My fiancée sleeps with a fan. I sleep with my finacée snoring.

I had insomnia for about the first 45 years of my life. At its worst, I would miss at least one night of sleep per week. By "miss" I mean I would go to bed at a reasonable hour, lay there with the lights off and my eyes closed until about 4:00am, when I'd get out of bed, get dressed, and go to work.

I tried drinking myself into a stupor. I tried white noise CDs. I even got a prescription for Ambien from my doctor. That scared me because I thought meds would do the trick, but I took it and still didn't sleep.

One day I saw a post about the Sleep With Me Podcast. It's described as bedtime stories for adults. I followed the link, started listening, and thought, "this guy may be the most boring person I've ever heard".

I started playing it when I went to bed, and it worked for me from the very first night. I fell asleep within minutes of starting the episode, but then I woke up after it ended.

The next night I loaded my phone with all the episodes. I slept through the night, but then I couldn't wake up in the morning. My alarm would go off, I'd hit snooze, then I'd hear the podcast playing and fall asleep again.

What I finally settled on was setting a sleep timer to stop the podcast a few minutes before my alarm would go off.

I've been listening to that podcast every night for the last 11 years. It's been the best sleep of my life. I've actually had the experience of being consciously aware of losing consciousness. It's a weird and wonderful thing.

The thing about the stories he tells is that it seems like there might be a point, and you start listening to the story, but he goes on so many tangents and diversions that it never actually goes anywhere. After a while, my brain just shuts down.

The first episode I listened to was telling a story about a group of people about to enter a pyramid. It ran for over an hour, but I didn't hear more than a few minutes.

The next episode continued the same story, and when I started it the next night, the people were still outside the pyramid. In over an hour of telling the story the night before, absolutely nothing happened.

Yes.

There's a retirement village nearby, and EVERY MORNING around 4 o'clock, some motherfucker with a huge rubbish truck goes in.

The driver parks.

The driver walks over to the large industrial bin.

The driver opens the lid to see if it's worth putting the contents in the truck. If it is, he lets the lid SLAM down, then pushes the rusty metal bin over the bitumen road towards his truck GRRRRNNNNNNNTTTT (because the wheels on those things never work).

He then gets back in his truck, does the little garbo magic with the mechanical arm thing, the truck lifts the bin, and he bangs it against the top of the truck receptacle a few times for shiggles BANG BANG BANGGGG, then moves the mechanical arms to place it back down on the bitumen with a gentle kiss BANG!

He then gets out of his truck, and pushes the now empty industrial bin over to where it was GGNNNNNNKKKKTTTTTT and positions it gently against the brick wall there BANG!

He then gets back in his truck, and reverses out the driveway DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT DOOT, and finally fucks off.

Dozens, if not hundreds, of people live there. If I can hear that truck as a neighbour, how much worse must it be for the oldies trying to sleep there?

A lot of comments in here about white noise and no one talking about brown noise! Brown noise is elite iykyk

No, I cant sleep with anything with vocals in it. My brain strains too hard trying to interpret or ignore it. Non-vocal music can work very well at low volume as long as its repetitive and thus predictable enough that my brain doesn't have to pay attention or react to a lot of changes in composition.

White noise machine

not intentionally, white noise from the ac or a fan is fine on summer nights though! and the sounds from my girlfriends headphones when she stays up a bit later than me, but only because I get to be next to her lol

a speaker/TV show/movie? absolutely the fuck not I can't sleep with that my brain wants to pay attention so bad

Yeah, tinnitus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMfPqeZjc2c

For the past two years. Without it, I have intrusive thoughts and anxiety. The sound makes me able to dream and to remember my dreams. I feel protected. Like I was in a bubble, sheltered from reality.

I’m so goddamn hyper alert that I need complete silence and pitch black darkness to fall asleep.

Except for thunderstorms. Those are oddly soothing. But that’s it.

Go and get that ADHD assessment

Tv every night

I always put on one of Vinny Vinesauce's vods from his Fullsauce channel when I go to sleep. He just relaxes me so much I'm normally out within less than 5 minutes whereas in complete silence I could end up taking half an hour or multiple hours to fall asleep.

