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Does Phenibut help you sleep?
One of the most unpleasant experiences I can think of is getting ready for sleep, getting into bed, and still being wide awake with thoughts racing through your head. All you want to do is sleep, but your brain just won’t let you. An hour goes by, then two.
You are begging and pleading to whoever and whatever you can to just once, just this one night, to have a decent night’s sleep. Of course, when you do finally go to sleep it feels like the very next second you have to wake up again. Instead of getting a refreshing night’s sleep you got a couple hours less than you wanted.
On top of that, you feel frustrated that you wasted a couple hours of an already short day just lying in bed frustrated that you can’t sleep when that time could have been better focused on something else.
I know exactly how this feels, and unfortunately, as a life-long insomniac, there is no way to permanently get rid of these feelings. Anyone who tells you that they were an insomniac and then cured it forever by using this one simple trick is feeding you a lie.
The best you can realistically hope for is to keep insomnia at bay as best as you can. Believe me, it’s a much better feeling when you have only one sleepless night a month or so instead of almost every single day. And in this post, I’m going to show you how to keep your sleepless nights on the back-burner for the time being.
Using Phenibut for sleep
So given the articles I have already written about Phenibut, I have already touched on how Phenibut can be used to achieve a great night’s sleep, but I haven’t really gone into too much detail on how to do it. Truthfully, Phenibut is a recreational nootropic and not something you can take every day.
So if you were hoping that you can take Phenibut and never have to worry about insomnia again you are mistaken (as mentioned earlier, there are no shortcuts or cheats). Instead, it’s best to take Phenibut no more than twice per week and only once per week once you are starting out.
But while I mention that Phenibut can be used for sleep, I wouldn’t recommend you use it strictly for that purpose. The reasons being it takes 5-7 hours for it to get into full effect, and it’s not something you can take every day.
That being said, there were nights when I went out partying and I took Phenibut beforehand to lower my anxiety. As soon as I hit the pillow when I got back, I fell asleep instantly! The only times in my life that I have ever fallen asleep that fast was when I was taking Phenibut.
The best practice is to take Phenibut on a day when you are dog tired and don’t really need to get up in the morning. I have recommended in Phenibut Tips and Tricks to take it on a Saturday if you plan to go out on both Friday nights and Saturday nights.
That might not be something that you are particularly interested in, so instead, you could take it on a Friday night instead. If you had a long work week and you just want to crash and get as much sleep as you can so you can have a full weekend of relaxation, take Phenibut on Friday as soon as you get off work.
Make sure to take the full 2 gram dosage (or 1 gram if you are a beginner), because there is really no need to break up the dosage if you not planning on staying awake.
Once you do hit the pillow, you are out and might get an entire 12-14 hours of sleep! This happened to me a couple of times, and I’m kind of glad that did. You see, we often don’t realize how tired we really are and how deep of a sleep debt we are in.
People often get an extra hour or two of sleep on the weekends thinking that they are making up the debt, but they might not realize that they needed several additional hours of sleep to be fully rested. If you are taking Phenibut to temporarily cure insomnia (which it can), don’t be surprised if you also end up paying off your sleep debt too (which you will).
Great sleep!
Damn, this phenibut stuff worked like a charm!
What about when I’m not taking Phenibut?
I understand that if you are taking Phenibut for sleep twice per week (the maximum limit), there’s a good 5 extra days that you are on your own. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
Phenibut is just a tool and is not something that you should solely rely on. Can it help you fall asleep on the occasional day you use it? Absolutely. Can you take it every day and cure insomnia permanently? Hell no.
So for the insomniac that needs help on those other five days, I have a couple of recommendations for you:
Vitamin D pill
There are a lot of health benefits to Vitamin D (too many to list in fact, so maybe I’ll do a separate post on this). I started taking a single 5000 IU Vitamin D pill every morning because I suspected I had low testosterone levels (low Vitamin D levels lead to low testosterone levels, source). What I didn’t realize was taking a Vitamin D supplement in the morning would also help me get better sleep at night as well.
Odds are if you are not taking a Vitamin D supplement right now, or you are not getting a full hour of sun exposure daily, you are Vitamin D deficient. In fact, at least 32% of Americans have a Vitamin D deficiency (source). This is problematic because low Vitamin D levels can lead to sleep deficiencies. And I can speak from experience that taking Vitamin D supplements gave me a slight boost in my ability to fall asleep faster.
