That sucks. I have never slept well without medication for all of my life that I remember (I'm talking going all the back to 4 or 5 years old, even when my parents had my sister and me sleeping together in bed on a double mattress as they didn't have much money for twin beds and the double bed was given to them.) I was so envious of my sister because we'd usually talk a bit and then she would doze off, completely asleep and not easy to wake. Same when years later we got bunk beds. It sucked.

I only started sleeping well on meds though a combo of melatonin & valerian (that one an herb that stinks to high heaven but that cats treat like catnip for some reason) usually helped me fall asleep when I spent around a 6 month period detoxing from the birth control pill (getting regular cycles again because the bleeding you get on periods is not a real period, just a withdrwal from taking placebo pills without hormones for a week and psych meds before trying to get pregnant with my daughter as I didn't think it would be good to get pregnant on a psych cocktail, and Effexor was a particularly hard withdrawal.) It was not recommended to combine the 2, but it was the only thing that worked for me. My primary care doctor tried Ambien, but that gave me terrible panic attacks and still didn't put me to sleep. She tried another prescription, I think maybe Restoiril, but it didn't work at all. I knew from past experience that Seroquel worked best of all, followed by high dosages of Trazodone (but the therapeutic dose left me feeling like a zombie until 3 or 4 PM). I didn't want those before pregnancy though. And of course, I tried Benadryl and Tylenol PM but those didn't work either.

There are times on this cocktail when I'm manic that I don't sleep well or at all. Last time, I got manic or hypo, and I was only sleeping 2-3 hours a night when I did sleep. Luckily, I got into the pdoc quickly after calling about the situation. I have around a 30 minute drive to get to his office and asked the staff how safe they thought I would be driving on that little sleep to see the pdoc it I had to wait 2 weeks for my scheduled appointment. I guess they thought about it, and that got me in quickly on an urgent appointment. Even when hypo, I don't like it if I don't sleep or only sleep a max of 2-3 hours because I feel so tired physically on so little sleep and know it often gets worse. This morning, I woke up at 3:30 AM though I did go to sleep at 9 PM, so that is 6.5 hours of sleep, a bit less than the 8 hours where I function best.