I prefer to sleep in the quiet, but if the neighbours are being loud I'll use a fan to drown them out

Never, but I like conversing with my internal monologue in my head. I'm not quite neurotypical, but I have been pretty good (trained?) to rein in any out of control thoughts if they ever wander by using bait I know my brain can chill with.

When I was a teen, it was sexy stuff. Young adult, plot points for a novel setting I'll probably never write. Lately, it's just plans for the day (I sleep so much faster now than I used to, though, since I changed my sleep habits after having kids).

Plus, my own monologue makes sense of how I'm feeling and gives me pep talks! That's probably a product of coping with abuse, but it's nice none the less.

Podcast recommendations:

1. The Drowsy Historian
2. History of English Podcast (Kevin Stroud)

Both have no ads at all, and uniform volume.

Always, because I have to use a CPAP

White noise (usually a fan) has been greatly beneficial to my quality of sleep. I wish I had started doing so many years sooner.

I do not do well with TV or anything that has speech though.

ADHD adult with chronic insomnia here. I usually sleep with "electronic ambient music for sleeping with delta waves", which is the prompt I give my bedside google home before bed. I do not sleep more, but the delta waves thing seems to help me sleep deeper.

Usually a story-telling or audio play podcast.

No

We have a ceiling fan, and I also used various white noise apps on my phone. I read somewhere that sound apps running on my phone all night was bad for the battery, so I bought a small, dedicated rechargeable white noise machine.

If it's hot out yes because I got a window ac unit. But when it's cold out, it is the deepest silence, and I love it. Either way, doesn't bother me. But I prefer the quiet.

I live in a city, of course there's noise, mostly road noise from cars going past tbh

I absolutely have to have white noise of some sort. My stupid ass brain is ALWAYS on alert for any noise whatsoever. A pin drops on the opposite side of my apartment and my brain freaks out "omg wake up and pay attention!!" it's so fucking frustrating. Any typical creaks or whatever that a house makes, well time to focus the entirety of my attention on it whether I want to or not. A knocking heater? It's the most dangerous thing in the universe and apparently my brain feels that it deserves all of my focus...

I swear sleeping is the most difficult thing for me to do. I'm so tired of being tired lol

Sleep music . changed my life . i used to lay awake for an hour . i created a world in my head and would continue the story every night . now with sleep music I'm out in minutes , the people of my world prolly miss me.

"Woo" unintentional ASMR, for me. Love hand reading and concave earth nonsense, it sends me straight into Morpheus' arms.

Give me the sound of rain or white noise or give me death!

I have sleep with me podcast

I use a fan. Without it it's too quiet and hot.

Yes I use a fan.

Varies from one night to the next, but I typically put on something from myNoise.net when I do want sound.

I use an app (iOS, Android, Windows, web) by TMSoft called White Noise. I think it was like $2.99. It has a bunch of pre-programmed sounds (waves, chimes, birds, traffic, etc) that you can use. You can also import sounds, change existing sounds (alter pitch, make slower, etc), create your own mixes, etc.

My current "sleep sound" is a mix. The base is pink noise, which nicely muffles many sounds. Since a constant hiss can be annoying on it's own, I topped it with a pitch-lowered heavy rain (the regular pitch was a little annoying). To avoid being woken up by bass noises (lawnmowers, vacuum cleaners, delivery trucks), I added in a slowed-down heavy thunderstorm: it has intermittent peals of thunder that rumble on and then fade away; any base noises that I hear, my sleeping mind interprets as a long peal of thunder and doesn't bother waking me up. Underneath all that, I have a very slowed-down heartbeat; my heart will tend to try to match it, prepping me for sleep. And I've added in some very intermittent birdsong and frogs croaking to make it a little more cheerful, and a kitten purring because that's relaxing too so why not?

I tinker with it occasionally, but it really helps me sleep through any disturbances at night.

We have the sounds of NYC to fall asleep to.... when we (are able to) go upstate, I sleep like a rock, the silence is deafening

Yes. Generally with Would I Lie to You or the Unbelievable Truth.

Just the sound of my CPAP running

I have tinnitus, I can't sleep without it.

