I have the formal diagnosis of "sleep disturbance, profound" for many years. I started taking melatonin about five years ago, starting with 3 mg and gradually going up. I am now at 24 mg (eight 3 mg pills). I saw a doctor, a sleep specialist, last week, and I will be going in for a formal sleep study at Regions Hospital, but one thing I asked him was if I'm supposed to stop or cut way back on the melatonin; and it turns out so little is known about melatonin that nobody even knows if this dose really is outrageously high, or if it's a reasonable thing for someone with my level of sleep problems to take. It seems high to me and I won't go any higher, but at this level it is almost, not quite, functioning as a knockout pill. (Even so, I still have some bad nights, and have a couple of Ambien pills left for when that happens -- but sometimes I can take an Ambien and still not sleep. I wish things were better.) I chew up the melatonin while lying down, as they work much faster that way, even though they taste pretty awful. I hesitate to do anything that looks like prescribing medicine without a license, but will only say that for me, this works. The cheapest place to buy melatonin, I'm afraid, appears to be Wal-Mart, but the GNC nutrition stores also carry it and sometimes have "deals" where the price goes down if you buy a couple of bottles. Also you can find it at Walgreen's.

Nate Bucklin