8mo ago

If I don't overshoot my planned sleeping time by 1 hour doomscrolling, I'm usually sick.

53 comments

I tried caffeine before bed the other night because I read in my ADHD book that that stimulants could have the opposite effect in some people with ADHD, and help the specific problem of racing thoughts before bed(understimulation) which I get pretty often. Slept the best I had in a long time for 4 hours, then got woke up by pets and lost 4 hours because I couldn’t sleep again funnily enough; I did tea for my first test but it definitely ran short, may try a caffeinated something else next time ~~ibuprofen~~.
Edit: Caffeinated ibuprofen doesn't exist to my knowledge and probably for the best not to test it, I got mixed up making comments too early for my brain to wake up.
- Yeah caffeine is a siren song for a select few. It's not necessarily an 'everyone and every form of ADHD thing', but it seems to present together often enough.
  In my case it's tricksy because the line between "this much coffee will help sleep" and "this much coffee will make you feel like it re-activated the magic conversion machine the actual ADHD meds just shut down" is about 1 oz one way or another from a 5oz cup (a real small amount in sane units, I didn't convert).
- tried the same thing and i feel very tired but my pulse shoots through the roof and my heart feels like its gonna stop :[
  
  It’s definitely not for everyone.
  
  Maybe less caffeine if you're so essily stimulated metabolically.
- Yeah caffeine when tired already is the best way to make my body go "ok, I sleep now, lie me down".
- Yeah, coffee specifically does shit for me. Literally. Pretty sure I'd lose weight at a rapid pace if I kept drinking it. Energy drinks on the other hand are...okay? More mood stabilization than energy improvements.
  Unless you count sometimes getting more anxious as energy, in which case some days I may actually be able to vibrate through walls.
  Course I don't have just adhd. I also deal with separate depression and anxiety with adhd as a sort of foundation, while also not being the primary reason for either. So fuck if I know.

I'm autistic and I'm the same but for me it's less about going a minute without stimulation, more about not wanting to be alone with my thoughts because they're constant and horrible at best.
Without my tv and pc always on around me (and weed) I don't think I could sleep at all (pc to scroll/read till my eyes get sleepy, and tv to give my brain external conversation to focus on rather than the one going on in my brain). Even then it's a struggle, but I'm still 100% more likely to get some sleep with these things on, than I am without (I don't consider crying for several hours in either frustration or deep despair until my eyes can't stay open anymore a good enough alternative ¯(ツ)/¯).
- I feel you...
  🎶 I can't seem to face up to the facts
  I'm tense and nervous and I can't relax
  I can't sleep 'cause my bed's on fire
  Don't touch me, I'm a real live wire 🎶
  
  Those lyrics hit far too close to home right now..

If I don't put on a decent to good movie I've already seen several times AND brown noise (not to be confused with the theorized Brown Note), odds are I don't fall asleep for several hours if at all.
Sleep advice and other such "lifehacks" are seldom very ADHD-friendly and can be borderline ableist at times.
- Yes, I usually watch tv or a movie in bed and it also has to be something I've seen before so I'm not kept awake wanting to see what happens next. Also it has to be not too funny, not too sad, or make me just too happy to see, etc. Interesting enough for me to want to watch it at all, boring enough for me to fall asleep quickly. It can be tricky sometimes.
  
  I go to sleep wearing noise cancelling headphones and playing YouTube videos from a handful of creators with nice monotone voices that I've seen before. If I don't, then my mind gets too preoccupied with thinking about things that aren't important, and on top of that every single little noise gives me an adrenaline rush and I feel the need to get out of bed and go investigate
- Mmmmmmm, brown noise <3
  
  https://www.verywellhealth.com/brown-noise-vs-white-noise-7254274 brown vs white vs pink

I find listening to (already listened to—this part is important) stuff is like a sleeping pill. Rip YouTube videos and put just the audio on your phone. Play it at bed time—I use earbuds and throw it under my pillow.
Right now, I’m listening to Kings & Generals and Operations Room audio. In the past, I’ve done Futurama audio.
- The sweet sweet, soothing voice of Robert Stack on "Unsolved Mysteries". I've seen damn near every episode, so it's become like a "comfort food"... puts me to sleep almost everytime
- Futurama has been my go-to for years at this point.
- I just let old Drawfee episodes play on low volume while I sleep. Multiple familiar voices seems to be more effective to me.
- This is exactly a trick of mine. It has to be already listened to, so that it’s a more passive listening experience.
  Sometimes it also helps if the content of the audio does not clue me in to how far through the video I am. That’s just one less “I’m not falling asleep fast enough” indicator to keep me awake longer.
- I use one of those sleep masks with the built-in earphones to listen to different kinds of music and/or rain and thunder. Oddly I tend to like creepy and scary music or ambiance.
- I've taken to listening to the Cobalt Core soundtrack, I never remember getting very far so I guess it works.

