..... so, you wanna sleep, eh? Best way I know of (no kidding) is a shot of Cognac. But alcohol is as addicting as any sleep medication and after awhile, either the dose must be ramped up, or you have to go sleepless for a few nights to get the same effect.
Now, if we were healthy, we could go on a long walk out in the fresh air, but many of us can't do that now. Reading. Pick up as boring a book as you possibly can find. Don't pick a riveting one , or I can guarantee you, you'll be up all night trying to finish it. I'm a scientist, so i have probably the most choice of boring books that one can imagine. !) minutes of anything with eqautions in it is guaranteed to put me in LALA land. However, it is often only temporary, that i think is the real problem that we are talking about here. NOw i've been on Klonopin for over 10 years so i can't use it every night or it just isn't effective, but it always works (2mg) to at least calm me enough (especially restless legs) to allow me to sleep. Trazodone does put one to sleep (i used too work for the guy who invented it, so i know a lot about it), but it can give one a bit of a fuzzy head well into the next day, as it's metabolite, a "phenylpiperazine" is quite long lived before it's all excreted.
There are two sides to the coin, falling asleep and staying asleep. It really helps to have a very dark room (even low light levels from bedside clocks are subconsciously "annoying") with an adequate (but indirect) flow of air that isn't too dry or too humid. A constant low humming sound as from a fan , helps to set a constant "background noise", so intermitant "bumps in the night" don't jump start the brainstem into consciousness. NO caffeine, and an empty bladder are imperative to keep on sleeping. "Antihistamines" that cause drowsiness do work to help you sleep (benadryl, etc), and the "non-benzodiazepine" sleeping agents (Ambien, Sonata, Lunesta) all are in a controlled release form now, but they are just as addicting as anything. The best thing with drugs is that you can get a bunch of different ones and rotate to avoid dependancy on any one, but lets face it, unnatural sleep aids eventually just don't work every night.
Like everybody who wants to sleep on time in a "natural" cycle; the best thing is to keep yourself from dozing off during the day, and try to expend at least some energy, or you just won't sleep on a regular basis. I've stopped trying, even though it buggers up my life. cs