[mafuyu]

The DSPS section is a spot-on characterization of my sleeping patterns:

""

People who suffer from DSPS often resort to their own implausible solutions that include:

-(poorly managed) free running sleep with an inevitable phase delays that ultimately result in sleeping through the day -skipping a night of sleep at a point when the bedtime reaches an outrageously late hour (i.e. usually after the dawn) -stabilization of the sleep pattern with medication (incl. melatonin) and artificial zeitgebers such as an alarm clock or a mom who pulls a sleepy student out from his or her bed for school"

Emergency: Melatonin: If your "protected zone" is stretched to the limit. You may consider an occasional pill of melatonin (e.g. 2 hours before your optimum bedtime). Remember that melatonin will affect your creativity and alertness, and should not be used on a regular basis.

""

I read this as I was preparing to sleep at 10 AM by taking a melatonin pill... I'll give his basic algorithm for fixing DSPS a shot over the holidays.

However, I don't think his characterization of melatonin is warranted. I take melatonin around 15 minutes before I sleep, similar to what gwern does in his article (http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin). This article suggests taking it 2 hours beforehand. It's been working fine for me for a year now, but it's interesting to see that in the natural melatonin production graph further down in the article, it peaks several hours before sleep.