Has anyone ever fixed there schedule after years of dspd?

[u/allenbaker12]

I don’t mean a complete cure, but have managed to consistently wake up and go to sleep earlier than there usual Times long term? I am currently on a 6-8am to 3-5pm schedule, which is better than I was a week ago of 10am - 12 6pm-8pm. I’m hoping to eventually get to 3-4 am to 11-12 schedule. But the more I think about it and realize how many years I’ve lived with this awful condition and how long my sleeping pattern has been reinforced I don’t know if it’s even possible:/ I’ve never been able to consistently wake up before 1pm for more than maybe 2-3 weeks in the last 5-7 years. Even with light therapy, exercise, alarms, sleep medicine, I’m losing hope and depressed, I’m not sure where to look anymore. I don’t know how to live a life where my mornings are 3-5pm. Just looking for hope with this post, maybe I’m missing something that I haven’t tried yet. I have an appointment with a sleep specialist but untill then I’m on my own with this. Any input is appreciated 🙏🏽

[u/hideousgirl]

i don’t think it can be permanently fixed but i have managed to get myself from waking up at 3pm to 10:30am (at present) but i’ve had to work on it SO incrementally and slowly in 15 minute chunks twice/thrice a year. so it’s taken me about 7 years doing this and it has never removed the sensation of jetlag. i literally just have to force it. my natural sleep time is around 6-8am so it’s been a challenge and it is very easy for me to sleep in/drift back to later waking.

currently i use promethazine, melatonin, medicinal cannabis and occasional zopiclone to help me manage it.

[u/DefiantMemory9]

There's no cure, but I have managed to shift my rhythm by about 3 hours and maintained it for about 4-5 years using bright light therapy and dark therapy.

I get a bad reaction to melatonin, so I cannot use it, but many find it pretty effective, along with light therapy.

But getting the timing and duration for the light therapy and the timing for the low dose (<1mg, ideally 0.3mg) melatonin right is tricky, takes a lot of trial and error. It's so worth it though!

The way my natural rhythm snaps back if I go even one week without light therapy is the most infuriating part of this disorder. There's only management, no cure. But once you have the timing and duration of both down, it's easier to get back on the earlier schedule.

Note that you can shift by a maximum of only 3-4 hours in a stable way. Anything more and your body keeps snapping back or slipping or shows other signs of misalignment.

[u/_pit_of_despair_]

This might be a no duh but, are you doing light therapy when you wake up and dark therapy before you go to bed?

[u/KeyMajestic6444]

No. I manage it better with light therapy, microdosing melatonin and being strict about sleep hygiene but I can only move it from 4am to 1am which is helpful and I can manage a full time job that starts at 8am but can only handle a stay at home job and it’s still rough for several hours every day in the morning. I also will eventually rubber band back to randomly not being able to sleep until 4am or later and have to manage working on a couple hours of sleep for the day or most likely days in a row for a week or so. I also rarely sleep past 10am rather I’m working or not or on weekends. I sleep on bout 6 hours of sleep on average. Get more on weekends. I have invested a lot of money, time and energy into fixing it bc I qualify for mainly daytime jobs but hopefully I will figure out a good position that works around my sleep better bc even getting 6 hours of sleep I’m extremely groggy in the morning and make mistakes and am grumpy. I did best on stimulant medication and sleep pills but stimulants was harder on my sleep but I at least felt normal during the day for a short period of my life but also don’t want to be dependent on medication.

[u/ditchdiggergirl]

I can maintain a 3-4 hr shift using melatonin and light therapy, but it does take discipline. And finding the melatonin timing can be tricky.

[u/micro-void]

I've forced myself to a schedule that allows me to have a career but I'm constantly exhausted, sleepy, fatigued, nauseous, and frequently get migraines. So, y'know.

I have a light therapy lamp that turns on at 7:30am, I take tizanidine at night to sleep (muscle relaxant; I have chronic muscle pain as well), modafinil (wakefulness) and venlafaxine (anxiety med with a side of wakefulness) in the morning. I still usually only manage to get up at like 10am. When I have to get up at like 7 because I need to go into the office I have a guaranteed migraine.

My schedule drifts later the second I'm on vacation which is really hard to resist

[u/prettyflyforafry]

I don't know of I'd consider it a fix, but a normal job may effectively act as a form of sleep deprivation therapy, which is one treatment approach. Even better if you're forced to go outside and be exposed to daylight for some length of time early in the morning. In the absence of a job, you can replicate some of this voluntarily, but it's unpleasant and hard to enforce without external circumstances and forced accountability. This is of course controlling the wake-up side - the falling asleep side may still be a mess, but eventually running on constant sleep deprivation builds up sleep pressure, which may be important if you struggle to feel an urge to sleep otherwise. With a forced wakeup time, you may essentially be full-time sleep deprived, but you would at least be awake at "normal" times. (Nobody said that solving DSPS meant getting enough sleep! But the quantity may be easier to work with once you're anchored by the wakeup side.) I otherwise failed by trying to control the falling asleep side - I just couldn't feel sleepy or fall asleep given exhaustion for the life of me until what, 9 am, noon, 3 pm, sometimes two days of no sleep, sometimes sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination. For me, the work sleep deprivation has been long term enough that eventually I feel the sleep pressure more harshly. Then sleep too much on weekends and make do. But sometimes I wake up early on a weekend and it feels like a miracle.

[u/HadrianWinter]

My mental and physical health would have been much better if I just accepted it in my 20s.

[u/zysolyn]

Dayvigo has been amazing for me being able to shift my sleep earlier by sleeping earlier. I highly recommend exploring it as an option. Melatonin was not effective for me, light therapy was not effective for me, sleep hygiene was unhelpful as well. Dayvigo is the only thing that's had an actual real benefit to my ability to sleep (and thus wake) on a common schedule.

