For a while I thought I had delayed sleep phase syndrome (which is more easily treated with light therapy), and that it's just so severe that the morning sunlight late in my day tends to make it go crazy. It's not quite regular enough for non-24. Or it could be completely irregular.

In any case, light therapy doesn't seems to help at all. I tried it for about a month or two with this and saw no effects. Also, it's a /huge/ inconvenience.

Helpful, thanks.

What I'm wondering with a markov process is whether it could be embellished to include other potentially relevant variables. From 5 minutes reading wikipedia, it seems like I'd have a combinatorial explosion of states, and the more states, the more data needed to train the model.

So I'd have like 48 states, for each half-hour of the day, times 3-4 for 8-11 hours long sleep? Would it work to have ordered pairs where the first item is measured in time since my last awakening?

I have karma display turned off (greasemonkey script). It stresses me out. I think your comment could certainly expand on point 3/4. Really what I was looking for as a response to the post is a good pointer on what sort of algorithms or tools could potentially give me good results on this problem to direct my studying, and perhaps what textbooks or introductions I should be reading.

But point 1 is good. I hadn't thought to do that. I was just going to go on common sense, and a kitchen sink approach.

Vyvanse has insomnia listed as a side effect.

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.

I have six months of past sleep data, though nothing current, with sleep and wake times. I could easily augment that with other potentially relevant variables, like daily caffeine intake or whatnot.

I use Supermemo daily, and have read everything Wozniak has written about sleep. I've talked to him a couple times about other things (1-2 month response time). I may ask him about this.

It was replaced shortly after, and my back problems promptly dissipated. I had only been sleeping on that mattress for a few weeks at the time, having just thrown away another.

I have tried sedatives, melatonin, melatonin-inducing sleeping aids, traditional sleeping aids, and Ambien (whatever that is). Some have no effect, some put me to sleep but leave me unrested, and some put me to sleep and leave me unrested and incredibly groggy for the rest of the day. Generally speaking, trying to shift your sleep schedule by more than 1-2 hours using sleep aids doesn't work. If your circadian rhythm keeps advancing anyway, the results are just like a normal person trying to go to bed at noon using sleep aids.

a lot of different ways to use them

Can you expand on this?

I suppose I could shop around for a doctor willing to prescribe modafinil for my sort of sleep problems. I have thought of trying it in the past, but that's pretty far off-label.

"Everything" includes having read all current medical literature, which all says that severe circadian rhythm disorders are basically untreatable, and having one sleep doctor basically give up. I could also try more sleep doctors, I suppose.