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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2765 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 29, 2026

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Sleeping is an enormously difficult task for me and I need something to carry me away and push things into the background.

I'm much the same in this regard, and it's always been viscerally difficult for me to understand people who need pure silence to sleep. Everything just seems too heightened when it's quiet; I become hyperaware of things like the house settling or find myself paying attention to every little sound on the streets outside and it just becomes impossible to relax.

Without 20mg-50mg melatonin every night I only sleep 3-4 hours. I don’t know if I’m a semi-permanent insomniac or what. But it’s the only thing that can do a halfway decent job of keeping me down and even then it doesn’t always take on the lower end of that dosage. Otherwise I’ll be awake for days. Parents used to yell at me all the time for not “going to bed,” but I don’t know how to fix it. I’d usually try and be productive by making breakfast for everyone in the very early hours of the morning before my family got up. Never stopped me getting yelled at but at least made them happy I suppose. Being tired was always a mental thing for me, never physical. I tend to recover extremely fast, physically.

I've recommended this book on this forum several times by now, perhaps even to you at some point, but you should take the time to read This is Natto: Are you ready for the journey within?. Unless you're some very rare specimen, hyperarousal in your mind likely contributes to or makes up nearly your entire problem with sleep.

I will definitely take a look at that. Thank you. My mind does tend to occupy itself a lot. When at home and not among company I’m a pretty emotionally lowkey and laid back guy. I don’t have ADHD or anything like that. But to me sleep was always a matter of my eyelids being so heavy I can’t keep them open. Even caffeine does nothing for me. I can’t drink coffee because it tastes like shit IMO but I do drink a good amount of soda. Doesn’t do anything. Even without it I could be awake for days without sleeping supplements.

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