The benadryl will also lose it's effectiveness after a while. Even with sleep aids I have major sleep problems, and the more you fixate on the problem the worse it gets. Now what I tell myself when I'm trying to fall asleep is that "nothing matters right now" and I try to see a "slide show" of random pictures in my head. I just read an article about sleep that talked about the slide show. random images just sort of flash and you don't think about them but they are what happens before you really fall asleep.