Melatonin
Some of you who know me personally, know that I sometimes have trouble sleeping. I’m not one of those people who can’t get to sleep, but I have trouble staying asleep and have trouble waking up multiple times during slumber. This has been going on for a few months, with one of the few times of actual good slumber has been on my couch.
So about two nights ago I started taking melatonin supplements based off of reading about how people adjust to traveling and dealing with changing sleeping patterns on an almost daily basis…read about someone who was a musician who kept having trouble sleeping while on tour in Europe. And their way to preparing for a tour was take a melatonin capsule to help him fall asleep.
Now, I don’t like popping pills and I have tried a couple of things like not drinking caffeine or eating sweets after 6 or 7. But I decided to try the melatonin to see what would happen.
Ok, so on day one. I took about 600mg of Melatonin, absolute overkill for my situation, but I took it to see what the effects would be. Literally, I fell asleep almost as soon as I hit the pillow. day two I did the same and when I woke up, I started seeing the side effects. For one, it’s taken until about noon and about 20oz of Diet Coke to wake me up. And trust me, I’m very careful about the herbs and medicines I put into my body, since I tend to react to a lot of man-made pharmaceuticals. So no hives no swelling.
I’ve decided to stop using the pills after today, to use it when I’m starting to get back to where I have problems sleeping or when I need to recharge that internal chemistry. I’ll probably keep a running tab here if anything else happens. The grogginess is a little too much for me, I fell well rested but it’s been hard to keep going. Plus when I tend to go between creative and very head-y things (like working with Fuji on a new software project for our platesetters), it’s very very difficult to get my mind up to speed.