I don't know where you live, but I live in Canada, about 100 miles north of the US border. I was taking melatonin, 5 mg sublingual 1/2 hour before bedtime. In the winter and spring it worked great, and I went to sleep right away and slept all night. As the daylight hours grew longer and longer in May and June, I found that I'd fall asleep, but be awake by 2 am. I stopped taking the melatonin and now I can sleep until 4 or 5 am, so I sleep 6-7 hours. I'm going to start taking it again in October when the days get shorter and see how it goes. It's now September and near the autumnal equinox, so it may be ok to take it here now. In northern latitudes, for sure north of the 49th parallel, I would say not to take it in late spring, summer, or early fall. In late fall, winter, and early spring it's very helpful. This is my experience, for what it's worth.

If you live south of the 49th parallel, it may be ok year round - you'd have to try it for yourself to find out.

Some other natural things to try are the herbs valerian, hops, passion flower, and kava kava. Kava kava was given a bad name 10 years ago because some company in Europe produced a bad batch of it. I've used all these herbs and they work just fine to calm you down and help you get to sleep.

I used to own a health food store (in one of my hypomanic phases) and have studied herbs and nutritional supplements. These are the ones I would recommend.

One thing I tell everybody is to ASK YOUR PDOC before trying anything new. These supplements and herbs may interact with whatever meds you're on. I'm not a doctor or pharmacist, so I can't say. If your pdoc says it's ok, then go ahead.