Can't I at least go back to WoW dreams? (RL)

[thistlechaser]

Sometimes it seems the worst part of stress dreams are how unoriginal they are. The night before last I had a dream that I decided to go back and finish high school because a college degree was important so I wanted to go. (WTF brain, I HAVE a college degree already!) So I signed up for high school... then couldn't remember how to get to the school. Then when I finally got there, I lost my schedule so I didn't know which classes to go to. Someone told me, then I couldn't find the classroom. All that was needed to make it 100% cliche was for me to find the class and end up having forgotten to put pants on.

Last night I had a dream that the world was ending. Often that situation wouldn't make for a bad dream, but in this case it did. I somehow found the last few humans, and then POOF, they all just disappeared when I blinked my eyes, leaving me alone with a bunch of mutant animals that were all fleeing in the same direction from Something Horrible. I stuck around to look for the other humans instead of fleeing as well. (WTF?)

I'm starting to think I have to rethink my Just Say No policy to drugs. I can't even count how many years I've been sleeping badly. Waking up every couple hours and taking hours to fall back to sleep, sleeping so lightly my heartbeat wakes me up. (Seriously, this morning I keep hearing some sort of knocking/pounding sound, it would startle me awake and then I'd realize it was my heartbeat.) I'm tired of never getting enough sleep. A good night is four or five hours of sleep. So very tired. The idea of drugs scares me though. I worry about taking anything I could get addicted to, or something that would make me sleep deeply enough that I'd miss someone shouting about a fire or breaking in or something. (Yeah, I have a smoke detector, but a couple years back the other end of the apartment complex was on fire and someone came around banging on bedroom windows to wake people up.)

Blah. *tired stress puppy*

Comments

[fealubryne.livejournal.com]

Okay, your school dream made me giggle out loud. Wow. That's a bundle o'cliché right there. Your brain officially wins the Unimaginative Dream Award! Congratulations!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Isn't it? The night before that, at least I had a more original one: Stuck on the highest mountain on the planet (I'm mildly afraid of heights), and I had to fly a nether drake if I wanted to get down.

[sailor-arashi.livejournal.com]

I get that High School dream a lot myself, complete with losing schedule and forgetting my locker combination. It's a pretty annoying dream, since high school sucked and I have no idea why my brain wants to revisit that :P

For trouble sleeping, you might try Melatonin. I recently started taking it for the occasional 4-day bouts of crazy insomnia I get, and it's worked wonders. Given that it's just the chemical your own body produces when it's time for sleep, it's relatively harmless as things go. It doesn't even make you really 'drowsy' like most sleep drugs do. It just makes it so you fall asleep almost instantly and enter deeper stages of sleep much more quickly, but also doesn't make it hard to wake up either.

The primary side-effect is 'vivid dreaming', which I can definitely attest to. I've never dreamed this much before in my life. This is not a bad thing :)

Oh, and it's over-the-counter. You find it in with the vitamins.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ha! I'm glad my brain didn't remember about locker combinations! In RL, those had been a terror for me, I could never get them right!

...watch I dream about that tonight. :P

Huh! Melatonin sounds perfect! And I love dreams, so that'd be an added bonus! I'll have to look for it!

[fealubryne.livejournal.com]

I've used melatonin! It really does do the trick, without making you feel drugged and icky. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, I take B12/B6 on days that I know I've gotten enough sleep but still feel fuzzy and not very alert. That kinda stuff is great if you're not expecting major swings (melatonin doesn't zonk you out immediately, and the B12/B6 doesn't make you feel OMGHYPERALERT) but they really help give your body the little extra nudge. And they're just vitamins, so you pee out whatever you don't use.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

That's good to know!

And they're just vitamins, so you pee out whatever you don't use.

But be careful about that, because it's not true of all vitamins. Just the water soluble ones will be peed out! The fat soluble ones will be stored in your body.

Edit: Looks like B6 and B12 both are water, so yay!

[sailor-arashi.livejournal.com]

Very true! Fortunately Melatonin, while a hormone and not a vitamin, is also cleared from the body just as easily. 90% removal rate in one full pass through the liver, apparently.

