Best Sleep of Your Life! 🌞😎😌❤️🙏🏿🐰 Science within! ⚗️👨🏿🔬
The ultimate health secrets lie within 💫
Incredible Sleep Is Possible!
What is the best sleep you ever had? Did it feel like infinite perfect release and rejuvenation? Did you wake up feeling like a million bucks? I hope you did! That's what I always feel like when I sleep shirtless, on the grass, in the sun. (I wouldn't sleep on grass at night bc I don't wanna get wet from dew, and it is often too cold at night).
Deep sleep is the lynchpin to peak health. REM sleep is also important for processing emotions and problems you missed during the day. And while accumulated toxins can block deep sleep (see my detox guide), deep sleep is also one of the most effective things to remove toxins, so both sides need to be addressed simultaneously.
Sleep can also be the key to the deepest spiritual experiences. Unfortunately, sleep duration and quality have been declining worldwide for decades now, due to the toxins and stresses of modern life. So it sort of makes sense that getting back to nature would bring us back to the restorative natural sleep rhythms that our ancestors (even our parents) enjoyed more than even the most powerful people on Earth might today. But before you throw you phone in the dumpster and jump into a pile of leaves for good, let me make my app pitch:
Self-Hypnosis App & Audio Induction For Sleep
Self-hypnosis is a powerful tool that, when done correctly, can help sleep issues, among other things. I built an app that integrates non-command spiritual communion self hypnosis with inner child reparenting, and has a sleep-mode feature which integrates much of the advice from this article with sleep-focused self-hypnosis induction, dreamtime hypnotic suggestions to encourage lucid dream meditation or whatever you want (can help with nightmares for example), and hypnagogic drift dialog to bring you into sleep in a different way.
And here’s the sleep hypnosis playlist that will put a hungry lioness to bed:
How to Use This Guide
Use this guide in layers, not as a giant checklist. First, rule out the obvious sleep-disorder and safety issues. Second, run a simple two-week sleep log so you know your baseline. Third, change only one to three variables at a time so you can tell what actually helped.
The goal is not to become obsessive about sleep. The goal is to remove the biggest blockers, make your circadian rhythm feel safe and predictable, and give your body enough time in bed to recover naturally.
Self-Love Is Required
Your sleep will be sabotaged by infinite emotional problems if you don't love yourself.
Detox the Body
If your body is under load from pain, inflammation, alcohol, medication effects, reflux, blood-sugar swings, overheating, congestion, stress, or environmental irritants, sleep can be impaired. Fixing sleep often requires finding the biggest load, not just adding a sedative. See my general detox guide here.
Understanding Natural Zeta Potential
Why is it that earthing and sunning have such an incredible deep sleep benefit? The answer may lie in what is called Zeta Potential. That’s just a fancy term for the electrical charge on the surface of your cells. Highly charged cells don’t clump together. They flow easily, absorb nutrients better, remove toxins better, communicate better, have less inflammation, fight pathogens better, utilize oxygen more efficiently and with less oxidative stress, and hydrate better. Reduced zeta potential underlies most disease states, and you can notice when it feels reduced, after eating certain foods, taking certain drugs, having certain stresses, etc. You feel heavy, slow, foggy, weak.
This also ties into the orthomolecular medical theory of redox balance/electron balance/antioxidant capacity. Greater zeta potential means you have more electrons floating around to absorb harmful molecules with unpaired electrons (free radicals). When it comes to neurological diseases, redox balance is too often overlooked.
A Midwestern Doctor, one of the most famous alternative health M.D. influencers, mentions various ways to boost Zeta but his/her post is way too long without tightly focusing on the most important stuff.
There are only 2-3 very effective ways to boost Zeta potential:
Walking barefoot on the earth (or earthing sheet properly grounded, but they also have strong capacitative charge which can bother some people) boosts zeta 270% in 2 hours.
Sunbathing boosts zeta 100-200% within 30 minutes (obviously without shirt and when sunny). This obviously can’t be done at night, but it helps anyway.
Ionized or ozonated charcoal water (which I call Holy Water, part of my ZHoly3O kit) may work even better than grass and sun (feels like it, no studies done). Drink this instead of regular water.
