Trying to change sleep schedule causes more troubles

[ITILTEZ]

For the last 2 or so years I have gone sleep at about 2:30-3am and woke up around 11am. It was working fine and I didint really have sleeping problems at any point. Also it never took more then 1 hour to fall asleep.

However, because of some recent changes in my life I have been forced to try to change my sleep schedule.
The goal was to get it so that I would go sleep between 12am and 1am and wake up rested at about 8 or 9am.
Seems like a really minor change, unfortunatly it doesnt seem to work as I wished.
It was going fine first and I was able to push to fall asleep at like 1am and wake up the same 11am.
However for the last 2 or so weeks I havent been able to actually fall asleep before 4am and when that happens I sleep untill 12pm.
Thats even tho I feel ready to fall asleep at 12am. However when I get to bed I will just twist around and go to pee every 20mins.

I would like to get some opinions about what is the most effective way to get the sleep schedule fixed.
And drugs really aint option at this point.

[Evan]

12 am = midnight
12 pm = noon


I have no answer for how to sleep better.

[ITILTEZ]

Thanks, fixed it.

One more thing that came to my mind is that I used to drink alot Coca Cola just few hours before going to sleep. But I stopped it at same time as I began trying to change the sleep schedule, because everything I read told it was bad. I dunno if it could have somehow actually made me sleep easier.

[theblackkeys]

Somebody here suggested melatonin, and I started taking it last week. It's helped a ton, I love it. It is a natural hormone released by your body, sometimes called the "darkness hormone". You can buy it off the shelves at any drug or grocery store. It has worked very well for me so far. It doesn't really make you "drowsy", it just sort of allows you to relax and quiet your mind. Waking up is a lot easier as well.

I used to take tylenol PM pills to get to sleep, but I found that I was able to fight off the drowsiness (my mind tends to think a lot at night). Also, tylenol pm type drugs make you drowsy for a long time. Mornings suck too.

I normally tend to stay up until 3-4am, regardless of how much sleep I get the night before.

[ajmargarine]

1. Melatonin rocks.

2. You just have to get up in the morning and no sleeping til noon. Yeah, you'll be real tired for a few days, but eventually you'll be falling asleep sooner and getting up when the alarm goes off.

[Tron]

[ QUOTE ]
2. You just have to get up in the morning and no sleeping til noon. Yeah, you'll be real tired for a few days, but eventually you'll be falling asleep sooner and getting up when the alarm goes off.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, this is really important. You're just going to have to suck it up and get out of bed at the exact same time every morning. Do things like set multiple alarms, put your alarm clock on the other side of the room, etc. to get out of bed, then do things like take a shower, exercise, drink coffee, or whatever to help perk you up once you're out of bed.