(They should be paying me for this!)

[fealubryne.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's good to know! The only reason I'm all cool with the Bs and the melatonin is 'cuz my mom cleared it and she's a nurse, so I generally take her word for it. Heh. Yay for laziness.

I'll remember that, though, thanks!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Oooh, good! My mother's a nurse too. It's a really handy resource sometimes! (And other times a source of nagging...)

[doxxxicle.livejournal.com]

Dude, there are these people called doctors. Go see one. Now. >:|

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

But a doctor would give me drugs! I think I'll try sailor_arashi's melatonin idea first.

[itsbacon.livejournal.com]

Well, the doctor can't force you to take drugs if you don't want to! If it's a decent doctor I imagine you can ask its advice on melatonin as well, check to see if the sleeplessness might be part of a larger pattern of ailments affecting you, etc.

Though sometimes you get stuck with a crummy doctor who won't treat you like an intelligent adult and discuss things with you. :\ If that's not the case with you, though... *nudge nudge* Go go!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

True! Luckily I have a good doctor, I'll bring it up to her next time I see her! <3

Also, this last update semi-broke WoW for me. I can't talk on channels or guild or anything! I didn't have time to try to troubleshoot it at lunch time, but loading/not loading out of date addons didn't fix it, nor did turning off Chatter. So when I log on tonight, I won't be able to talk! ...or maybe I'll be able to but only I don't see it. I'm going to poke at addons more tonight.

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

It's most likely not broken, it probably just took your channels off. Patches for the last year or so have randomly done that. On the chat General tab, right click, go to Settings, and then make sure all the various default channels are checked. My guildies and I have had this happen a lot.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Huh, oddness. I'll check that before poking at addons! Thanks!

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

Well, you can just RP as a mute and try to communicate via morse code by jumping up and down.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

*snickers!* You're silly!

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

A solution to every problem and a problem in every solution; it's how I roll.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

And that's why we all like ya! <3

[kamalloy.livejournal.com]

When I was having problems a while back, my doctor referred me to a therapist. No drugs were involved, and we worked out some ways I could improve my sleeping habits.

I don't blame you about being hesitant to take sleeping drugs. My brother just finished pharmacy school, so he's studied a lot of drug effects, and they freak him out.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Addiction runs in my family, so I'm extra-careful about such things. And hmm, that's interesting. I wouldn't have thought a therapist could help you with ways to sleep!

[firebyrd.livejournal.com]

Honestly, this is something you need to go to your doctor about. Specifically make an appointment about this, with the way insurance is, they don't have time to really address complex issues like this when you just bring it up as an aside. I would bet your doctor will want you to get a sleep study. Given how similar your sleep sounds to mine, I'd think there's a good chance you've got sleep apnea.

Given how long this has been going on, there's almost certainly an underlying physical problem. Your reluctance to take drugs has probably been a good thing, because they can interfere with those physical things. Me? My brain stops sending signals to my body to breathe. A lot of sleep drugs are depressants, so when your body is already forgetting to breathe for whatever ready, adding in a depressant makes things that much worse.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Sleep apnea is probably a good guess, yeah.

[achika-soladia.livejournal.com]

Ooo, drug addiction talk! I'm so there.

I take Ambien to sleep. I also take Tylenol PM. One or the other will not put me to sleep.

I also take a number of other sedatives. One of my antidepressants has a sedative in it, or so I'm told.

The thing with addiction, though, is that it's generally caused because someone doesn't take something as prescribed. Narcotics are heavily controlled. I don't believe Ambien is a narcotic though. If you take it as your doctor prescribes, or less, addiction shouldn't be an issue. My mom takes 1/2 pill every night. If she wakes up, she takes the other half. She's allowed one pill a night. I take a whole one. If I wake up, I take more Tylenol PM because I'm typically waking up due to pain.

Don't get me wrong, addiction is a terrible thing. Just take things as your doctor says and you'll be safe.

If you're worried about missing important things like people alerting to fire, take the half pill. Just enough to knock you out, but not enough to render you unconscious.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

If nothing else works and I go the drug route, I'll try this for sure! Thanks! :D