Epsom salt bath boosts zeta 50-100%.
Electrolytes in general help a bit, 20-50% boost. (Source)
Naiman’s Sleep Insight Gems:
One of the most famous books on sleep is “Healing the Night,” by Rubin Naiman. Here are the top gems from that book:
The “Night Watch:” Middle-of-the-Night Waking is natural. Before electricity, humans naturally slept in two shifts (”first sleep” and “second sleep”) separated by an hour or so of wakefulness known as the “watch.” This interval is not a disorder but a time for “spiritual reflection, contemplation,” or intimacy.
Instead of fighting to get back to sleep with frustration, one should view this lucid, quiet time as a sacred opportunity for meditation or reflection, which often leads naturally back into the “second sleep”.
“Counterfeit Energies”: Drama is a Stimulant. We know caffeine and sugar are stimulants, but Naiman identifies “gratuitous drama” as a primary source of artificial energy used to mask exhaustion. When we are sleep-deprived, we subconsciously seek out “hyperbolic” news, conflicts, or stress to trigger an adrenaline rush.
Depression as a “Call for Deep Rest:” Conventional medicine views depression as a disorder to be fixed, often with SSRIs that suppress REM sleep (dreaming). However, dreaming is essential for processing emotion. By chemically suppressing dreams to treat depression, we may be eliminating the very mechanism (dreaming) the mind uses to heal itself. Naiman suggests that the “fatigue” associated with depression is a protective mechanism trying to pull us out of the external world and into the internal world of the dream to heal.
“Cognitive Popcorn”: The Heat of Unprocessed Emotion. People often can’t sleep because their minds are racing with trivial thoughts (the grocery list, an oil change). Just as heat makes popcorn pop, repressed emotional energy (anxiety, grief, anger) generates these random thoughts. You cannot stop the thoughts by fighting them; you must “turn down the heat” by feeling the underlying emotion (e.g., crying, journaling, acknowledging fear) before bed.
Grogginess is a Sacred “Coastal Zone.” We usually treat morning grogginess as a nuisance to be cured immediately with coffee. Naiman reframes this state (the hypnopompic state) as a “lush coastal zone of consciousness.” Awakening is a “birth” process. Rushing it with alarms and caffeine is like a “forceps delivery” or “rude awakening.” This “half-dream, half-waking” state is permeable and offers access to creative inspiration and spiritual newness. We should linger in it rather than “snap out of it.” That’s why I try to wake up before I need to, so I can enjoy massaging my feet and meditating!
We Are “Darkness Deficient.” Society focuses heavily on Vitamin D and sunlight deficiency, but Naiman argues we are suffering from a “darkness deficiency.” Darkness is not just the absence of light; it is a biological nutrient mediated by melatonin. After sunset, we should minimize our light exposure (wear sunglasses if you are exposed to light).
Sleeping Pills are Actually “Waking Pills.” Sleeping pills often suppress deep sleep (Stages 3 and 4) and dreaming (REM). They create “artificial sleep”.
Spiritual Sleep: Surrendering the Ego. Naiman connects the fear of insomnia to the fear of death. Falling asleep requires a “letting go of waking” and a temporary dissolution of the ego/self. This mimics the process of dying. Insomnia is often a refusal to “let go” of the waking self because of a lack of spiritual trust.
The “Waking Dream:” Naiman challenges the idea that dreaming only happens at night. The “Waking Dream” is a way of perceiving daily life symbolically. By noticing synchronicities, symbols, and the surreal nature of daily events, we bridge the gap between night and day, reducing the pressure for dreams to “rebound” violently as nightmares or symptoms. Caution: if you have trouble grounding in consensus reality, you should probably not go further in that direction by practicing this.
Start Here: When Sleep Hygiene Is Not Enough
Sleep hygiene is powerful, but it cannot fix every sleep problem. If you have one of the patterns below, treat it as a clue that you may need a clinician, sleep study, medication review, or targeted workup rather than just more hacks.
Ask about sleep apnea if you snore loudly, wake up choking or gasping, have witnessed pauses in breathing, wake with headaches or dry mouth, have high blood pressure, or feel excessively sleepy during the day even after enough time in bed. Sleep apnea can fragment sleep without you fully realizing it. The most common medical treatment is via CPAP machine to force air in, but some people can’t tolerate that, in which case you have some other options:
First, confirm the apnea subtype and severity: obstructive vs central/mixed, AHI/RDI, oxygen nadir, time below 90%, positional data, REM-worse apnea, and whether nasal obstruction is present. Untreated sleep apnea is associated with higher risk of hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke, so the goal should be objective control, not just less snoring.
Ask your partner if you snore (I’m sure they told you), or if single, use an app to tell you. Best one is RISE.
While structural nasal blockage sometimes requires surgery, a much more interesting, safe and effective approach is Balloon Sinoplasty.
If sinusitis is the issue, you can do nasal irrigation with Quinton Medical Seawater.
Buteyko breathwork (longer exhales than inhales to improve oxygen utilization) has been shown to reduce sleep apnea and improve sleep quality in general. Of course, effectiveness will vary depending on apnea cause, but the improved oxygen utilization itself is a boon regardless.
For mild OSA, the most reasonable non-CPAP stack is usually: custom oral appliance or positional therapy if positional, treat nasal obstruction, reduce alcohol/sedatives, exercise/weight loss if relevant, and consider myofunctional therapy. Supplements can be used only as sleep-support add-ons.
For moderate OSA, I would prioritize a custom oral appliance with follow-up sleep testing, positional therapy only if the study shows positional dependence, weight-loss/metabolic treatment if relevant, and ENT/sleep-surgery evaluation if anatomy suggests obstruction.
For severe OSA, low oxygen, heart disease, arrhythmia, pulmonary hypertension, stroke history, or major daytime sleepiness, discuss PAP re-troubleshooting, bilevel/APAP, oral appliance plus PAP, Inspire/HGNS eligibility, bariatric/metabolic treatment, or surgery. Also avoid alcohol, benzodiazepines, opioids, and other sedating/respiratory-depressing substances unless a clinician specifically manages the risk.
Some people promote mouth-taping as a hack, but be careful if you really have blocked sinuses, as you could suffocate.
Ask about restless legs syndrome if you get an urge to move your legs, especially when resting at night, and movement temporarily relieves it. This can look like “insomnia,” but the target is different.
There’s one miracle sea algae that anecdotally works better for RLS better than any pharma treatment for most people, called Ecklonia cava (not related to the hepatotoxic sleep herb called Kava kava). But it lowers BP, so be cautious about dose and timing, especially if you take other meds that lower BP. Ecklonia cava also helps relaxation and sleep.
Ask about narcolepsy if you find yourself falling asleep during the day. This is extremely dangerous, especially while operating heavy machinery, bicycling, etc. There’s one approved medication for it that works pretty well, called Xyrem.
Get help sooner if you have drowsy driving, sudden severe insomnia, violent dream enactment, sleepwalking with injury risk, panic attacks at night, mania-like symptoms, suicidal thoughts, chest pain, fainting, severe depression, pregnancy/postpartum sleep collapse, or a major medication/substance change.
This is not meant to scare you. It is meant to save time. Sometimes the missing “sleep hack” is a diagnosis.
Run a Two-Week Sleep Log
Before changing everything, track the basics for 14 days:
Bedtime
Lights-out time
Estimated time to fall asleep
Number and length of awakenings
Final wake time
Out-of-bed time
Naps
Caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, cannabis, and other substances
Exercise timing
Late meals, reflux, or late fluids
Medications and supplements
Morning light and evening light exposure
Pain, anxiety, nightmares, hot flashes, congestion, urination, or restless legs
Daytime sleepiness, mood, focus, and driving safety
The point is not perfect measurement. The point is pattern recognition. You want to know whether the issue is sleep timing, sleep opportunity, breathing, substances, stress physiology, pain, digestion, temperature, light, or something medical.
Don’t Chase Sleep-Stage Scores
Wearables can be useful for trends: bedtime regularity, wake time, resting heart rate, HRV trends, and rough sleep duration. But do not treat “deep sleep percentage” or “REM percentage” as a diagnosis.
If a tracker says you slept badly but you feel good, do not let the score ruin your morning. If a tracker says you slept well but you feel impaired, trust your symptoms and look for causes.
The best use of a sleep tracker is pattern recognition, not sleep perfectionism. In my own testing of the best-rated trackers, they all were too unreliable to use, in 2024. They might be better now, but I remain suspicious since they got way over-hyped back then.
Sleep Hygiene Protocol
Before taking anything for sleep, first build a baseline that gives your body a fair chance. Do this for 7–14 days before judging it. Keep the parts that help, drop the parts that do nothing, and do not stack so many interventions that you cannot tell what worked.
Keep a consistent wake time. The most important anchor is usually wake time, not bedtime. Pick a wake time you can keep on most days, including weekends. Then let bedtime move earlier or later based on sleepiness, while still protecting enough sleep opportunity.
Give yourself enough time in bed. Most adults need at least seven hours of sleep, and many need more. If you need 7.5–9 hours of actual sleep, you may need a longer sleep window to allow for meditation, falling asleep and brief awakenings.
CDC lists 7 or more hours for adults 18–60 and 7–9 or 7–8 hours for older adult groups, depending on age.
Use naps carefully. If you sleep well at night, a short nap can be fine. If you have insomnia, keep naps short, early, or skip them while you reset. Long or late naps can steal sleep pressure from the night.
Avoid all stimulant drugs, including caffeine, completely, 100%. Even when taken in the morning, they can subtly disrupt your sleep architecture at night. Stimulants destroy your HPA axis alignment and thyroid. They are a gateway to all kinds of mental illness, as Dr. Josef explains, and they don’t even keep you truly awake. They activate your brain stem to make you feel alert, while other areas of your brain go to sleep, leading to impaired work and driving performance, and overconfidence.
Audit other sleep-disrupters: Alcohol can make you sleepy but fragment the night. Nicotine is stimulating. Large meals, spicy/fatty meals, and too much fluid late at night can worsen reflux, heat, awakenings, or nighttime urination.
CDC includes avoiding large meals and alcohol before bed and avoiding afternoon/evening caffeine; NHLBI also flags nicotine/caffeine and late naps.
Get plenty of exercise during the day so that your body is really tired at night. Strength training is especially important.
Turn off devices with screens, alerts, and emotionally-activating content a few hours before bed. Keep phone out of reach if possible. Unplug wifi and all electronics. Some people might need to get an expensive Blushield device if they can’t get out of the city’s toxic airwaves (and electric power). I tried their top model and it was absolutely incredible for relaxation (although I didn’t notice a sleep benefit as some others did).
Check the temperature in your bedroom! At slightly warmer temperatures, sleep quality is dramatically reduced. If you have the cash, one of the best solutions in 2026 seems to be the EightSleep temperature-controlled sleep-mattress. They have a money-back 30 day guarantee, so it’s worth a shot, and they have great forum reviews. The “base” option also helps with snoring by lifting your head when it hears you snoring. But some people don’t like being tracked by their app.
Check air quality! Most people are in houses without proper ventilation and even mold contamination, which must be remediated professionally.
Fans just blow hot air, so while they do cool your body, they don’t cool your brain since the blowing air doesn’t penetrate that deep. Can help to fall asleep, but won’t give deep sleep usually.
Air conditioners can actually remove the heat from the room, but they often emit mold if not cleaned regularly and thoroughly with non-toxic cleaners like HOCL. Even without mold, air conditioners do not provide the fresh air that you get from opening windows.
Obviously, opening windows can let mosquitos in, so get a large pop-up mosquito net to put on your bed (the drop down ones almost never close correctly, which is absurd).
Turn off the lights. If you must use light at night, Get rid of blue light, and only use incandescent lights. Even better, use red light or candlelight only as needed, and turn your screens onto max red light/night light mode. I find red light really does make me sleepier and more relaxed. The best red lights are sold by EMR-TEK. If there’s unavoidable light in your room, wear a comfortable eye mask to block it as much as possible.
Avoid large meals close to bed, especially if you get reflux, heat, congestion, or nighttime awakenings. If hunger keeps you awake, some warm, whole A2/A2 milk for fat and tryptophan (ideally hygienic raw goat, sheep, camel, donkey milk), with a little raw honey can help.
Replenish the probiotics in your gut that are beneficial for sleep.
SIBO yogurt is a good place to start for this and general health. Research here.
See if you can handle slowly building up your level of dietary resistant starch to naturally build up butyrate-producing bacteria and fix your gut to heal your brain and promote deep sleep:
Journal: Write down everything that is on your mind so you can stop trying to remember it. Ideally write with pen and paper since your phone should be off.
Take a hot Epsom salt bath or at least splash Epsom salt on your armpits (unless you are stuck in catabolism, then use Epsom salt in morning). Eat 1-2 servings of Magnesium L-Threonate. While Epsom salt does go to the brain, some people find that Mag threonate works better for their sleep issues. Be careful with kidney disease, diarrhea, low blood pressure, medication interactions. A warm bath by itself before bed can also be relaxing.
Go to bed 10hrs before sunrise so you don’t feel pressure to immediately fall asleep and you can enjoy some self-massage (wink wink).
Listen: Use sound if it helps you relax: yawning, silence, rain, crickets, gentle music, a boring podcast, or white noise. Treat brainwave tones and device-based audio as experimental. If they give you headaches, agitation, or sleep disruption, stop. The Nimja sleep hypnosis playlist is a real gamechanger.
My friend Kevin suggests listening to a soothing podcast like from Eckhart Tolle. You can play tones which match the average brainwave pattern during sleep. They are sold at MindAware for $2-$5. But before that, detox your brain with :
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Do self massage and gentle body scan. Don’t focus too much on doing a deep body scan, as this can put your mind into concentration mode. We just want to mentally touch the body with a feather so it feels heard and held.
Do masseter jaw muscle massage to prevent jaw grinding and relax (magnesium also helps). If you’re still grinding your teeth, you should get your dentist to make a custom mouth guard—it’s not super comfortable, but it’s a lot better than grinding.
Love and talk your inner child. Hold one hand on heart chakra and the other on solar plexus. Don’t worry if it seems one-sided at first.
Extended meditation before sleeping can be counter-productive as it might keep you awake, but if you do have an hour or two, it can have some incredible benefits in terms of making your dreams more therapeutic and beautiful.
Forgive everyone and yourself and promise to be better tomorrow.
Don’t force sleep unless you must:
The goal is to teach your nervous system that bed means sleep, not effort, frustration, scrolling, or self-surveillance.
If you feel you aren’t sleepy after a little while in bed, and you don’t have to, say, drive in the morning, sit up and meditate.
Choose a meditation that feels gentle, like loving kindness meditation, rather than one that requires strong focus. At some point you will feel drowsy, and then you can lie down.
If you do have to drive, remember that sleepy driving is as dangerous as drunk driving. Caffeine makes you feel more alert but doesn’t fix reflexes misfiring, because half your brain is still “invisibly” asleep.
Drowsy Driving Rule
If you are nodding off, drifting lanes, missing exits, hitting rumble strips, repeatedly yawning, or having microsleeps, do not push through. Pull over somewhere safe, switch drivers, use a rideshare, or take a short nap before continuing. Caffeine can make you feel more alert, but it is not a full fix for serious sleep deprivation.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) does have good evidence of effectiveness for most people (up to 80% get significant benefit akin to sleep medications), but it should be approached with caution. CBT-I therapists would tell you to get out of bed entirely and go do something else, but this can sometimes backfire as it can send the signal to your brain that it’s not time for sleep.
Also, CBT-I itself can backfire for people who already have sleep anxiety, as it tends to be rigid in its rules and goals. The point is retraining the bed-sleep association without turning sleep into a performance test.
If you want to try CBT-I in app form Sleep Doctor is the best-rated app.
