What will I do when (if) I start working again?! I'm now in the habit of staying up later and later each night, just so I get really tired and sleep well.

I always drink till I pass out,not the best rest,but it works for me.

ive made an attempt to cut my drinking and smoking down. i've cut my smoking in half and my drinking by roughly 30-40%.

My #1 project for the month of March is to explore alternate sleep patterns. I'm leaning toward 12 hours awake/2 hours asleep, which is different from my initial plan to do 2 hours awake/15 minutes asleep. Whatever the awake:sleep ratio, I am most looking forward to not caring what time it is. I'll know the time and day and the year, but my hope is that it's all the same. Another hour, another day... This could get inconvenient if the need for a beer run strikes at 10am on a Sunday. Or if I'm at a concert and suddenly realize that it's time for my 2 hours of sleep. I never trusted the whole 16 hours awake/8 hours asleep ritual. And I've done a bit of research on the matter, which says that the 24 hour cycle is not what the humans are designed for. My theory is that the humans don't like leap years or daylight savings time, either. But my theory is pretty much just a substanceless hunch. Anyway, I'm thinking of trying out sleep deprivation again. I did sleep deprivation as part of a Winter Term project in college, but never got as far with it as I had hoped. I never saw the little winged horsies galloping through my door or the glorious breasts and vaginas blowing in through the air conditioner. I might also need weed for this, but hey I've got the time the motivation and the resources.

wow, that's neat. let us know how the various patterns work for you. my insomnia has switched from not being able to get to sleep to not being able to stay alseep. i fall asleep just fine these days, but wake up at least 3-5 times per night, either to pee, or because my brain is whirring, or because i'm physically uncomfortable or experiencing joint pain or my arm or leg has gone numb from lack of circulation. doc says no water or food before bed, and take vitamin e an hour before going to sleep, and/or eat a quarter cup of brown rice (or other high fiber carb) before bed or if i'm up in the middle of the night. i'm getting a little tired of the melantonin/valium/ambien routine.

Dude I love sleep dep... Live by the shit... Do it all week long, I get SOOO much acomplished and then I REALLY push it on Friday night, and sleep till roughly 5 or later on Sat, and then I'm fine and start all over again. Its great... somtimes if I need a little extra I sleep in more on Sunday. I miss the days of worklessness where time had no meaning, 6pm was the same as 10 am... Just more sunlight sometimes... thats it.

Try 8 hours awake, 3.5-4 hours sleep. The 3.5-4 hours will get you through one full brain wave cycle. We typically go through two cycles per night, and you really need to go through one to get the full benefits of sleep. Otherwise you'll start to see your mental facilities deteriorate over time, especially memory... You can get on a new schedule pretty easily. Buy yourself a powerful full spectrum light (or get some full spectrum lightbulbs) and set it on a timer to turn on when you want to wake up. Make sure it shines on your face when it's on. (Though, this is not required...) The full spectrum light simulates sunlight. This will trick your body into waking up, and is far more effective an alarm or other jarring wake up inducer. It causes your body to reset itself to the proper hormonal state for waking up, which is vitally important. There are all sorts of studies backing this shit up (circa 1993 when I last studied it all) but I've gotta go explore San Francisco now...

They say if you go 100 days without sleeping you'll see the vision of Elijah. You might die before then, though. Be careful. I found that going 24 hour without sleeping made my skin very papery and irregular. It's not called beauty sleep for nothing, I suppose.

you probably wouldn't die. you'd just fall asleep. sleep is so inconvinient. yawn.

If you can't sleep. I highly recomend having major surgery done. You'll sleep for days afterward. In fact you'll have more trouble staying awake than falling asleep.

I will sleep when I die.

I thought you said you were god? If you are god then you don't need sleep. Nor will you die. If you did either then we'ld all be screwed.

See... Thus If I will sleep when I die, and I am god... there fore I shall never sleep... Its a paradox... Deal with it.

this weekend i went to a party on saturday night. roughly 21 hours awake, 2 hgours of sleep, 14 hours awake, 11 hours of sleep, 1 hour awake, 5 hours of sleep. i haven't worked since friday, i've been calling in sick and looking for a new job. bah, i need to go apply to work at the pearl bakery.

maybe this sleep thing is a good idea after all, it helps u think before u type something stupid, like i did last night

i very strongly do NOT recommend major surgery as a sleep aid.

