Sleep Is For the ME! GIVE IT BACK!

This summer has been wreaking havoc on my sleep patterns. We've had camp after camp after camp, and so our schedule has never once been consistent. One freaking time I mixed up the am/pm on my alarm and my oversleeping anxiety went into overdrive, and despite years of behavior modification therapy I still can't turn it off.

In the past I always had trouble with falling asleep, which I now have under control. A mean combo of melatonin plus counting backwards by threes from a number higher than 1000 does the trick most nights. Now, though, I've been waking up around 2 or 3 in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep. Just tossing, itching, crying. I do all of the things I'm supposed to do, don't go to bed until I'm sleepy, avoid caffeine in the afternoon, etc. but to no avail. Inevitably I usually fall back asleep so that when my alarm goes off I'm in the deepest sleep possible, and then end up a zombie space cadet all day.

Zombie Space Cadet was the name of my band in college.*

I used to be able to nap to get myself back on track a little bit, but now even that won't work for me. I lay in bed hearing an imaginary clock ticking away the minutes that I'm not sleeping and end up giving up before I've hit the 30 minute mark. It's very frustrating, especially considering how much I used to love a good nap. Now we're enemies, naps and me.

So it's time to change things up. I'm not looking to take any other medications of supplements, so I'm going to start gradually weaning off of caffeine, and I'm going to avoid alcohol as much as possible. School starts in about a month, and I want to nip this shit in the bud before then.

So if you call or text me after 7:30pm and I don't answer, assume I'm in bed.

*False. I was never in a band. Feel free to use the name, though!