My sleep is unpredictable. Not in a technical sense, but a colloquial one. To be literal, I have no idea how to predict my sleep. I just as often sleep through the day as I do through the night. My sleep itself, as far as a sleep study can tell, is normal. I can vaguely say, 60% confidence, if I'm likely to fall asleep in a given 3-4 hour period, and occasionally I will be fairly sure, 80% confidence, 6-10 hours beforehand, of a 1-2 hour period. I can similarly predict the length of my sleep (which is relatively normal--generally distributed 7, 8, 9.5, 13 hours at .1, .4, .6, .9).
My sleep is seriously disturbed. Without understanding the process behind my sleep, without being able to predict it days beforehand and understand the variables behind it, I find it impossible to wake up at a consistent time every day (+/- 8 hours), despite years of trying, which makes it extremely hard to hold down a job, or do dozens of other normal things. There could be a profession that I could make my sleep work with, but I'm still searching for it.
So I ask you readers: Is there some sort of pattern detecting thing, whose name perhaps includes something like "markov" or "kolmogorov" or "bayesian", that could automatically take a time series data and predict the next values based on an unknown, complex model?
So, I could like enter the times I go to sleep and wake up, and when I have caffeine or I exercise, and maybe other things, and it would puzzle out how my sleep works and forecast my next few sleep cycles?
To have an accurate tool like that would transform my life.
"Hidden Markov models" comes to mind, but at first glance I don't see how a sleep model would count as a Markov process, given that you have to factor in sleep debt, time of day (because of sunlight), and perhaps other variables. But then I know nothing about HMMs.
Also, this is my first post. Is this the sort of thing that goes better in LessWrong or Less Wrong Discussion?
Ok, here's what I just did. I looked through that log, collected all the names of pharmaceuticals in there (Klonopin, Vyvanse, Lunesta, Melatonin), and searched each one's wikipedia page for sleep-related effects and side-effects. And I found this:
So that's probably a net negative, sleep-wise, although there might still be non-sleep-related reasons to take it.
Wikipedia has this to say about Lunesta:
Vyvanse has insomnia listed as a side effect. It's not clear from the log whether you just used it once, in which case that's unimportant, or for a long time in which case it is. Melatonin is sometimes used as a sleeping aid, but in my experience it's pretty weak. It may be effective against a particular cause of insomnia, but it didn't do much for me and if it didn't do much for you, well, that's not that surprising.
So, the good news is that the reason using drugs to help you sleep hasn't worked is that they're lousy drugs. The next step is to go through the wikipedia page for insomnia, and collect a list of candidate substances. Then read the page for each one, cross off the ones that sound bad (mainly based on side effect risk), and get a list of candidates to try. Bring this list to your physician, let him veto any subset, get prescriptions for any remaining ones that require prescriptions, and then try each one in turn.
Well, Vyvanse is modified amphetamine, so yeah. I also have serious focus problems. I was only on it for a month or so, and found it ineffective for the same reasons as other stimulants. I think in the sleep log I had just taken an isolated pill I had left.
But your advice is good. Going through the options very thoroughly might turn up something.