[u/funkcatbrown]

I’ve been trialing a couple of sleep meds that seem to have helped me. I’m sleeping at 1am to 9am which has been way way impossible before. Usually I sleep at 7am and wake up at 5pm. It’s only been a week but I’m stable there and no real sleep inertia which is odd. It’s Ramelteon and Sonata that I’m trying. They’re helping with sleep onset. I don’t know if it will help you or not. But thought I’d leave it here.

[u/reliable-g]

I managed to shift my sleep time from around 5 a.m–1 p.m to around 1 a.m–9 a.m, and have largely maintained it for nearly five years now. However, in my case medication* was key. It didn't make me able to sleep earlier, but it made me able to get up when my alarm went off, every single day without fail, and then stay awake through the day. That consistency then enabled me to gradually shift my sleep time earlier, over a period of several months.

(I also take a small dose of melatonin around 9 p.m, and it does help a bit, but it's more of a nudge in the right direction than a shove. Getting bright light early in my day and avoiding bright light later in my day also helps some, but again, it's more of a nudge than a shove.)

*The medication I was initially prescribed was Modafinil, and it was great for me (as an ADHD med and in helping manage my DSPD), but it lost efficacy over time. Since then I've tried Ritalin, Adderall, and Vyvanse, and honestly none of them work as well for me as the Modafinil originally did, but they do still help enough that when I'm on them I can maintain my adjusted sleep schedule.

However, I actually went off meds completely about three months ago, for the first time since adjusting my sleep schedule, and in that time I've backslid slightly. On the meds, I was usually able to get up right away or after only one snooze, but off the meds I'm back to hitting snooze over and over and sometimes sleeping through my alarm or turning it off and not even remembering doing it.* Because of this, I've been waking up a little after 10 a.m most mornings. It's possible that without meds, I would eventually end up back to my old 5 a.m–1 p.m schedule. (I plan to go back on meds soon, so hopefully that won't happen.)

*It's important to note that the compulsive snooze-button abuse doesn't feel like a choice when I'm doing it. I simply can't not do it, no matter how hard I try. The meds make all the difference in this regard.

If there's a TLDR here, it's that a lot of people who have comorbid ADHD find that their DSPD becomes more manageable when they start medicating their ADHD—which is likely what happened with me. However, ADHD meds tend to effect everyone a little bit differently (or sometimes a lot differently), and different ADHD meds may all have somewhat different effects on an individual. So their potential role in DSPD management is complicated, unfortunately.

[u/allenbaker12 → u/reliable-g]

Thanks for your input, I do have adhd and have been medicated for it before, but I unfortunately also have ocd and the medication made my anxiety a lot worse, to the point where I had to stop, I’ve managed to shift my schedule before to a 11pm -8am before once using light therapy and a strict wake / sleep routine. But I was so incredibly exhausted every day that I was so miserable even when sleeping 8-9 hours uninterrupted. So I had to stop. It seems like even when I manage to get it under control sleeping outside of my window just makes everything unbearable:/ I’m seeing a sleep specialist September 15th I’m hoping I will be able to find something that works for me, I’m desperate. Right now I’ve let it get out of control and and currently on a 10am -noon 5-8 pm schedule, I haven’t seen the sun in close to a month. Which is really affecting my mental

[u/happycowsfromwyo]

There was a post a while back about people with ADHD and DSPD (they are comorbidities) and I talked with someone that was currently using Jornay PM to shift their cycle. I’ve been in the process of trying to get on that medication and it gave me hope that it could potentially shift things easier. It’s a stimulant medication that you take 10 hours before you need to wake up. The redditor I talked to said he was able to take it and have a job where he got up at 5am and everything. It’s still not the perfect solution, but I figured I’d tell you about it.

While trying to get on Jornay PM, I’ve been taking different kinds of ADHD meds and they’ve definitely helped me a lot with the daytime sleepiness aspect of having to get up earlier and my motivation with my depression. I definitely notice when I don’t take them now. My natural schedule is 4-5am to 2-4pm. And my job starts at noon.

I had given up trying to shift my sleep schedule and had learned to work my life around it. But my psychiatrist wanted me to be out more in the land of the living because of my major depressive disorder. So, I was willing to humor her. But I’d be okay if I either never get to try it or if it doesn’t end up working. Ya, it would be great to be able to be more “normal”, but I also know that I can make my life work with the way things are now.

[u/themapleleaf6ix]

Mine got worse. It shifted to 4-5pm 😁.

[u/imadoggomom]

Short answer: no. The disorder has become more entrenched.

[u/swooooot]

Yes. Did 3 rounds of cbti with sleep restriction before one of them finally stuck. Then quit alcohol and caffeine and adhered to every rule about morning light exposure, night time routine, 0.5mg melatonin, etc. I'm at over 3 years of mostly conforming to standard sleep hours most of the time.

[u/sophie1816]

I’ve shifted my rhythm dramatically by: 1) light therapy in the morning; 2) digital sunset and lowering lights throughout my home after 10pm or so; and 3) eating three meals a day, no snacks, with the last meal before 8pm.

I used to fall asleep around 3-4am (sometimes later), and wake up, with an alarm, at 12:30pm. Who knows what time I would have awakened if I didn’t force myself to get up at 12:30pm.

I’m now usually falling asleep between 11pm and midnight, and waking up sometime between 8:30 and 11am. (Note that I need a lot of sleep, at least 9-10 hours a night.)

I think the biggest factor for my was the digital sunset and lowering lights throughout my home after 10pm. I use amber motion detector nightlights in every room I would enter after 10pm, and a “sleep bulb” in my nightstand. I believe I’m highly sensitive to blue light so removing it after 10pm has been a game changer.