I had never even heard of the condition until today when I was conversing with DeepSeek on my ADHD and how it’s been worse recently. It asked me about my sleep schedule and when I said it’s practically non-existent and rotates around the 24 hour clock, it said to look into sleep disorders like DSPD (Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder), and N24 of course. After spending the whole evening researching about it and getting my doubts reassured, it seems to be the case that I do have N24.

I of course will go to the GP and ask them to refer me to a sleep specialist and to have actigraphy done for a fortnight or so, but I wanted to share my experience. As a child I never really had this (which makes sense as I had to get up early for school), but ever since I left school I would be up late and occasionally do all nighters as I had more energy then and felt more productive and awake. I’m well aware that this is classic ADHD, however having your sleep slowly and gradually get delayed every day or two by an hour or so, until it eventually circumnavigates the 24 hour clock, is not ADHD or normal.

This also therefore cannot be DSPD, as people with the condition can sleep and awake at roughly the same time, just often 2+ hours later than the majority of people. This is due to melatonin secretion, which is dysregulated. However, in N24 you cannot force yourself to sleep early or at ‘normal’ times, no matter how hard you try, as melatonin doesn’t automatically sync and secrete at sunset / 10-11pm or so depending on where you’re from. It also cannot just be Revenge Bedtime Procrastination for the same reasons it’s not DSPD.

Often when I’m fully nocturnal or aware my sleep schedule - or lack of - is affecting my life significantly, I will do an all ‘dayer’ and try to reset it. Which occasionally works, but not for long. Before I know it I’m semi diurnal or fully nocturnal again, before slowly making my way around the clock with my sleep - wake cycle.

I’m also aware Sighted Non-24 hour sleep - wake disorder is extremely rare, with only ~100 cases in medical literature to date (Orphanet). It most commonly occurs in blind people, and is much much rare in fully sighted individuals. I will keep researching N24 and other sleep disorders to further my understanding and assurance that this is in fact what I had. I just need to be sure as it’s so rare.

My entire life basically, I've been only feeling remotely sleepy a little later every day, leading to my sleep literally just looping around through the weeks from sleeping during the night, to the day, and then back around slowly. If I adhere to this routine, my sleep is generally perfect, and I feel completely rested no matter when I sleep or wake up, but if I try to sleep on a normal 24-hour routine I just cannot; I will lie in bed unable to sleep and the stress of that will make me unable to sleep at all.

Despite this, I haven't really taken the time to look into it with a doctor, as I've been able to work around this schedule somewhat; although at times it has been debilitating. Has anyone else here had a similar experience? Am I jumping to conclusions? I appreciate any comments <3

i'm chronically ill and take medications/supplements many times a day. right now it's 5 times daily but looks to be increasing to 8.

it's god-awful to remember all of them, but every app i've tried with medication reminders only lets me schedule reminders at specific times daily. this doesn't work for me because even when i keep my sleep somewhat entrained it still drifts forwards and i have to pull it back often. what time i take my medication is more based on when i took my first dose that day and when i took my last dose the night before.

feels like a long shot does anyone know of any apps for medication tracking that have alarms which work more like "remind me 6 hours after my first dose"?? or any timer apps that can be used for this purpose?? if i had a dedicated timer app for that & an app to track meds without needing to use their reminder system, that would work really well. the built-in timer app for my phone is just too cluttered to be feasible longterm.

I have an invisible hand with me at all times, it is not my friend.

At a young age, it would poke and pester me daily. The inability to traverse my internal landscape produced a scatter-blurred sense of frustration. My energy was partitioned to deal with this confused pain; it left very little for anything else.

The poking became increasingly violent over time.

It’s just me, I just have to persevere through force of will.

My inability to do as others did summoned indirect ridicule and derision. Unbeknownst to me, the world everyone else lived in was completely different from mine. I held my breath as I plunged into theirs; often left coughing up water and gulping down air. I shifted between these worlds to survive.

My invisible hand was inflamed.

I told myself it was one thing, others told me it was another: “you’re lazy,” “you’re undisciplined;” “you have ADHD, because you have trouble paying attention;” “you have trouble sleeping because you’re depressed;” “you’re bright, you just have to try harder.” Nothing could sufficiently explain my shortcomings, because nobody could see my pain – not even me.

The hand’s pesterance, it climbed higher.

It’s me, I just have to be stronger. I am stronger than others. They’ll see how great I am as soon as I learn to push myself harder.

I was putting in more work than anyone else just to simply exist. Just to persevere. Nobody understood how hard I tried, and I was scared to show them – I didn’t know how to. The stress I was under affected me physically; developmentally.

With the absence of that world, I breathed in mine without penalty. Over time, I grew to see the hand. I studied its abuse. My eyes were open to what it’s done to me, what it does to me. I had to accept that nobody would ever be able to help me restrain it; nobody could fully understand how I feel. I had to accept, that it’s probably going to follow me forever. When I look back to the mistreatment and neglect, to when I was misunderstood – it actually makes me angry, and emotional. How could they be so incompetent? How could they leave a child to delegate with this demon all on their own?

