Why does being healthy require such hard work 
Sounds like you are trying really hard, hopefully you will get results soon 
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I know… But I guess nothing good comes easy!?! 
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Some basic sleep hygiene (copied from Healthy Sleep Habits - Sleep Education by the AASM)
Follow these tips to establish healthy sleep habits:
- Keep a consistent sleep schedule. Get up at the same time every day, even on weekends or during vacations.
- Set a bedtime that is early enough for you to get at least 7-8 hours of sleep.
- Don’t go to bed unless you are sleepy.
- If you don’t fall asleep after 20 minutes, get out of bed. Go do a quiet activity without a lot of light exposure. It is especially important to not get on electronics.
- Establish a relaxing bedtime routine.
- Use your bed only for sleep and sex.
- Make your bedroom quiet and relaxing. Keep the room at a comfortable, cool temperature.
- Limit exposure to bright light in the evenings.
- Turn off electronic devices at least 30 minutes before bedtime.
- Don’t eat a large meal before bedtime. If you are hungry at night, eat a light, healthy snack.
- Exercise regularly and maintain a healthy diet.
- Avoid consuming caffeine in the afternoon or evening.
- Avoid consuming alcohol before bedtime.
- Reduce your fluid intake before bedtime.
These might seem like nothing special. But they work. If you practise 'm all. I don’t follow all these rules myself and my sleep suffers as a consequence. For example, I check my phone when I wake up at night. Really bad. I read in bed. I shouldn’t really. We need to associate our beds with sleep (and with sex maybe), not with reading. I drink too much coffee too late in the day. I eat and drink too much too late at night.
When I drank I fell into a black hole when I went to bed, some sort of comatose state from which I woke -on average- some five hours later, hungover and often still under the influence and hungover. I never dreamt.
Then I got sober and a much more natural sleeping pattern emerged, with periods of deep sleep and lighter sleep following each other, dreaming which I had to get used to, waking up and falling asleep again, or sometimes not feeling asleep again. This happens till today. It’s very unusual for me not to be able to fall asleep, but I tend to wake up a lot at night.
For me it all comes down to my mental health. I sleep best when I’m not anxious, not depressed, when I generally feel good. That might seem like something very obvious, but it’s still worth considering. Good sleep comes with good health, mentally, physically, spiritually. So it might be a good idea to focus on that and good sleep will follow, if combined with a good bedtime routine and sleep hygiene.
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I’m in the UK, pharmacies in England sell them over the counter, I got mine from ASDA pharmacy 
Don’t get herbal stuff- ask for the active ingredient ones.
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This is really amazing thank you. I will try to implement everything!
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I never knew that you know!
I love that I’m not just passing out early at night anymore. I love being able to recall the entire events of the evening!
I’m not having too much of a hard time falling asleep but I’m awake a lot later than normal (probably because I’m lying in bed scrolling through this forum 
… So that’s a good thing because it’s helpful!)
The biggest issue for me is Im wide awake at 4:30am. Makes for a long day and only about 5 hours sleep which is not enough for me.
Does somebody know the Hello Better Sleep app? I got it from my psychiatrist as a prescription, because of my abuse history and former liver damage medication wasn’t an option.
I’m at phase 2 at the moment without caffeine and with sleep compression. That means I’m going to be a bitchy monster, why, as a precaution, one has to inform one’s social environment.
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An old thread, but still valid for my question and sharing my experience. So, I’m on day 55 and for about a week my sleeping has been really strange. I sleep only 2 hrs at time, then wake up, going back to sleep, then wake up again after 2 hrs, again back to sleep etc. This cycle goes after I finally decide to stay awake. I’m not feeling tired at all. Does someone else has this kind of a problem? I know that in early recovery sleeping can be pretty fucked up, but I have never experienced something like this.
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To me that’s actually a rather normal and natural sleeping pattern. Natural sleeping has these cycles of roughly 1.5 till 2.5 hours (give or take) with periods of deep sleep followed by light sleep and vice versa. In between these cycles there’s short periods of very light sleep or actually waking up. My sleep pattern is like that since I quit substances. It was when I was under the influence my sleep was messed up, dropping off into a comatose state without dreams and waking up groggy and hungover five or six hours later.
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Thank you for the reply. That’s really comforting to know that my sleeping is getting normal. I experience a lot of dreams nowadays versus before when I was drunk or stoned. Thanks again!
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