Sara, my one friend out of two that i have here in austin, went shopping with me last wednesday. we wanted to get something to wear to the Flesh n Fur party we were both invited to by a friend of Sara's, a girl who plays kickball with us. we went to this whacky little resale shop called Limbo, and there was a short fur skirt with a mathing fur halter top. both items in the set were very, very abbreviated. first i tried on the outfit, then she did. the top looked terrible on me, mostly because you could see my bizarre, oversized, man-made belly button (still discolored from scar tissue). the skirt didn't fit her tummy and hips. we decided to split the outfit; she looked great in the top and i looked pretty good in the skirt. [side note: i also bought a $5 pair of fish net thigh highs. the night of the party, as we walked the 3 blocks from my house to our destination, i knew it looked good, but i felt ridiculous. a 31 year old woman in a fur skirt and fishnets. i mean, come on, who am i kidding?] before we disrobed, she asked to see my belly button again, and i showed her, and i only had to roll the skirt down maybe an inch; it was so little that it barely covered the big scar. sometimes now i forget about the scar, until someone else sees it, in all its hip-to-hip glory, and their eyes bug out of their head and they gasp. other people's reactions to it are an interesting mirror. certainly different than the mirror that reflects a 31 year old woman in a fur skirt and fishnets.

Rave on Sarah:)

To a dirty old man, a thirty one year old woman in a fur skirt and fishnets is a sexual fantasy come true. And this one thanks you Sarah for the image.

oomffff!!!!!

i recently cut my smoking by 100% cut my altered states by 100% and nearly cut breathing by 100%

What happened,you scored in Mexico and o.d.?

you're getting warm.....hot....i plead the 5th

Gosh -- I thought I was the only one! S'good to know I'm in such good company. I know my insomnia is part of periomenopause (the hormonal changes women go thru from their late 30's up until they reach actual menopause around 50). But I'm only 41 -- I've got another 9 years or so before the ovaries shut down & I can get back to a normal sleep pattern. And I can't wait that long. I saw a thing on the PBS a while back w/some anthropologist visiting an indigenous jungle-dwelling tribe of Indians. She talked abt how all the women in their late 30's & 40's sprawl together in a communal bed & talk until dawn every nite. She attributed this to periomenopause & the fact their their own children were teenagers & had left the nest so they weren't getting up in the crack of dawn's ass to prepare breakfast for them, etc. Since I was abt 36 or 37/I've noticed that I simply *cannot* fall asleep before 5am or so. I sleep just fine (providing the damn Keepers of the Lawn don't show up w/their damn leaf blowers @ 8am!) from 5-5:30 'til 1-1:30pm. Which is okay -- I get my 7-8 hours/my body is happy/I don'twake up w/rubber-face. But lately I haven't been able to fall asleep until 6-6:30am. I need to be up no later than 2pm so I can get to work by 3:15. I want to get to sleep earlier (4am at the latest) so I can get up earlier so I can enjoy the gorgeous weather before the Hot season returns. I get home from work btwn 11:30pm & midnite/so it's not abnormal for me to stay up til 5am -- it's no different than someone who gets home from work @ 6:00 going to bed @ 11pm becuz they have to get up @ 7am. And I've always been a nite owl/since birth. But no matter how many times I try going to bed early (2 or 3am) I can't fall asleep. I've tried kava kava/passion flower/valerian -- they all relax me a bit but they don't make me sleepy. I'm told there is a specific herb that is useful for periomenopausal insomnia -- Prevention magazine featured it in one of their issues last summer. But of course/I didn't save that issue & I never found out the name of the herb. If any of you know/or you can think of any other suggestions (short of the 2 nightly cocktails Rx), pls. let me know.

Try eating Sunflower seeds and/or Pumpkin seeds. They are supposed to contain an important ameno acid used in the production of seratonin. I don't really know if it works. I've tried it and have had mixed results. But, unless you're allergic or are taking something like an MAOI inhibitor eating them shouldn't cause you any further problems.

That's funny, RC, but the 6am-2pm sleep schedule is the one that's always been most natural to me. If I have no other time constraints, that's when I sleep...

My natural sleep schedule is something like 12:30 am - 9:30 am. I have found, too, that regardless of when I go to bed (9 pm or 12 am or 3 am or...), I naturally want to wake up around 9-9:30.