First of all it might be important to note that I have never taken a sleeping pill in my life. However, I have used Chamomille Tea, a natural sleep aide, and muscle relaxants, (while hiking 50 miles in the Himalayas so my muscle spasms wouldn't get worse and keep me awake) and things like that. Oh, I also used Apple wine one time when it was snowing in Yosemite national Park in the early 1970s (my early 20s) to kill the pain of my bleeding hands from rock climbing and jam cracking them into rock cracks as hand holds. So I drank some Apple wine to kill the pain as I tried to sleep under a VW bug in my sleeping bag because none of us thought it would snow so we only brought tube tents but the tube tents with wind and snow slamming against it kept us awake. So we put our tube tents around our sleeping bags and slept under my VW bug which has high ground clearance. Unfortunately, camping next to us was a large Winnebago and we could see the people watching the Orange Bowl on their TV while eating popcorn. Quite a contrast from us in sleeping bags in the snow under my VW.
But generally, my methods are things like a hot microwaved cup of milk, a Tums to settle my stomach so I don't get reflux during the night (if you are over 40 or 50 one of the worst things is to wake up choking on reflux because some people don't survive this. It really burns and then you have to spend the next 1/2 hour to one hour cleaning out your nasal and throat passages while they feel like they are on fire.)
So, the older you get the more of an art it is to sleep. Generally, what I do is to allow my natural cycles of my body to work for me. So, when I feel sleepy I try to sleep. If I don't feel sleepy I get up and read or write or watch TV or talk to someone in my home if they are also awake.
But the real problem of resorting to sleeping pills or any pills for that matter is that your body basically becomes addicted to these substances one way or another and then you have to take them all the time.
Basically, it works like this. Your body has its own equilibrium. So, whenever you upset your bodies equilibrium it tries to come into its own balance again. So when you take a sleeping pill for example, your body will try to counteract that sleeping pill which will eventually make you awake and not able to sleep without that sleeping pill. I think Michael Jackson was an example of someone who had used every sleep medication and his body had so compensated for not being able to sleep that he absolutely could not sleep ever without some drug sleep aid.
This is why you don't want to start taking ANY sleeping pills or sleeping medications so you don't eventually wind up like he did: DEAD. However, it is true that this was a slow process over probably 30 or more years to get to the point where he was. However, this also is a good reason never to start taking them as well.
So, for this reason I never ever even took one sleeping pill my whole life. Also, I take this same approach with coffee. I never drink coffee except as a way to stay awake late at night driving or in some emergency situation. If I only use coffee as an emergency drug then it always works for me because my body isn't everyday exposed to it and compensating for caffeine to where I have to drink it every day to function at all. And if I don't drink coffee I don't have to deal with the coffee crash an hour or two later either.
So, for me at least, sleeping is what I do when my body feels like sleeping. So, if I'm really excited about something and can't sleep I just deal with it and don't sleep and make my sleep up the next night. But once your embark down the sleeping medication route it is important to know that one day it could be fatal. So, finding a way to not take sleeping pills at all might be a good idea if you want to live to be 100.
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