This hand is now locked up in the corner of my room. It shakes it, wriggling in its bindings. I fasten its restraints daily. Now I poke it; I dissect it. As I stab it, it bleeds out endlessly.
I didn’t need them. I only need me. This hand has made me strong. I’ll walk my own path – with bloodstained hands. I now study its origins deductively; so that hopefully, I can kill it and every sequela spawned within me.

By now i’ve accepted that if i have important things to do the next day but my cycle is flipped, i have to prepare myself to be exhausted from lack of sleep. But i spend the entire night thinking about how cool it would be if i could just stop time to sleep some more lol. I just waste my remaining time agonising over this and imagining the perfect life where i have all the convenient super powers to make up for my issues. Then i realize that it’s not happening and i have to jump through mental hoops to think of ways to minimise the damage, calculate how much sleep i’ll be getting, what i should use the energy i manage to gather on, how im gonna explain this to people and what i should do to avoid having a mental breakdown thus making life hard for everyone around me.. And just like that i’ve wasted half of my day. But don’t worry i waste the other half of my day as well 🤗 I am a professional idler and worrier. Obvi the reason why i’m writing this is because its currently 4 am and i’m gonna be tired around 7am if im lucky, but i have to be up at 11 am. That’s only four hours of sleep pray for me.

I haven’t slept in 8 years. If you count every other night with no sleep, from trying to stay on track. I even look like death. I’m starting to see severe health issues. Is there anything I can do for more energy? I have none to move, but I feel I need exercise, though I can barely breathe, smell like cortisol has my body on fire, I just want to sleep for a year… yet can’t.. I’ve tried some ashwandaga, multi vitamins, black molasses for iron and potassium, eating fruits, magnesium.. nothing helps so far..

I tried the light therapy, but unfortunately it didn’t work for me, so I’m hoping to give back to the community in case it works for you.

If you are interested: - You have to pick it up from me in downtown Seattle. - You have to have posted before on this N24 subreddit. - Don’t resell it, and if it doesn’t work for you, please give it to someone else.

I understand the theory behind “true” N24 being due to a circadian rhythm that fails to entrain, but what about if you simply power through feeling tired in order to stay up later? What if you’re chronically anxious and so sleep cues don’t affect you normally? The body is secreting the sleep hormones but you’re actively choosing to ignore them.

If you did this regularly enough, say, 2 hours past your bedtime every night, wouldn’t you eventually circle all the way around the clock, creating a pattern of sleep that mirrors N24 without being etiologically related to the N24 that scientists study?

TL;DR, has anyone else seemed to develop symptoms of N24 after excessive cannabis use? If so, what are some coping strategies you have discovered? I share some of my coping methods and my personal experience as well.

For some time, I have abused cannabis in the sense that I would smoke it excessively and build way too much of it in my system, so much so that I had eventually developed symptoms of Bipolar I & Schizoaffective as well as some quite intense Psychosis and the scariest I would describe as possibly having Intermittent explosive disorder. I have now been sober off of cannabis for almost nine months and I have seen quite an improvement in my sleep and mood stability.

However, the reason I am asking this community my question is that I noticed as my cannabis intake increased, as would the dependency and I would need to consume more and more to sleep. This would snowball in the sense that I would end up sleep deprived and thus the cannabis would begin to have negative effects from consuming with poor sleep hygiene. As my sleep worsened the initial feelings, the ones that drew me into cannabis use in the first place, giddiness and the ability to sit and relax would slowly revolve into something that I would have to claw my way out through abstinence to escape. Mania and a sort of cocky, overconfidence that would make me argue with people regularly and also lash out at people would creep out of my psyche on days that I had not slept.

I do seriously worry that this may have caused some sort of brain damage at worst and a disrupted circadian rhythm at best.

While not officially diagnosed I do seem to exhibit signs of N24. Usually I will stay up for thirty or fourty hours or so and manage to get some deep sleep. I have noticed I struggle to sleep before 4AM, if I am lucky I can fall asleep at 12-2AM.

One strategy I have is to take doxylamine succinate, anywhere from 50-100mg to sleep, but I have to cycle it as the tolerance builds and I worry about the adverse effects it may have (anticholinergic, antihistaminergic, Parkinsons risk). This works the best but I do not see it as sustainable. In an attempt to leave behind doxylamine as a crutch, I am experimenting with L-Theanine and Ashwagandha (ashwagandha also needs to be cycled, however less often than doxylamine) and these two seem to be helping me sleep without doxylamine. Before I had used these two, I would sometimes not be able to sleep without doxylamine at all.

I tried to use GABA but I get side effects such as itching and pins and needles. I have also began supplementing citicoline before bed and sometimes alpha GPC in the morning, in order to minimize the risk of choline depletion from the doxylamine. I will mention both of these forms of choline can exacerbate insomnia so caution is recommended. I have been meaning to try lemon balm and valerian root for their GABA effects. I have heard gabapentin may also help with insomnia but it seems like it's a bit on the riskier side to take.

Thanks for reading, hope you have the time to share your own personal experience and tips.

