Melatonin

Epistemic Status: Personal experiment; single subject, uncontrolled conditions. High confidence in subjective improvements, did basic logging but no precise measurements; was sceptical whether this would do much for me (biased towards little to no effect)
Experiment duration: 1 month

Background

I’ve had sleep issues for many years. Initially, it would take me 1-2h to fall asleep each night and aside from the sleep-onset insomnia, I also had terrible sleep maintenance insomnia to the point where if I woke up w at least 3h of sleep it was almost impossible to fall back asleep (even when trying for several hours).
I stuck to many sleep hygiene rules¹ for most of that time without much success. Having loosened them a year ago didn’t seem to make a difference².
Whilst my sleep-onset insomnia was gone after having started uni, I would still struggle to fall back asleep once I woke up.
The sleep cycle my body typically enforces³ didn’t allow me to partake in many evening activities, especially bc often² I would wake up earlier when going to bed late, rather than later than usual.
I’ve almost never used alarms, my sleep cycle is early enough for my schedule that I don’t need one day-to-day.

One month ago, I got this bottle of Instant & Long Release Melatonin (1mg) pills and quickly noticed enormous improvements.

Results

Whilst it was a bit bumpy in the beginning⁴, this pill fairly consistently lets me fall back asleep w relative easy (even if it sometimes still takes half an hour) to fall back asleep once I’ve woken up until I had around 8h.
If I push it much past my usual⁵ bed time I might not quite get there sometimes, but this is an enormous QoL improvement!

But last night I had the ultimate test: went to bed late, slightly wired from traveling and jogging w luggage, new and noisy environment, shared bed. I woke up so many times yet I’ve fallen back asleep within minutes each time, having gotten a full 8h!

It would be interesting to also try other forms (e.g. only instant or only long release), but this is great so far. There is a slight overhang in tiredness that makes getting up within seconds (fast boot) or a few minutes of waking up (in the last few months) more difficult.

Ability Swap

For most of my life I had fast boot, which changed a couple of months into HRT to soft boot which felt like a suboptimal in-between spot where I neither had the fast boot benefits but still couldn’t fall back asleep easily. But w IR&XR melatonin I’m now in a much better position.

Ability: fast boot

• waking occurs instantaneously⁶
• mental benefits:
  • no brain fog upon waking
  • immediate full access to mind and memories
  • immediate awareness of location incl in new environments
  • immediate recollection of things marked as “remember”
    This ability comes with the following word (afflictions? debuffs?… (5% probability to overcome per attempt)
• upon waking after 3h of sleep, further sleep is not granted
• naps are disabled

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Ability: soft boot

• waking occurs gradually⁶, with a slow rise in consciousness
• increases success chances of falling back asleep and napping to 20%

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Consumable: melatonin (IR&XR)

• enables sleep maintenance: increases success chances of falling back asleep to 95%
• adds +10 min to waking time

Research / Notes on Melatonin

Basics

SleepFoundation states

Most adults are advised to start with 0.5 to 1 milligram of melatonin, gradually increasing the dose if needed. A typical dose ranges from 1 to 3 milligrams, taken about 30 minutes before bedtime, with most people rarely needing more than 5 milligrams. Experts recommend taking no more than 10 milligrams of melatonin at a time.

Cleveland Clinic states

“It’s important to note that it’s really easy to overcome the effect of melatonin,” says Dr. Goldman. “If you take it and then get on your phone, go on social media, play video games or if you have an overactive mind that’s racing or worrying, you will likely overpower the effect of melatonin.”

(emphases mine)

Long-Term Use

This study found significant improvements of Prolonged-release melatonin (2mg) over the 6-12 months study period (20-80yo), no evidence for tolerance or withdrawal symptoms was found.

Of the 244 patients, 36 dropped out, 112 completed 6 months of treatment, and the other 96 completed 12 months of treatment. The mean number of nights by which patients reported sleep quality as “good” or “very good” was significantly higher during PRM than before treatment. There was no evidence of tolerance to PRM. Discontinuation of PRM was not associated with rebound insomnia or withdrawal symptoms; on the contrary, residual benefit was observed. PRM was well tolerated, and there was no suppression of endogenous melatonin production.

SleepFoundation on the other hand states “Long-term use of melatonin may lead to decreased effectiveness and impact your natural melatonin production.”

Footnotes

1. e.g. no backlit screens right before bed; using night light mode on all devices; dimming lights; using yellow-tinted glasses when in harsh lights; no caffeine past ~noon; no chocolate in the evening; bed is not for chilling, working, etc. ↩

2. this is just my feeling; I never actually tracked this ↩ ↩²

3. getting tired early and waking up early ↩

4. e.g. one night I woke up many times, but at least I managed to fall back asleep; once I woke up at 4am but couldn’t fall back asleep ↩

5. previously 10-11am, now already 11-midnight as the new baseline ↩

6. at least phenomenologically; have not been to a sleep lab for confirmation; this is opposed to waking up gradually ↩ ↩²