Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Sleep

I am the Queen of the Paradoxical Reactions. Just want to throw that out there.

I have not been sleeping. Well, I sleep, but not at the desired time. The past five nights now I have not fallen asleep until 4 or 5 am. I sleep until noon, so I'm still getting enough sleep, but it's getting old, lying awake in bed all night.

I know all the sleep remedies. I was using a lot of them before this problem, and they did help. L tryptophan, L theanine, melatonin, my antihistamine, they were getting me to sleep around 1 am. Hoping to get to sleep a little earlier, I tried adding phosphatidyl choline to the mix, and that was the first night I was up until 4. For the next 3 nights I didn't take the choline, but I was still up until 4 or 5. Last night I tried 2 choline, thinking maybe I wasn't taking enough, and I was definitely more alert after I took it.

So the choline is no good for me, but that doesn't explain why I was up on the nights I didn't take it. I made two other changes recently, I dropped down to 12 Empowerplus capsules from 15, and I added Holy Basil. The combined effect of these changes has been to make me more alert and a little more energetic during the day. I guess they are doing the same to me at night as well. But I'm not willing to give up the daytime benefit for more sleep, because I am sleeping, just not at the right time.

What I'm going to do is start shifting my wake up time earlier, and see if that will eventually be reflected in an earlier bedtime. I want to maintain my energy in the daytime, so the change will be gradual.

Really, despite this sleep problem I am getting better every day. I guess I am in the sweet spot now, between withdrawal and protracted withdrawal. My laundry has really piled up over the course of this withdrawal, maybe soon I'll be able to take care of that!