That advice is bullshit. I look at screens for hours before bed and then just fall asleep. Doesn’t apply to everyone.
- Because it's talking about quality of sleep rather than time it takes to get to sleep

Yeah bro not gonna happen. 2 hours is 2 entire hours and I have things I care about to do.

A while ago, I read something about how back in the day, people would spend half of their evenings "thinking about sleep" and not really doing anything, talking about it like wasted time when you could be doing more fulfulling things. So it's weird to me to hear that people are recommending two whole hours of this.
As someone who doesn't have ADHD, here's what works for me*: No heavy metal or intense video gaming right before bed. I usually just take one final scroll through the front page of Lemmy before I go to bed. And I leave my phone at my desk - that part seems more important. Studies have found it's harder to fall asleep while looking at a screen. I learned this a while ago and thought it was a no-brainer, then was surprised over the years to learn how many people are literally scrolling through their phones while they're trying to sleep. If you can give that up*, you'll fall asleep easier, and if your phone is out of arm's reach of your bed, your alarm clock will be much more effective in the morning.
*I can't even guess how easy this would be to pull off with ADHD. Maybe it's about as easy as it is for anyone else (which may not be all that easy tbf,) maybe it's borderline impossible. If it's the latter, sorry, I don't have any ADHD-specific advice.
- Always appreciate someone who doesn't have adhd coming in and giving advice like they have it all figured out. You might as well just say, have you tried not having adhd?
  
  Yeah, I know it's not necessarily going to be applicable. That's why I gave two asterisks pointing to a disclaimer about exactly that.
  Anyways, the point of my comment was more to talk about my thoughts and experiences regarding sleep routines, and the fact that the "two hours of nothing stimulating before bed" is incredibly alien even to me, as a person who doesn't have ADHD.
- You may need to update your "no brainier"
  As those of us who scroll in bed have long known:
  One study, published in the National Sleep Foundation’s journal, Sleep Health, investigated iPhone use in young adults before bed and found no significant differences in sleep outcomes regardless of whether subjects used a phone with a less-blue display, a normal display or no phone at all.
  Several studies have suggested blue light emissions suppress the production of the sleep-promoting hormone, melatonin. But researchers now say these effects are not as extreme as previously believed, amounting to, at most, a 10-minute delay due to screen use.
  https://nypost.com/2024/05/30/lifestyle/screentime-before-bed-could-be-less-harmful-than-earlier-thought/
  
  That's talking about being on the phone before bed, not while trying to sleep. I'm not talking about people doing one last scroll before they go to bed, I'm talking about people lying in bed, scrolling through their feeds, expecting to fall asleep with their phone in hand.
  And yeah, I thought it was a no-brainer that actively reading social media makes it harder to fall asleep while doing so, but these days I'm not so sure how common this "common sense" is.

The sleep thing highlights how little we know about the brain. We have no treatment whatsoever which can safely induce sleep. This cliché advice, which is meant exclusively for acute insomnia of those who typically don't experience it, is the cutting edge of sleep medicine. Humanity and the most advanced scientific research currently available is totally ignorant of everything not covered by these tips.
When I finally accepted that I have absolutely no control whatsoever of my sleep latency and there is currently nothing in all of medicine that can be done about it, my nights became a lot less stressful and a lot more enjoyable.

Weirdly, I can spend hours meditating. But meditating before sleep? Impossible. If I can't have Netflix, I require music

I fall asleep super easy if I am watching stuff in VR. The trick appears to be to completely immerse yourself with stimulation until your brain shuts down.

I thought reading is actually often recommended though instead of all those other activities. Knitting too. Relaxing things like that.
It might be a specific “stay alert” trigger for some, but not generally.
- The thing about ADHD is that it is going to include a large portion of those "not generally" covered by that common trait by definition.
  
  I guess it’s one of those “on a spectrum” things — for me, an ADHD person, reading before bed works.
  It’s just other things mentioned in the post, like movies, games, are stimulating and not recommended before sleep even for neurotypicals, and even they still can’t live without screens before bed, that was my point.

Try weed instead
- The problem with that is there is no middle ground, because then you rely on it daily. So you have the option of being a habitual user and living each day in a semi haze or trying other things instead
- Am I the only one that smoking before bed has a stimulant effect? I am awake for hours. Have to time it like people time coffee.
  My mind goes into thinking all the things mode, which I enjoy but it is not restful.
  
  I don't smoke anymore but when I did id smoke in the morning to wake me up and then smoke at night to put me to bed. I really have no idea how it worked but it did.
  Not different strains either, the exact same bag.

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