The best sleeping aids in the world aren’t drugs, they should in fact be the last resort to sleeping problems. I conquered sleep onset insomnia by not thinking too hard about trying to fall asleep. Thinking leads to being aware of you still being awake, that leads to ANXIETY which leads to even more frustration and more tossing and turning.
Before you go to sleep you have to do some breathing practices, for e.g., when you inhale expand your diaphragm and when you exhale contract your diaphragm. Also try listening to music on your mp3 player, if you’re hungry you should have a light snack, preferably those that contain tryptophan. A cup of milk, warm or cold, eat some cookies until you feel fairly full. If after 10 minutes you’re still awake and don’t feel that tired, get out of bed and do something else until you feel you absolutely have to lie down and rest your tired body.
It’s good to keep a paper diary that you use to write down what time you woke up at and what happens during daytime and finally what time you go to bed AND what time you fall asleep. This way you can track how many days you literally cannot sleep, how many days you only sleep 5 hours when you need 9, for example.
Last but not least I myself had been on sleeping DRUGS on and off since I was 15. I’m 23 now and have tried sleeping pills like Atarax, Ambien and Imovane. They’re no good for health and they harm our body in the long term, the side-effects are like a side-torture to the small benefits they bring. You can’t be on sleeping pills forever… there would come a day when you finally have to stop taking them and be able to sleep on your own! When you do come off them you’ll find yourself having even more serious sleeping problems (due to the withdrawal symptoms) THAN you had before and so much money would have been wasted and it would have been better to never have started eating any sleeping pills, right?
