Tried Everything and Still Can’t Sleep? The Short List of What’s Actually Left
Short answer: if you have already done the dark room, the fixed bedtime, the phone ban and the magnesium, you do not need another list of basics. You need to work out which problem you have, because “can’t sleep” is at least three different problems with three different answers — and you need to stop doing the one thing most people in your position are doing at midnight, which is drinking to get to sleep.
Below: the swap that matters, how to tell which problem is yours, and what is actually worth money.
You have done the basics. This is not that list.
Everyone writing about sleep assumes you are a beginner. Cool room, no screens, get up at the same time, no caffeine after two. All true, all worth doing, and you have done all of it — which is why you are reading a page called tried everything at an hour when you should be asleep.
So here is the next layer, in the order we would actually do it.
1. The nightcap has to go, and here is why
This is the hardest one to hear because it works — on the first bit. A 2013 review in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research by Ebrahim and colleagues put numbers on it: at all doses, alcohol reduces sleep onset latency. You fall asleep faster. That is real, and it is why so many people end up on a glass or two every night.
What the same review found is what happens next. Alcohol produces an increase in sleep disruption in the second half of the night. It delays the first REM period at all doses and cuts total REM. The extra deep sleep it gives you early can make sleep apnoea worse, not better. Net result: you go under quickly and then surface at three, wired, with the sleep you got being the low-quality kind.
If you are using a drink as your sleep aid, that is the single biggest thing standing between you and a decent night — not your pillow, not your app, and not any supplement. Swap it for anything that does not fragment the back half of the night, and give it two weeks before you judge.
One caveat worth saying plainly: if you are drinking heavily every day, do not just stop on your own. Withdrawal from heavy daily drinking can be genuinely dangerous, and it is a conversation to have with a doctor rather than a website.
2. Work out which problem you actually have
“I can’t sleep” covers three completely different situations. Nothing works when you keep buying the answer to a problem you do not have.
Something physical keeps waking you
You fall asleep fine, then wake with a stiff neck, a dead arm, a sore shoulder or a headache. You reshape the pillow four times a night. That is not insomnia — that is a support problem, and no supplement on earth fixes it. Start with the height your pillow should actually be, then our pillow pick.
You cannot switch the day off
You are exhausted all day, and the moment the light goes out your brain starts filing paperwork. Or you go out fine and wake at 3am on the dot. That is arousal, not tiredness, and it is the pattern most “tried everything” people have. The free work is a fixed wake time and a real wind-down; the paid experiment is the sleep formula we rate. Our guide on why you wake at 3am covers the mechanism.
The room goes quiet and your ears do not
Ringing, hissing or humming that you barely notice all day and cannot escape at bedtime. This one gets missed constantly, because people treat it as insomnia and buy sleeping tablets for it. It needs sound in the room and, if you want to try something, a different product entirely: our hearing pick, and first the free stuff in why tinnitus gets worse at night.
3. Test one thing at a time, on a deadline
The reason nothing has worked yet might be that you have been changing four things a week and judging each one after two nights. Neither of those gives you an answer.
- One change at a time. Otherwise you never learn which thing helped.
- Four to eight weeks. Sleep is a rolling average, not a single night. Two good nights is noise.
- A deadline you write down. Every product below has a money-back window. Put the date in your calendar the day it arrives, judge it before the window closes, and get your money back if the answer is no.
- Write the nights down. Judging four weeks from memory is how people talk themselves into keeping something that is not working. Our free seven-night sleep diary does the arithmetic for you — time asleep, time in bed, and sleep efficiency for each night and across the week — and prints a one-page summary. No sign-up, and nothing you type leaves your own browser.
What we would spend money on, and what it costs
| If this is you | What to try | Window to decide |
|---|---|---|
| Pain or a dead arm wakes you | Our pillow pick — free calculator first | 60 days |
| Cannot switch off, or awake at 3am | Our sleep formula pick | 60 days |
| Ringing ears in the silence | Our hearing pick | 90 days |
The honest bit, because you have been sold to before
None of the supplements above — ours or anyone else’s — has a clinical trial proving it fixes chronic insomnia or quiets tinnitus. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you, and this category is full of pages doing exactly that. We earn a commission when you buy through our links, and we would rather tell you that than pretend to be a charity.
What makes trying one rational anyway is the shape of the bet. You are not buying a cure; you are buying a test with the money refundable if it fails. When you have already spent months of bad nights, a 60- or 90-day experiment that costs you nothing if it does not work is a reasonable thing to run — and a lot more reasonable than another year of the nightcap.
Just run it properly: one thing, four to eight weeks, date in the calendar.
Not sure which of the three is you?
Two minutes, four questions, and it points you at the one that matches — including telling you when the answer is not a product at all.
Take the sleep quiz →When it is not insomnia at all
Some things do not respond to any of the above because they are medical, and they are common enough to rule out before you spend another penny:
- Sleep apnoea. Loud snoring, gasping or choking noted by a partner, waking with a dry mouth or headache, and heavy daytime sleepiness however long you were in bed. This is the single most under-diagnosed cause of “nothing works”, and alcohol makes it worse.
- Restless legs. An urge to move your legs in the evening that eases when you do.
- Thyroid, pain conditions, or a medication you started recently. Check the timing against when the sleep went bad.
- Insomnia lasting more than three months. Ask about CBT-I — the talking treatment for insomnia. It is the first-line treatment, it outperforms sleeping tablets long-term, and most people have never been offered it. Turning up with a couple of weeks of sleep diary data makes that appointment faster, because sleep efficiency is the number the treatment is actually built around.
If any of those fit, see a doctor before you buy anything. That is not us being cautious; it is the fastest route to actually sleeping.
Source: Ebrahim IO, Shapiro CM, Williams AJ, Fenwick PB. Alcohol and Sleep I: Effects on Normal Sleep. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 2013. Affiliate disclosure: we may earn a commission if you buy through our links, at no extra cost to you. General information, not medical advice. Not evaluated by the FDA; not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.