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.
https://www.verywellhealth.com/brown-noise-vs-white-noise-7254274 brown vs white vs pink
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
I have this 1 have this one creator, The Exploring series covering mainly SCP who has just the right monotone with no special sound effects to perk you alert. He started on youtube but has 95% of his material on spotify as well. His stuff plus a dose of melatonin 2H before when I want to go sleep mode is what does it for me.I’ve solely used his material to sleep for more than 4 years now (uploads once a week so Ive gone through his whole production multiple times). Been trying to find a comparable podcaster but no luck so far. Either they have too much background music, use sound effects or too much variance in speech volume & tone. Any recomendations are welcome.
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.
tried the same thing and i feel very tired but my pulse shoots through the roof and my heart feels like its gonna stop :[
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).
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.
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.
Not everything is about or for you, you don’t always have to chip in, and this is a perfect example of a time where you actually have nothing of much value to contribute to the conversation so should just taken a seat and listen (if you must. Again - some things simply aren’t for you and it’s ok to move on without piping up).
You are literally being the top person in the meme who doesn’t get it. We face several of you a day every single day of our lives.
I hope you take this opportunity to learn and do better in the future, instead of trying to justify, and continuing to centre yourself in conversations that aren’t for you.
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.
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.
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.
And there it is.
The NT has ridden in on their white horse to teach all us NDs about their “common sense” that is clearly what we’re lacking…
What would we do without you, oh great neurotypical??? /S
Try weed 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.
