Morning lads, recently I have gone cold turkey on marijuana which I have been using heavily for a number of months. Whilst its hardly a crack addiction I have noticed that my appetite has disappeared and I am presently suffering from pretty bad insomnia.
My experience appear to match those that a quick google search comes up with so I was wondering if anyone could share some wisdom on what to do as far as mitigating the symptoms. Its a bit of an awkward month for it as you can imagine.
Don't eat after 8pm and then wake up with the Sun the next day. Eat some breakfast, that'll kickstart your metabolism. Then, go out and do something. Even if it just involves going for a wander around town for a couple of hours in the afternoon, or visiting a friend. Ideally you want to tire yourself out though. Eat lunch, eat dinner.
Then, it is important that you don't sit in front of a bright screen in a dark room for the rest of the evening. If you have a TV, put it on Cinema mode if you are watching or playing anything. Have a lamp on at least. Unless they are brown/blown shooters adjusting the brightness of the game itself will make it look fine. Cinema mode is the closest to natural colours on most TVs.
If you are using a PC, turn the brightness down or even take a night off, ideally.
If you don't sleep after that, I'll be surprised. It should reset your sleep cycle and your metabolic cycle too and you'll be hungry again in the morning. It is important that you do get up the next morning, so go to bed no later than 1. If you've spent the day active, that shouldn't be a problem though.
I can't recommend this program enough. I use a similar one on Linux called Redshift, and another on my Android phone, Twilight. It has a powerful cumulative effect.
>>7111 is spot on with diet and metabolism. Think of eating and sleeping as two sides of the same coin; one of the main functions of sleep is to temporarily lower the metabolism, whereas eating and exercise (or any activity that requires greater concentration/movement) increases it. An extreme measure would be to starve yourself for 24 hours and then eat a very large meal, so that the meal time would function as your new 'morning', but I've found consistency is more important when it comes to adjusting habits.
It's not really worth bothering with any other substances to try and sleep, in my opinion. I've had bad experiences with sleeping medications. It will at best be a temporary measure and at worst can complicate things further. The only thing I can really recommend would be melatonin. It's the same thing the body produces to regulate sleeping patterns, but it's not a magic pill. The effects are pretty subtle, with some possible grogginess the next morning, but taken at the right time each night it might assist you in settling into your new pattern.
The most important thing, though, is cracking that metabolism. Eat well and eat regularly at similar times each day. Some physical activity in the morning to afternoon, no matter how small, will help the process along.
>>7116 fl.ux is pretty good but the problem with Twilight is you're always using your mobile phone in the evening in different light conditions, so I end up having to dick around with the settings whenever I take it out of my pocket anyway.
>>7116 Cheers for this.
Using flux now, it's mostly okay but I've got a niggling issue; the mouse pointer isn't affected at all by the program, so I'm left with a quite glaringly blue mouse.
I believe you can set it to come on at custom hours, i.e. bright the rest of the day and dark/red when you're absolutely certain you should be going to sleep.
>>7120 No, that's the problem. In the evening, my surroundings don't necessarily decrease in light proportional to the advancing time. I could be in my brightly-lit living room watching a film at 11 o'clock, and then I take out my mobile to look something up and I can't see a fucking thing, so I have to switch Twilight off. Or I could get an early night and be in bed at the same time the next night, reach for my mobile in the dark and agh my eyes. Do you see what I mean yet?
>>7121 You're sort of missing the whole point of this.
The aim is to reduce the amount of blue light, not the overall brightness, if the twilight app makes your phone that hard to see, then it's not doing the right thing.
And also, if you have a brightly lit room and a bright TV, then those will be having a far bigger impact on your sleep patterns than your phone is.
I find that having little routines before I go to bed help both to relax me and tell my subconscious that it's bed time. For maybe 30-45 mins before I intend to get into bed I'll go downstairs (really anywhere that isn't your bedroom is a good idea) and read whilst drinking a chamomile tea.
Just make sure that whatever you do directly before bed does not involve any screens (even with f.lux) or mental work (e.g no studying or crosswords). Having a hot drink is great but obviously no caffeine. No alcohol either, it ruins your sleep quality. And whilst a cheeky joint might make everything that much easier, once you get into the habit it's hard to break without getting anxiety and insomnia - remember it's all about creating good repeatable habits. As a rule of thumb, if you don't want to do it every night before bed, don't do it ever (maybe I'm just too compulsive before bed, I used to have to flick my alarm on and off at least 10 times before I could sleep).
Well now there's all three of us in here, I too recently quit weed, due to my dealing being away for the holidays, and have been having more trouble sleeping and occupying myself than usual.
I've even found myself checking my youtube subscriptions every ten minutes and flitting from tab to tab half watching documentaries, I don't know how normal people stay entertained during their day sat in front of the TV.
I got these Uvex S1933X Blue-blocking glasses for using tablets in bed and they're great. On US Amazon they have 4.3 stars from 541 reviews. I find fl.ux decreases clarity while the glasses make images and text much sharper. I just hope my webcam doesn't accidentally turn on while I'm in bed with goggles on.