Tricking myself to sleep

As it has been well documented on this blog, I do not sleep well. Starting when I was in high school, occasionally I would be wide awake at night and sleepy through out the day. This would happen to me about once every couple months until I moved to Calgary. The last couple months before I moved back to Regina, I could not fall asleep before 4:30 AM. I would force myself to stay awake all night and try to go to bed the following night. This would result in falling asleep for about an hour and then not getting tired again until 4:30 AM. After some research, I found success gradually getting back to a regular schedule by delaying sleep 2 hours each night.

For the last week, I've been having the same problems again. Essentially my body gets confused between day and night. I did not have the time or patience to gradually get my sleep schedule back to normal. With the attempt to be proactive to prevent this from happening again, I bought a light box and some melatonin. I took the melatonin at 10PM last night with the hope to get to sleep by 11PM. I've been so sleep deprived, I was in bed before 10:30. Amazingly, I slept until 3 AM and only woke because I was thirsty. I was able to sleep again from 4:30 to 6. At 6AM, I started using my light box for a half hour. Wow, did it ever help me to wake up. For the next little while, I'll have to be pretty strict with my sleep and waking time. Hopefully, all this will help.