I discuss melatonin's effects on sleep & its safety; I segue into the general benefits of sleep and the severely disrupted sleep of the modern Western world, the cost of melatonin use and the benefit (eg. enforcing regular bedtimes), followed by a basic cost-benefit analysis of melatonin concluding that the net profit is large enough to be worth giving it a try barring unusual conditions or very pessimistic safety estimates.
Full essay: http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin
Since I wrote this post, the following comments have come in. If I missed any, please PM or reply with links. The following entries are compiled from LessWrong,
#lesswrong
,gwern.net
, Reddit, or Google+, generally in relation to this melatonin essay; I classify as using/positive anyone who is using melatonin or will likely use melatonin in the future for any reason (eg. daily use counts, but so does using it for jetlag), and as negative/null anyone who is no longer using it for any reason (eg. found a better way to induce vivid dreams, or found it made them sleep better but this interfered with their diabetes-related medical devices).Using/positive:
#lesswrong
; IRC entries may be inflated by multiple nicks whose unity I didn't recognize)Not using/mixed/negative:
#lesswrong
)Unknown:
I am microdosing, 300mcg plain + 300mcg time-release, both from LEF. Currently trying doubling the time-release dosage to see if that works better. More than 400mcg up-front did not work well. In general, people trying melatonin are advised to try microdoses.