When I pay attention to those random thoughts, it tends to lead me to the analyzing stage.

A serious response: it takes 10-12 hours for caffeine to get out of your system. My doctor told me this, and since I started following this I have been sleeping much better.
Also, +1 for random thinking.

OP is 100% correct. It's the same reason why reading a book you find interesting can kill your sleep, mental stimulation.

I drink lots of beer each night and fall asleep easily

+1

-Also, I post mainly in H&F and every couple of months some college kid comes in whining about how he cant fall asleep at midnight and needs drugs or meditation or some other BS.

Invariably it always comes out that this guy tends to sleep in till 3 pm. No sh*t you can't fall asleep at midnight if you just woke up 9 hours before. Try waking up at 8 am every morning for a week straight and staying awake all day like us real adults have to, and then tell me you have trouble falling asleep at midnight. Trust me, you wont.

Won't*

I just throw a chess video on the netbook and start watching - I'm out in 10 minutes, man

i remember this asian fad. at least i hope it was a fad. i think the pillow would make an adequate sleeping partner with the western world too. she cant cook though. cookings great. i wish there were no plates. food would fly through the air, cool in transit, and end up in your mouth. mouths are kind of excess too. a higher evolved being wont have mouths. are platelets serving food to your body cells? what about sperm? what if a sperm went in a volcano, would there be a new earth? what about the moon? cheese, maybe new planet will be cheese-like. id rather consume the earth and die then destroy it aimlessly. like animals. oh look there's a billy goat. but its chin hair is replaced by a man. we'll call it a mantee, not to be confused with a manatee. oh god those things are weird. i wonder of those pillow girlfriends take it in the ass.

lol this, i started doing this. Not told others people yet thou haha

there's your ****ing tip right there

I've been taking Endone for the past 5 weeks and it helps me ..

now you're just dreaming.

Really, that simple huh. Obviously if you start waking up at 8am you will get tired and fall asleep earlier. However, it's not exactly easy to wake up at 8am when you are used to staying up until 5am every single night. I have tried to go to bed earlier but I end up just laying awake in bed.

Masters of meditation train for years to do this. While effective , there is a lot of effort in training the mind to let go.

when i was a member of the ICC, i could just watch some instructional chess videos and fall asleep within 30 minutes max.

Dali Lama walks into a pizza place, says, "Make me one with everything."

plz diagnose this whiny college kid then!

I wake up at 8 mwf and 9-9:30 (at the latest) for the rest of the days.

I do not consume caffeine (or any other stimulant) past 1pm (typically earlier but thats the latest).

I get in bed at 11:30 (at the latest) on sunday tuesday thursday, at 12:30-1 (again at the latest) on the rest.

I weight train 3x a week and I either jog or play tennis (competitively) on my 'off' days. There is *almost* always at least one true off day per week on saturday or sunday but every once and a while I'll play tennis or racketball.

However, I cannot fall asleep unassisted. At all.

I am exhausted when I get into bed at night, yet I will lay there for 3-4 hours before I give up and screw around until 6-7am when I can actually fall asleep.

Admittedly, I haven't let it get that far in a while and I always have some form of sleep aid at my disposal (some mixture/cycle of melatonin, gaba, valerian, benadryl, unisom (pretty much same as benadryl but I prefer it), and weed).

With all of this it is still difficult to fall asleep, and I have sleep anxiety from the second I wake up worrying about the night to come.

So please, tell me that all I need to do in order to go to sleep at night is 'grow up'. Fantastic advice imo.

Cliffs: I'm pissed off that I have trouble sleeping and I got more pissed off when I saw a ******ed generalization and I decided to write an unnecessarily long post explaining my own problems to show it!

Its a good tip and sounds about right until the "It takes absolutely no effort" part...

That's fantastic that it takes you absolutely no effort, but for me (much much worse at night time than during the day time) that sounds like the most difficult thing in the world.

Hopefully with increased reading and practice of meditation I can work this out myself and 'let go of my mind', but I assure you, it is not that easy for everyone.

I just repeat phrases to myself to zone out:

"Empty spaces"
"Deep blue water"
"Endless ocean"

That usually knocks me right out.

This might be my favorite post ever.

so your advice is to do nothing...........

fu

Don't Fade IV by Mudhoney started playing when I opened this thread. Irony or karma?

didn't read it at first till you quoted it.

poty

My favorite part.

Sounds like you have anxiety or something. I'm not a doc but if it's that tough then you probably have something goin' on. Weed isn't helping.

http://www.rainymood.com/

Play that, listen to it and make white noise inside your head while you listen to it( because not thinking at all is hard), fall asleep ezpz.

No making thunder or other interesting sounds in your head, and don't picture anything!

Get good at it and you can apply it to other situations. Kinda like this: