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AngryParsley comments on Case study: Melatonin - Less Wrong
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It sounds interesting but I'm a little wary of your one line dismissal of any potential side effects without reference. To the best of my knowledge the function of sleep is still not completely understood and the long term effects of reduced sleep are not known. A suggestion to take any kind of supplement every day for the rest of your life places a fairly high bar on safety. Taking melatonin to overcome jet-lag seems very likely to be safe but I'm more wary of using it on an ongoing daily basis.
Do you have any references to support the claim that there are no long term side effects of daily use?
Here's the longest-term study I could find: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19486273
Basically, children taking melatonin for several years didn't develop any problems. Melatonin is also used by blind people quite a bit, since without it their circadian rhythms are longer than 24 hours.
I believe it's not generally considered valid to apply results from medical studies on adults to children. I'm not sure if the reverse applies.
The fact that the study was on children certainly doesn't help the validity when applied to adults, but I think you're being overly risk-averse. Melatonin's mechanism of action is pretty well understood, and it occurs in the body already. The long-term effects would have to be very bad to outweigh the advantages of a regular sleep schedule and an extra hour of wakefulness every day. That's assuming melatonin works, of course.
Endorphins are chemicals that occur naturally in the body, with a mechanism that is pretty well understood. Yet taking opioids regularly is not good for you.
You cannot assume health-benefits simply because it already occurs in the body.
There may well be benefits, but they must be proved independently of simply understanding the natural mechanism.