enough.
I found my neck vertebrae going out due to sleeping position, but I already know the exercises that will work to sort that out.

So I’m now reduxting my coffee to 2 cups a day and not after 1400. Last week of the course work so I decided to put an early hour in each day starting the day after the last assignment submission. i’m hoping the exercise will exhaust the body as well as the mind.
 
I'm an old man so I've fallen into the old man pattern: deep sleep, then wake at some random time after 02:00 and struggle to sleep again. I get up at 05:20 during the week, so at the weekend I can't sleep in, and wake at the same time. Then want to sleep straight after lunch.
 
For me, my career choices have wrecked my sleep pattern. I was a watch keeping engineer on tankers and LNG carriers for 10 years, which involved irregular hours, and call-outs in the dead of night. Literally as the duty engineer, which I was every 3rd day at sea, I’d have an alarm panel in my cabin connected to the control and instrumentation system for the engine room, so I’d be abruptly woken by that going off, which could be at any moment, which naturally made it hard to fall asleep.

These days I’m working in offshore oil and gas, doing 2 weeks on 3 weeks off of 12 hour shifts, and while the work’s easier, I do one trip of days, followed by the next trip of nights, the transition from which can be brutal when I get off. I’ll finish the night shift at 7am the morning I get off, and then have to go to check in for the helicopter straight off the bat. All going well, I’ll get ashore around 10.30-11.00, and then have to hang around Aberdeen until 14.30 for my flight down to Manchester, after which I’ll get the train home to Liverpool. All being well, I’ll get through the door at 18.00-18.30, without anything going awry, having been awake since around 16.00 the day before. I’ll then crash hard that night, usually around 21.00 I just can’t stay awake anymore, but then I’ll wake up, wide awake around 1.00-2.00am, and spend the rest of the night trying to get back to sleep, before having to get up and sort the little ‘uns breakfast out, and get her to nursery.

It seems now though that I’m stuck in that pattern, even when I’ve not been on nights, in that I’ll fall asleep, possibly around 22.00, normally after my daughter’s gone to sleep about an hour earlier, and then wake up between 2.00 and 3.00 for a wee, after which I just can’t get back to sleep, and spend the rest of the night trying to force myself back to sleep. I’ve recently given up caffeine, massively cutback on alcohol and joined a gym again for the first time in a few years, and although it’s only been just under a month, I haven’t really seen much, if any, difference at all.
 
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Insomnia is a curse.

I suffer whenever I know I have to get up at a ridiculous hour. Doesn’t matter what time I go to bed, just knowing I have to get up so early fllips a switch ion my head with the result that sometimes I don’t even get a minute’s sleep.

And it happened last night knowing I had to get up at 5 am. Even the Nytol I dropped had no effect other than adding to the extreme grogginess I’m currently exxperiencing.

Later the dizziness and nausea will kick in.

Gonna be a long day.
 
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On the days where i have been doing a bit of a cycle to and from work, i have been sleeping a bit better
 
yep i suffer and have for years. I go through periods of being able to sleep okish but most of the time i am falling asleep on the sofa to then go upstairs and can't sleep. I then lay there going over everything in my mind to what happened years ago to what i'm going to say to someone the next day. and so on. I then feel ready to sleep when everyone else is getting up. So that caused me many problems when i was working but i'm retired now so thats not such a problem.
 
I have no issues with falling asleep, go up to bed and generally am asleep within 10 mins of the lights going off (usually 11-11.30 ish), issue I have is no matter what I seem to wake sometime around 5am and then toss and turn until I have to get up about 7.30.
 
For the last 6 months I've had nonstop nightmares every night. Even tho they wake me several times in the night, they continue till I wake.

I've tried stopping 2 out of my 3 medications but its made no difference. I will stop the 3rd med and see if that works. If it doesn't, I'll ask the gp for advice.
 
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