Use Special Breathwork Techniques: Buteyko breathing was mentioned above in the Apnea section, and Vagal Blitz is the insta-fix for sleep if you can handle it. Wim Hof breathwork (which is one part of Vagal Blitz) has helped me to get the type of sleep where I wake up in the morning literally in an MDMA infinite love state for an hour! Avoid intense breathwork if you are pregnant, prone to fainting, seizures, panic, arrhythmias, chest pain, or uncontrolled blood pressure.
Using the correct pillow(s) oriented properly is critical to relax your whole body, especially your trapezius muscle. Some people like the Japanese Hug Pillow, while others might prefer the trapezius neck pillow, with a separate pillow for the knees.
I always turn my head pillow 45 degrees since I’m a side sleeper, but here is one designed just for side sleepers. I also find i need some extra cushioning on my waist to keep my spin straight. Some folks actually find they sleep best on the hard floor, although that has never worked for me no matter how much I’ve tried.
Sleep curled up on your left side to aid digestion and glymphatic drainage. I find sleeping on my back is much better for lucid dreaming and psychedelic-type dreams, though. Some people can’t sleep on their side. It depends how you slept as a baby.
Wake up 1-2hrs before sunrise. Or before you “have to” wake up if you’re a night-shift workers, new parent, teenager, someone with delayed sleep phase, or recovering from jet lag. Don’t turn phone on. Don’t use alarm to wake up unless it’s a gentle sunrise mimic type of alarm, otherwise you will often wake up in the wrong sleep cycle, which is why you feel bad instead of amazing upon waking (sleep cycles explained here).
My dad always woke up exactly when he wanted to just by asking “the spirits” to wake him at that time. It does work, if you believe in it, and if you aren’t afraid of waking up at the wrong time.
Do loving kindness meditation and massage your feet until it’s really time you must get out of bed.
Get early sun on your skin as possible on as much skin as possible. The infrared light from the red sun is critical to regulate your circadian rhythm. It also protects you from UV rays later in the day. Avoiding industrial oils in your diet also helps with that. Continue getting as much sun as possible on your body (without burning) all day.
If you work nights and can’t find a healthier job yet, get bright sun-mimicking full-spectrum light at the biological time you want to be daytime, and protect darkness at the biological time you want to be night.
If you are a natural night owl trying to shift earlier, move gradually. Use bright outdoor light soon after waking, dim light earlier in the evening, and shift wake time in small steps rather than forcing a huge jump.
Exercise during the day to give your body the signal that you physically need sleep to recover.
Why Most Sleep Aids Are Insidious
Sleep aids are not the first step. If insomnia is persistent, if there is snoring/gasping, restless legs, dangerous sleepiness, medication changes, or major mood symptoms, the right move is evaluation, not stronger sedation. Any sleep aid that causes next-day impairment, tolerance, withdrawal, mood changes, breathing suppression, or loss of dream recall should be treated cautiously.
Before adding any sleep aid, review what may already be disrupting sleep. Make a list of prescriptions, over-the-counter medications, hormones, antihistamines, decongestants, stimulants, thyroid medication, steroids, antidepressants, pain medication, sleep aids, alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, herbs, and supplements.
Do not abruptly stop prescribed medication to improve sleep. Some medications require tapering or clinician supervision. Also avoid combining sedating substances unless a clinician specifically says it is safe.
If sleep suddenly worsened after starting, stopping, or changing a medication or substance, that is not just “bad sleep hygiene.” That is a medication-review question.
I have done extensive research on sleep aids. It turns out, almost all of them disrupt sleep architecture to different degrees. Obviously, some sleep is still better than no sleep, but if we can do better, we should, because good sleep is so critical for mental and physical health.
Benzo type drugs
Many people rely on benzodiazepines (aka benzos), or the so-called Z drugs, like Ambien (generic name: zolpidem), which destroy your hippocampus, memory, processing capacity, and GABA receptor sensitivity (making you paranoid and suffering panic attacks). These drugs are also incredibly dangerous to get off, taking months to years, and most people never manage to get off them. There is only one “benzo-ish” drug that actually does give very deep sleep, Phenibut, but it is the most addictive one (and true benzos do not substitute for it when in withdrawal, btw), so it's for real emergencies only.
