Does this sound like a sleep disorder, or am I just happy to see me?
 

Sorry for the title, it's awful, but I something just happened in my head and I wrote it down.

I've had insomnia for a long time now. Even when I did sleep, I'd wake up a lot and never feel rested. But I am on Trazadone now, 100mg before bed and I'm gone. So I'm not too worried about it now, I am already on many medications and at least now I get to sleep before waking up and getting on with my heavily medicated day.

But I do have a theory about what was wrong with me. If anyone has the time to read this and then tell me why everything I said was bollocks then I would appreciate it.

The one thing I noticed when I was sleeping with medication was that I always had very, very vivid dreams. To the point where I often get memories of dreams confused with real memories. I've written a paper for a class before, well in time for once, and only to find that when I look for it it was all a dream. But when I was struggling with insomnia, I would never dream. At all. I figured it must just be the meds.

But then I remembered that when I did sleep, I would wake up all the time. Fairly regularly, every hour or so. Because I am a college student who thinks he knows everything, I remembered that there are different stages of sleep that you cycle through during the night. I know REM is one, and I think that is the one where I dream. So I used some sort of logic to think that maybe what is happening is that whenever I go into REM sleep, I wake up. And because the meds are forcing me to sleep, I sleep through the REM and have the very vivid dreams.

Does this sound viable at all? Or am I just not thinking straight because of a lack of sleep.

I feel it does sound viable! I am on Ambien, not that I take it everyday, but I do take it. My insomnia issue isn't around falling asleep, it's staying asleep. Hence, not taking it daily, but when I begin a stretch of not sleeping through the night.

One night, I did wake up in the middle of an Ambien induced sleep. (I like to write down my dreams, when they are vivid), so I reached out, in the dark, for the closest thing I could find to write something down. What I wrote was, "He BLEW it, Chasing the Shark"
I also like to do self dream analysis, big fan of Freud. My ego went in search of id, and guess whose repressed memories and everything else in there came unblocked? :D

So, yes, to me, it stands to reason that if, you haven't been sleeping through the night and reaching REM, then by getting the necessary sleep your brain needs...your dreams are vivid and your brain may being working overtime to make up for all that lost REM.

Did you analyze yours?

Just for food for thought
 

I was diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) back in 2010 and have been on a CPAP machine ever since. Prior to my diagnosis, I was convinced that I did not have sleep apnea because I did not have the "common symptoms" of it - namely falling asleep at random times during the day or at least feeling tired or drowsy. I had the opposite - insomnia. My Dr explained to me that insomnia can be a side effect of sleep apnea although it is not a very common one. Since correcting the apnea with the CPAP, I had no trouble falling asleep (until my back issues came into play, but that's a whole other deal). Also, just FYI, my first dr - a real quack - prescribed me Trazadone and Valium. They did work, but left me even more exhausted in the mornings than the symptoms of the sleep apnea did and I eventually quit taking them and found a new dr!