Every night, White noise via the sound of rain and/or the fans of my computer if I leave it on.

Oh man no. Not like that. White noise or nature sounds is great. One thing is I run a fan often in the summers and it is a bit annoying to adjust to not having it but its not so big a deal I feel I have to use it. Its like a treat for myself to put on some nature sounds but I rarely do it. I love having a fire with ocean rains and a light storm combined. Im actually sorta the opposite of you. Sounds that actually have engaging audio drive me nuts and its kina worse the lower it gets. The most annoying thing is to have this sound of a show or voices that is just barely loud enough that I can hear them and its keeping me from actually sleeping. Have had to remind my wife a bunch to put on her headphones as she always thinks she can just lower the volume and it will be fine. But the lower volume is as I said. Worse.

I’ve had some success with binaural beats. It’s two pure sin wave tones - one in each ear. The tones are out of tune with each other so it has a bit of a wavy or pulsing sound. But they’re close enough to sound like one note and not two. Apparently the difference between these two waves gets entrained into your brain waves even though you can’t hear it. My favorites are 94 hz carrying a 3 hz differential, 96 hz carrying a 4hz differential, and 115 hz carrying a 5 hz differential. I’m using an app called Binaural Beat Gen by TMSOFT. Anyway the very low brain waves are delta waves associated with deep sleep. In a way, it’s hacking your brain to sleep.

I honestly would prefer library silence or less. Earplugs cause other issues for me so they are not an option, I have tried. I also prefer almost complete darkness.

I'm honestly looking to build a float tank to use for times when I am really struggling to sleep. When I scuba dive the only reason why I don't try to take a nap is the risk of losing my regulator or running out of air.

My window unit on hot days. Also some tv show I’ve seen before.

Yes. I have a list of YouTube channels that make content suitable for me to sleep to.

English isn't my mother language so I think it's easier to me to pay attention when I want to but just turn off my brain when I feel like it's time to sleep

Ive been sleeping with a noise maker (the kind that blows air through holes) my entire life. Ive noticed I get deeper sleep in silence though, it just takes too long to fall asleep without the white noise.

Been falling asleep to music recently, using Finamp and set a timer for 90 minutes because sometimes it takes me 30+ min to fall asleep. Wear one ear piece, so it's not to drown out noise, just something to fall asleep to

I started using a white noise machine and fans on high when I lived down the block from a hospital emergency room. It sounded like a jet engine in my bedroom, but my brain learned to interpret the white noise as profound silence. I moved away from the hospital zone but still use the white noise to sleep.

Podcasts can help me fall asleep when I can't, but that happens rarely and does not feel like a good thing to me, as it's usually being stuck in bad thoughts.

Before I got married, I always put some snoozefest video to fall asleep to. Now I fall asleep by itself. Frankly, I am not even close to my wife who falls asleep in 5 minutes if she leaves her phone alone. But 10 to 15 mins is guaranteed for me.

It took practice too. After I stopped doing it, sometimes it would take me more than half an hour to fall asleep. Especially if something is bothering me. Overtime I have developed ways to take my mind off these thoughs by focusing on music or sounds around me.

I have the TV on in the other room while falling asleep. I live alone, so nobody is bothered by it

I'd prefer to sleep in total silence, but since that's not an option where I currently live, I have a white noise machine.

White noise. I cant stand random volume changes, otherwise I wouldn't mind soft music. I also cant stand the sound of my own breathing, so silence isnt an option.

Yes, either the fan, or gentle psybient music, something. Because it's never silent, and earplugs make me cough, I need sleepy sounds.

ETA I also love when a neighbor has a party, sleeping to the distant sounds of a party, music and all, relaxes my mind so much. I think my subconscious must figure things are ok if people are partying. I have had sometimes the opportunity to sleep above a dance club and that also was so nice.

I sleep with a fan going and some zen-like meditation music on my computer.

Yes.

I prefer movies or anime I've seen so many times that I have them memorized, so my mind follows along effortlessly.

It's sort of like my mind is a toddler, and if I don't plunk it down in front of something familiar that I know it likes, it'll run off and get into god-knows-what and I'll never get a moment's peace.

Nope, the quieter, the better