I’m looking for suggestions that zombie-me could follow through with. The problem is I can barely bring myself to get out of bed, let alone do a useful task. It just wastes typically 2–5 hours of my life as I wait for tiredness to finally (re)take hold.
I will eat a couple melatonin gummies and then read until I get sleepy enough to turn out the lights.
I would caution doing this too much. Melatonin is great for short term sleep issues. But too much melatonin can turn into insomnia. It’s happened to me several times, where I take melatonin too many nights in a row (I’m talking weeks, or even months), and I end up having difficulty sleeping for almost a week when I try not taking melatonin anymore.
I understand this is your experience but I’ve yet to see this confirmed by any well crafted studies.
That could be the case. I don’t know if any long term melatonin use studies have been conducted. But they do caution against using it long term given the safety of it hasn’t been well studied.