[Miracle1986]

I fear I am becoming dependent on sleep aids to get a "restful" night sleep. I put the word restful in quotations because I know that sleep can not truly be restful if it is medication induced. Or can it? Well mine sure isn't. If anything, I think it causes me to have more vivid dreams (the bad kind), which causes me to wake up and be afraid, but it is not hard to fall back asleep, so I guess in a way, the medication is doing its job. And also, it causes me a somewhat pleasant side effect. It causes me to not be able to remember the dreams when I wake up the next day, whereas before my dreams would often haunt me the next day.

The medication that I am currently taking is just a store brand sleep aid.
The directions say take two... occasionally one will put me to sleep,
but more often than not, I just toss and turn for a few hours and then get up and take a second pill.

When I take one, I normally sleep between 7-9.5 hours (if I take it at 11pm... I wake up around 7:00 the next morning)
but then, I am absolutely exhausted the whole day and have no energy, etc. Whereas if I take two pills, I normally sleep for
12+ hours (for example: I took two last night at 11:30 and did not wake up until almost 2:00 this afternoon, but my energy level is fine today)

[Perna]

I switch things around. Most nights I don't take anything, just get the broken sleep. Then some nights I'll use a single Tylenol PM and other nights I might take a plain OTC allergy pill that "advertises" it makes you sleep or a Benadryl. But I don't want to become dependent on any one pill. I pay attention too to how much caffeine I get in a day and when (i.e., if I have a Coke that day I try not to drink it too late in the day) and whether I'm drinking beer or not and how much, etc. Eating well and exercising (just walking) helps me.