Can't Sleep

Hey everyone, I'm having a certain problem. I can't sleep, well I can but I can't sleep until 3-7 AM and when I do I wont wake up until 1-4 PM.

I lay down at about 1 AM and it just doesn't happen.
This all started around January when I decided to get home schooled. I guess since I don't have to wake up early I stay up late, so now it's a habit I'm used to.

How can I revert back to sleeping at 11 PM? (Original time I'd go lay down at)

Is theie any type of pill/liquid medicine I could take that would put me to sleep?

Pills seem like I could get addicted to them so that's a last resort.

Any help is appreciated.

Edit: It's 4:34 AM at the time of writing this

 

How old are you?

What is your daily schedule?
What is your desired daily schedule?

How many hours do you sleep a night?

Answer all of the above and I can diagnose you.

 

How old are you? 17

What is your daily schedule? School either at 12-1 PM or 4-5 PM (I still sleep at the same hours but wake up before) and just sitting infront of my computer 80% of the time. I watch T.V at 10 PM until their is nothing interesting then I go to my room and listen to music and lift some weights.

What is your desired daily schedule? Sleeping at 11 PM, waking up at 9 AM feeling refreshed.
Then going to the gym for 2 hours or so.

How many hours do you sleep a night? 7-12 Hours depending on if I feel like waking up or if my parents wake me up then not being able to sleep again.

 

Alright well to start off, your a normal case.
(TL;DR at bottom however you should read most of this)

It seems you get probably 10 hours of sleep a day correct? This is great, it is slightly above the average sleep recommended for a teen. However the way you get it isn't so great lol.

Sleep is primarily caused by a chemical Melatonin. Simply put Melatonin is released during the night which causes us to sleep.
Now a teenagers problem with sleep is that their biological clock has been altered to produce Melatonin later, which consequentially causes us to sleep later. You are somewhat lucky as you still get the required amount of sleep, just not at the right time.
So just to let you know, your not abnormal and theres no need to buy sleeping pills.

Now one of the problems I can identify for you is that you linger around light for too long at night. If you just stare at your computer screen after 11PM, you WON'T get tired as your body is sent spastic as it still thinks its morning, the light emitted from your computer screen is interpreted by your body as an external cue that hey its time to wake up/stay awake.
1 way of causing you to be more sleep is to try to avoid lights when your 'winding down' for sleep. Turn all your lights off when you want to go to sleep, and under no circumstance should you go back to your computer, this just prevents your body from producing Melatonin and in turn you'll sleep later and later.

Now obviously even if you do that you probably still can't get to sleep at your desired time. So another thing you should try to improvise is 'bright light therapy.' You'll get what it is as I'm explaining what you should do.

Basically assuming your refreshed every time you wake up from your sleep then you can skip the first step. If your not refreshed, then for the next 2-3 days sleep AS MUCH AS YOU WANT.

Now this is where the fun starts. Try to sleep as early as you can, a way of inducing this is having a really hard day. Once you sleep set your alarm clock (make sure you wake up this is important) to 1 hour before you would normally wake up. Once you've woken up move on to the next step.

The bright light part. As soon as you wake up go to your computer screen, turn all the lights on, stare at a bright light (hence the computer screen) This is to tell your body that hey wake up as the external cue of light is activating your body. Stare at the lights for maybe 15 minutes, you can browse Sythe while doing this, just make sure your looking at the computer screen and turn it up to maximum brightness.

Everyday do this, however each day set your alarm click 15-30 minutes earlier. What this should do is completely reshape your body clock. You should feel after a few days you'll feel more tired earlier. Now continue this until you hit your desired waking up time, 9AM. Once you hit it consider the treatment till 7AM, which means yes you will be waking up at 7AM and staring at your computer screen.

What this should do is completely change your body click to sleep much earlier than you are and in turn wake up earlier.


TL;DR - Lights cause you to stay awake so avoid them when your going to sleep. As soon as you wake up stare at very bright lights and as each day passes by set your alarm clock back 15-20 minutes. Do this until you hit 7AM and Voila you should have a new biological clock.


Hope this helped bro.

 

Well, its easy.

Stay up now. Dont go to sleep until 11PM comes back around.

Yes its hard, just drink coffee/tea/coke or anything along those lines to keep you awake.

Go for a run or go outside and play some sport too. That way at the end of the day your going to be really exhausted.

Try spending less time infront of the computer screen too.

 

Yes, and once that 11PM comes around you'll become sleep deprived, and end up waking 2-3 hours later than normal.

 

Hey thanks a lot for that very appreciated!
I'll definately try it, whenever I used to wake up early for school I would head straight for my shower and that usually woke me up.

I'll try this out, maybe go for some early morning jogs!

Thanks again

P.S Weed knocks me out but I can't do that at the moment lol

Edit: Thanks player

It's 5:35 AM and my eyes are tired, going to try to sleep

Thanks for the advice