You don’t need to take a whole bunch of Vitamin D to get the effects of this, nor do you need to fork over extra money for overpriced stuff. I just use this Vitamin D from GNC. It will last you six months, and you will essentially spend 11 cents per day on it- a tiny price considering that it will progressively help you fall asleep faster and get better quality sleep.
One last note: don’t assume you are getting enough Vitamin D from your multivitamin. They usually skimp on the most important nutrients like Vitamin D and Magnesium, and instead just have a bunch of useless filler. Just get the nutrient in as pure a form as you can.
Train your Body
This should come as a no-brainer, but if you are not already lifting weights, you are doing yourself a disservice. Get out of your head about aesthetics or how much you can lift- you don’t need to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger or bench 315 pounds to get the benefits that lifting weights can provide. This is one of the most beneficial activities you could possibly do, so you need to start viewing it as a necessity, just like you would eating or brushing your teeth every day.
You should try to lift weights 4-5 times per week if you can. Doesn’t have to be anything extreme- even a 10-15 minute lift that’s very intense can help you fall asleep quickly at night. Not only that but lifting weights increases your resiliency which makes it less likely for you to get sick, which will also help improve your sleep. So whatever excuses you were having about going to the gym, throw them out and get to lifting!
Cold showers at night
You may be tired about hearing me talk about how amazing cold showers are, but I stand by my statements- they really are something. A cold shower right before you go to bed will help slightly lower your body temperature. Our bodies have natural heat cycles that peak during the day and dip at night.
This allows us to alternate between restfulness and sleep, which would also explain why it’s easier to fall asleep when the temperature in the room is nice and cool.
Taking a cold shower right before bed takes this a step further and really gets your body primed for sleep. Every time I have taken a cold shower before bed, I get this strange wave of relaxation and all the manic thoughts buzzing through my head just fade away.
It may seem a bit contradictory (doesn’t cold water shock your body and keep it awake?), but a long cold shower or even ice bath at night will get that body temperature nice and low at night, and pretty soon you won’t imagine going to bed without it!
Relaxation ritual
Since we are so accustomed to creating habits and running on autopilot, it’s important to preserve a block of time every evening for a relaxation ritual. 30 minutes before bed should do it, but even just five minutes would be better than nothing at all. Meditation is an awesome one to try and is what I do on a regular basis.
All you really have to do is spend 5 minutes every evening (starting out), and just clear your mind of wild thoughts and just focus on your breathing. Do this every day for 5 minutes until it becomes a habit, and then you can increase the daily time you meditate for 5 minutes every other week. It’s so easy to sleep when your mind is relaxed!
But if meditation isn’t your thing, you could always read a book. The catch is it needs to be on paper. The blue light that comes off of computers does murder to your sleep cycle, and they say you should not be on your devices in the hour before bed.
However, that is often not practical because we are so busy and/or just dependent on our electronic devices that parting from it even late at night is easier said than done. For this reason, I recommend Flux. It’s a free program that you can install on your computer than decreases the blue light emitting from your computer at night.
I have it and it works like a charm! It’s a bit more flexible for me since I have tried (and failed) to create a rigid hour before bed where I’m not on any sort of device. This made it easier for my work schedule and my sleep cycle. Give it a try!
Conclusion
So let’s cut to the chase. Can phenibut help you sleep? Of course, it can. In fact, on the days that I have taken it, it was the most effective tool to allow me to fall asleep quickly and get an amazing night’s sleep. I would highly recommend anyone who is desperate to get that quality sleep that we crave to try some for yourself.
That being said, I can’t say that it will make insomnia go away permanently. Sure on the days, you do take it you will get the best sleep of your life, but if you try to take it every single day you are going to build such a high tolerance to it that it will be pretty much worthless.
This is why I recommended the other tips that I did in the article. It would be too easy to pedal Phenibut by claiming it is all you need to get a good night’s sleep, but doing that would just feel unethical to me. I want you to get the best resources available to you and if it means I make less commission than so be it.
I’m sure there are other sleep tips out there, but these were just the ones I could think of off the top of my head. If you know any others, feel free to share them with me!
For further reading on some of it’s social and recreational uses, be sure to check out: Phenibut, Cure for Social Anxiety Ultimate Game Changer
Guest Post Endorsed by DrChuang.com 2018
