I've had insomnia here and there. My main problem is not being able to get restful sleep. I've had the problem for somewhere around four-or-five years. For the past four months, I've noticed I developed a slight case of tinnitus. Recently, I've been able to over come this using a couple of methods.
1. Ambient sound
2. Being awaken softly
3. Dark room
On number one, I have a playlist on my ipod that is just one mp3 of rain with light thunder. I loop this through the night. I don't notice the ringing in my ears with this, and it helps to drown out any background noise that might occur during the night (i'm a stone 's throw away from a busy street).
This leads to number two. Being awoken abruptly in the morning leaves me feeling groggy and as though I could continue to sleep for another four hours. Not to mention it makes my mood pretty assholish. So there is an alarm app on my ipod that I use. It will slowly increase the volume of the alarm over a specified amount of time. I have it set to two minutes for full volume.
Lastly, number three. You need a completely dark room for you to enter deep sleep. The littlest light will cause your brain to begin sending neural signal to awaken. (This is mainly due to the sensitivity of our eyes.) I've eliminated most of the lights/leds in my bedroom. I'll use a combination of socks and quarters to cover them. (Quarters for the LEDs on my laptop, if I have to keep it on during the night.) Socks for the bigger LED bars or what not. I try to turn off what I can. Then, the main source of light: your windows. Buy some thick curtains that will render your room pitch black.
To give you an idea of how much this has helped me with sleep... Before I began following this regiment, I scarcely remember when the last time I dreamed during sleep. Now that I have been doing this, I'm having on average at least two different dreams, sometimes three, during the night. The dreams tend to be fairly long, too. This means I'm entering REM sleep for a longer period of time, and multiple times a night. And before? No dreams? Means I barely got any REM sleep. Maybe a minute of it.
It's not a matter of how much sleep you get. I used to get 10 or 12 hours of sleep and wake up feeling like I could sleep another six. The critical factor is how much REM sleep you get. If you only sleep five (maybe six) hours a night, but you get a combined total of more than 90 mins REM, you're good. The more REM, the better. (I've also read that doing a lot of cardio helps the body enter REM faster.)
I will agree with the drug enduced sleep bit. The best sleep i had in a long while was when I got stoned off my ass with a friend. I can't remember if we were drinking much, probably. That night was on par with sleeping up at an old lodge on a ski mountain during winter. Hardly any street lights to beam light into the windows, it was cold as heck, and ABSOLUTELY quiet. However, that was back when I didn't have tinnitus.
