Hi!
I am a 26 year old male student.
The last semester I started to get trouble falling and staying asleep. I have always been a light sleeper, with trouble sleeping more than 6 hrs a night, but I always did manage to fall asleep. I am not sure why I started to have these problems. I was pretty busy in school, and kind of anxious about stuff all the time, and the insomnia didn't make things better, so I got some sleeping pills, and that did help. Something that I found to be very cheap and helpful was Valium. Most of the time, I can get a good night's sleep with as little as 5mg Valium.
Anyways, when the semester ended, my sleeping problems got allot better. Although, I think that might be because I started to stay up pretty late at night playing computer games (WoW), When I felt tired from playing computer games (about 3-4 in the morning), I went to bed and was able to sleep for 8-9 hrs straight without taking any medicine. Although, some nights when I didn't play WoW, I had the same problems as I used to have falling asleep, although Valium helped me out those nights.
Now, the autumn semester is about to start and I don't know whether it's because me worrying about my sleeping problems, or because I can't play as much WoW, but my sleeping problems are returning.
Those nights I cannot fall asleep, I just lie in my bed thinking about stuff, trying to fantasize about something so that I might start dreaming and drift of. After a few hours, I will enter this strange "Not asleep yet not awake" mode, and when I "become aware" again, I feel really tired and I can't tell if I have been sleeping for the last few hours or not.
I don't know how much of this that is psychological. Since 5mg Valium is pretty little (most people take 10mg or more), it might be the fact that I am taking a sleeping pill that calms me down and makes me fall asleep, not the pill itself.
Anyway, does anyone here know what my problem might be, and why I can sleep so well when I have played WoW intensely, but not at all when I have not? Also, I should say that I am a pretty anxious and nervous person, but I have been like this for years though, the sleeping problems didn't start until last semester. I started to play wow about a year ago, then I didn't play for a month when I went home during the winter holidays (I am a foreign student), then I started to play again when I came back, and that's when the problems started.
It might also be the fact that I used to live and sleep together with my ex-girlfriend, but she moved out about a month before the winter holidays. Back in my country, I live with my family, but when I came back, I lived all alone. Could this be a reason?
Please help me, I don't want to become addicted to sleeping meds for the rest of my life.
Thanks!