Dr. Rictus' and Incognito's advice (except for the wine) is right on the money.
Here's a good link on common sense insomnia cures. I'm not sure I like these SOB's - elsewhere on the site, they use stolen graphics that I actually created at my last job - but this information is sound.
You want to avoid alcohol before bedtime; it disrupts your sleep patterns. you may fall asleep faster, but your sleep will be less restful. Morning exercise is better than late evening exercise, which will keep you awake for several hours afterwards. No caffeine in the evening, either, as several people have said.
Some fast background:
There are basically five stages of sleep: Stage 1 and 2 (light sleep, easy to wake up from), Stage 3 and 4 (deep sleep, hard to wake up from), and (REM sleep, when you dream.) If you wake up from deep sleep, you typically feel groggy.
Stages 1-4 are marked as "NREM 1-4" on this graph:
You'll see that throughout the night, you change between deep sleep and light sleep a number of times. Going through each cycle takes about an hour and a half, and you repeat this 3-5 times throughout a sleep period. Most of your deep sleep (without which you won't feel refreshed) happens in the first half of your sleep; most of your dreaming/REM sleep (which clears your mind and reduces stress) happens in the latter half.
If you're short on sleep, absolutely the best thing you can do is train yourself to take naps. Remember, though, that there are good naps and bad naps!
A good nap is one of two different types: short (15-20 minutes) or long (about 2 hours.)
A short naps burns away sleep pressure making you drowsy, giving you higher alertness for the next 2-3 hours.
This is the type of nap you should take if you are suffering microsleeps while driving your car. (Find a safe place to pull over and shut your eyes for a few minutes. It is the
only thing that has been proven to actually be effective in getting you home safely.) Because it's only a few minutes, you'll wake up before you slip into stage 3 sleep. You'll typically wake up feeling great, and refreshed.
A long nap brings you through one complete sleep cycle, waking you up from REM sleep or light sleep. You'll wave up feeling good, and you'll have burned off some of your accumulated sleep debt. This type of nap is pretty healthy; anyone working night shifts should try to get one of these before going in to work.
A
bad nap is about 45 minutes to an hour in length. Look at that graphic; since sleep cycles are 90-110 minutes long for most people, where are you after an hour? Right down there in stage 3-4 sleep, that's where. So if you wake up from an hour nap, you'll typically wake up feeling groggy and worse than you did before you lay down. Lots of people say "I'll lie down for an hour," but it's the worst possible length of time to rest for.
This is also why you sometimes wake up before your alarm clock in the morning feeling great (waking out of light sleep), decide to stay in bed, and you feel like crap when the alarm rings. You've slipped back down into deep sleep again. Emokage, this is what is happening to you.
Remember that you can train yourself to nap and fall asleep/wake up quickly. It takes some work, but lots of people (from armed forces personnel to truck drivers) do so. It involves following a consistent routine for a few weeks, trying to nap at about the same time of day every day. Even if you spend the first week just lying there feeling stupid, you're training your body, and you'll soon find yourself dozing off.
Reprisal, A shower at either time is fine. If you have one at night, make it part of your bedtime routine. Just like babies, our bodies like a routine, and you can fool your body into thinking it's bedtime if you follow the same habit patterns that you always follow before going to bed - even if you're trying to go to sleep at 9 am.
