It’s actually like the title asks; What does everyone here do when you can’t sleep and are wide awake besides being on phone?
So let’s say it’s in the middle of the night and you are unable to sleep. You have to keep things soundless due to family or partner.
Trying to get the phone usage significantly lower when being in bed but it feels like nothing can replace the ‘easiness of mindlessly scrolling’.
I have those nights and I hate them.
I stay in bed and at least rest the body. I found that getting on an electronic device keeps me up.
For me there is often a problem that causes to not be able to sleep, and I’ll try to solve that. Like being hungry, thirsty, radiator too warm, radiator not warm enough, I have some energy I need to get out, need to close the window, need to open the window. If nothing helps I get out of bed for a while and this makes me more tired after some time. I try to avoid scrolling because it just makes the time fly by without changing the circumstances or making me sleepy.
Not exactly quiet but works for me because of the layout of my house.
I go to the laundry room which is on the other side of the house from the bedrooms, turn the kitchen light on, laundry room like off (so it’s light enough to see but pretty dim), sit on the washer and play sad songs on my guitar.
It’s therapuetic and after about 20 minutes I’m just exhausted.
I put on a Playlist of DCAU animated series. Batman: The Animated Series through Justice League Unlimited. I’ve seen them all a million times and it’s something that lets my ADHD brain rest. You’d be surprised st how much of those shows are orchestral soundtrack withiut dialog.
I lay completely still. Properly, completely still. I focus all my energy on not moving a single muscle besides what I need to breathe.
Then, while doing that, I try to conjure up elaborate fantasy scenes in my mind.
9 times out of 10 I’m gone within five minutes.
Read or take a dose of melatonin.
Ambien.
Throw on an eye mask and headphones and turn on an audiobook.
Call it quits and get started on work, play a video game, run or workout.
Ambien can be crazy though, my mother used to go out and eat an entire cake (or cook something and eat it all) in the middle of the night. More anecdotes than can be counted.
As an alternative (because, being her child I would probably do the same and would rather not) I made mini brownies with 3MG THC and threw them in the freezer …30 seconds in the microwave and in an hour I’m sound asleep.
- YouTube (radio drama channels) - there are some fantastic plays.
- podcasts using antennapod on F-Droid.
Oooh, do you have any recommendations for the former?
Search on “radio dramas” in the bar regularly until “radio dramas” appears in the capsule shaped in the listings for you; you might want to try “BBC Radio” too. I’m a old fart Brit bought up in the golden era of BBC for context.
- I adore le Carré and there are quite a few read by him, some quite abridged. However, these will probably stop you going to sleep because you stay awake trying to guess what’s actually happening.
- RD Wingfield
- the Whitehall 1212 series about the old Scotland Yard are half hour stories of the old type where the criminals always give themselves up and explain why they did it!
- Paul Temple (and …)
- Miss Marple… and related Agatha Christie
- Dorothy L Sayers (Lord Peter Wimsey)
- The trenchcoat PI with the classic American Private Investigator voice and demeanour. Damn. Can’t remember the name. Philip Marlowe.
- there’s a Nordic series too: Martin Beck.
- PD James.
I hope that’s of some use. Don’t hesitate to write if you listen to a good one i may have missed!
It’s difficult to provide channels because YouTube takes channels down for some reason and they reappear under similar names or not at all.
Send them a few pennies if you can or at least like and subscribe.
Please expand on the radio drama channels
I explicitly command my brain to stop thinking. When something pops up again I would go “nope, you ain’t doing that”.
I would visualize something being cleaned up, like a whiteboard being erased, or turning screens off.
I do that too, like wiping my whole whiteboard/brain completely clean. It takes a few tries often.
I live walking distance to the best queer bar in the south, you can find me there many nights after midnight. Plenty of clubs, dancing, house music. I just be roaming the night looking for pretty lights and thumping music. Perks of living in a major city
Read books, do light stretching, journal with pen and paper, meditate, any quiet activity like that without a screen.
Melatonin and a 3mg THC gummy or two.
If it’s real bad, I’ll resolve to go clean up the garage. All of a sudden my body becomes too heavy to stand up and I’m immobile.
I personally like writing + D&D, so I’ll just do that in my head. Grab some character I like, throw them in some random moments, and then just kinda daydream about the little movie I’m making for myself. It helps a ton if I can keep focused
Read with a real book if possible . If you sleep by yourself you can be quiet with just a small light. Either I get lost in the story then can sleep or it gets so boring sleep seems better then forcing myself to read another word.
I very rarely have trouble sleeping, but when I do, this is what I’ve always done since childhood and it hasn’t failed me yet.
I lay there, with my eyes closed, resist any temptation to look at my phone or do anything else, make myself as comfortable as possible wrapped up in blankets and pillows and whatever
And I just kind of direct my mind towards something pointless and let it wander down that rabbit hole
Maybe I’ll imagine sort of a bunch of swirling lights and colors and just kind of watch them, look for patterns, etc.
Or I’ll make up stories. I’m no author, but I’ll imagine myself as maybe a super hero, or an astronaut, or a wizard, or any of those sort of stock characters, and I imagine myself saving the world, or fighting a dragon, or boldly going where no man has gone before. These stories I’m making up aren’t deep, they’re a crappy universe full of plot holes and the kinds of characters an elementary schooler playing make-believe would come up with, because of course the superhero I’m imagining myself as can fly and has heat vision and wolverine claws and can turn invisible and has super strength and…
Or I just kind of think about simple things I enjoy. Places I could go hiking with my dog, date nights with my wife, meals I’d like to cook for friends, etc.
Whatever it is, I just kind of let my mind wander down that road, it takes my mind off of whatever was keeping me awake, and after I while my focus begins to falter and I just sort of slip into sleep from there.
I’m pretty sure this kind of falls under the category of some kind of meditation. My work once did a mandatory “wellness retreat” as a “training” thing I had to go to. One of the things we did was a guided meditation session, and that felt like the same sort of thing (but for people who are boring and lack the imagination to think of a scenario to meditate on by themselves, imagining myself flying an x-wing through an asteroid field beats the pants off of imagining I’m walking through a meadow to the beach or whatever that lady was having us imagine)
Sometimes a little background noise is helpful. I’m not personally too picky about what it is, I like trip hop music for this purpose, or forest sounds, or just random YouTube videos (not even necessarily anything relaxing, I’ve fallen asleep to some machinist YouTubers plenty of times and the sound of a mill, lathe, band saw, grinder, etc. isn’t exactly what I’d call soothing.
And when all else fails, I rub one out