Jordan Peterson, the famous psychologist-influencer, got addicted to benzos his doctor prescribed for anxiety. It took his family years to find a rehab center that actually helped (in Russia somewhere). It actually makes sense it was in Russia because modern peptide medicine (and scenar tech) comes from Russian research. But even these miraculous peptides weren't able to help him very fast. One thing that he should have known about is the Syrian Rue cure for benzo withdrawal, and Selank for safe relaxation. And tragically, his health got worse after stopping the benzos also, likely due to the mitochondrial damage caused by the protracted benzo withdrawal.
Weed
Many other people rely on indica weed for sleep. That’s a heck of a lot healthier than a benzo drug, but cannabis in general, and especially THC, still does disrupt sleep architecture.
You’ll probably notice your dreams are either gone completely or toned down quite a bit. That’s what a lot of people use it for, specifically, because they suffer from nightmares. The problem is that those nightmares are your subconscious trying to do the emotional processing you’ve avoided during the day, and then if you don’t do it while sleeping, it piles up as a backlog which eventually hits you like a freight train when you quit weed, and subtly destroys your life if you don’t quit weed.
Deep sleep is also disrupted by weed, but the deep sleep you get from weed is still a lot better than no deep sleep, so relative to that, many people will say they feel like a million bucks after a nice indica sleep. It takes a while to understand how it’s really affecting you, and you’d need to have a better alternative that gives real deep sleep to compare to.
Less Insidious Sleep Aids
If we still need more help after the sleep hygiene tips, there are some powerful sleep supplements which can work wonders, altho we don't know exactly how they affect sleep architecture:
SIBO yogurt bacteria. I mentioned it before but it’s so important I will say it again. Some bad gut bacteria directly cause insomnia. Dilute food grade h2o2 can help purge those baddies, and then SIBO yogurt could help put some helpful bacteria back in.
Relaxing and safe at higher doses, but not forceful:
Lemon balm. You need a lot of it to work. I took a bunch and i had a dream I was high on heroin (never had that before). Seems to have a tolerance tho and the actives aren’t preserved well in most extracts aside from glycerin tinctures which are expensive.
You can also try:
Raw Gmelina arborea fruit (very potent, especially the semi-bitter fruit skin.. avoid heated fruits, they are inactive) is the best natural sleep aid I’ve found. I eat 1-3g of the fresh fruit to go to sleep (or less just for meditation/chill). No side effects. It also detoxes the liver, improves memory, fights inflammation, and many other things. Unfortunately, finding the unheated fruit is difficult unless it grows in your area (or I can supply). 1-5mg Lithium Orotate is less powerful, but also good for sleep and a number of other health aspects.
Mulungu bark (very relaxing, not pushing into sleep tho)
Lotus flower (relaxing)
Passionflower (need high doses, but 2g of a 100x extract often put me to sleep)
Edible CBD, CBN, CB9, or indica cannabis root, these can help sleep but they are proven to disrupt sleep architecture, as explained in the Insidious Sleep Aids section above, so I would not rely on these long-term, especially if they noticeably alter your dreams (reducing them or making them always pleasant). THC, of course, is the worst offender.
Forced sleep: L-THP from Corydalis yanhusuo is quite powerful, but it has a narrow therapeutic index which makes it dangerous. Interestingly it gets you as high as heroin when you vape it but it’s totally non-addictive. It’s also helpful for nerve pain and mood. The yanhusuo herb itself is much safer than the pure THP, but pure THP can be more powerful. I overdosed on a THP plant once and it was like being forced into a death sleep repeatedly. Very scary.
Another herb that is less well-studied but worked well for a friend of mine who was using cytisine to quit nicotine, is Incarvillea sinensis.
Vagal Blitz Breathwork — I mentioned before, but it really works if you are able to do it.
Below, I will mention another absolutely incredible cheap and natural deeeep relaxation and sleep hack that AI doesn't know about and i guarantee you won't find anywhere online, for paid subscribers. Free subscribers can already have this info if they carefully read my fermented psychedelics post. This image might give you a hint:
Please share this post with anyone you love who wants better sleep and better health! 🥱 ❤️🧸