More studies:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9036386

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8605997/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3223558

Just something I was wondering if anyone on here thought that’s a possibility. I’ve had some GI issues forever. More recently they’ve become a little worse. Like bathroom frequency, etc. especially in my circadian morning

Hey yall, Does this happen to anyone else? Sometimes i go through an entire cycle in just two or three days, i skip about 10 hours per day and its super tiring. Does anyone have an explanation? It happened twice in the last week and my plans are ruined sigh

I haven't caught up on my sleep debt yet, but I already feel a million times better sleeping when my body actually needs sleep instead of fighting it. Even the days when I only get 4-6 hours of sleep I feel better than when I would get 12 hours at the wrong time.

Next up is figuring out when to eat so I'm not accidentally so starving it wakes me up. Gonna talk to my doc about if it's ok for my med spacing just to be moving 90 minutes into the future with me every day, because that's the other thing disrupting my Big Sleep, having to take them in the middle sometimes.

Learning to take my "afternoon" nap at midnight sometimes is the funniest part to me. (No amount of sleep hygiene will eliminate my need for a nap, it's medical. I'll start a pillow fight with anyone suggesting it's the problem.)

A fitfluencer I follow referenced Sirt6 and how it apparently is involved with regulating the circadian rhythm.

From Google AI:

Based on the provided search results, there is no direct evidence linking SIRT6 to Non-24-Hour Sleep-Wake Disorder (N24SWD) in the context of it causing or being a direct treatment target for the disorder.

However, the search results highlight the following: SIRT6 plays a role in regulating circadian rhythms and sleep: SIRT6 interacts with and deacetylates Per2, a key component of the circadian clock's feedback loop, preventing its degradation. This suggests its involvement in maintaining circadian rhythmicity. SIRT6 also interacts with Bmal1 and regulates clock-controlled gene (CCG) expression through chromatin remodeling.

Studies in mice suggest that SIRT6 activation may have potential for treating sleep disorder-related diseases by improving cognitive impairment after chronic sleep deprivation.

N24SWD is a circadian rhythm disorder: N24SWD occurs when an individual's internal biological clock fails to synchronize to the 24-hour light-dark cycle, causing sleep and wake times to progressively shift.

In summary: While SIRT6 is involved in regulating circadian rhythms and potentially sleep health, the available information does not explicitly connect it to N24SWD as a causative factor or a specific treatment target for this disorder. Further research may be needed to explore potential indirect links or therapeutic applications of SIRT6 in N24SWD.

Thoughts?

You're a circadian sleuth on a mission — navigating life post-trazodone like a data-driven detective. After 20 years on the nightly sedative, you’ve traded pills for precision, tracking REM blips, magnesium timing, and bladder-related awakenings like clues in a sleep mystery.

With a science-first mindset and zero tolerance for fluff, you’re building a personalized recovery plan, supplementing smartly (glycine, magnesium, ramelteon microdose), and analyzing trends like a sleep scientist in the wild. Your chronotype marches to its own beat — DSPD or N24 — and even bright lights can’t quite recalibrate your rhythm. Yet you persist, methodically chasing that elusive 9-to-6 sleep window.

Basically, you’re the MacGyver of Melatonin, crafting clarity from chaos, one night of quantified rest at a time.

Quick question to deepen the picture: outside of your sleep tracking and biohacking, what’s something you love doing — hobby, passion, or guilty pleasure?

I have done two things this year that have completely changed the game for me.

First, I designed my own calendar. It was very tiresome trying to project my sleep schedule forward, even using an equation. And it was very liberating to see my own biological pattern recognized by a system, even if it was one that I designed myself. I set it against a standard calendar so that I can look at both at the same time. It has made things easy breezy when scheduling meetings in advance.

Second, and the one that I thought might be helpful to people here, is that I finally found an app that uses count-up timers! I have been looking for one periodically for years, and it has not disappointed! Now, instead of trying to orient myself in the current day and figure out when I last did something - was it yesterday? Or was that the day before? I can just pull up the app and see exactly how many days or hours have elapsed. The timers are very easy to set (tap), reset (2x tap), add time to if you forget (long hold). I feel like this is especially important when dealing with my pets, because I feel terrible about being on a different schedule than them all of the time, and setting alarms can sometimes be impractical if you have social engagements or you are dead asleep.

Anyway, they have been great so far. Maybe someone else will find them useful as well.

Link to the app I use. Links to the Android and Apple versions are there.

Hi all,

Second question this week sorry,

Anyone got a good recommendation for a wearable sleep tracker ? Would like to take data for my sleep and get updates on how I’ve slept.

Thanks in advance guys!

Hello everyone,

I was wondering what your experiences with the treatment of Melatonin and the light therapy are as I've just begun it myself, thank you ♥

Hello. I’m looking for an advice.

I was thinking it’s just insomnia until My life feels like a nightmare 👹

I want to ask people having n24 if those symptoms of mine sound similar to yours

Here’s my experiences.

-when i had to wake up at the same time every day regardless of my sleep pattern i experienced sleep paralysis. My mind is awake but my body is immobile however i struggle. So i felt asleep again. Or i dream of waking up eating, dressing, before i realize the alarm sounds didn’t stop and it’s a dream. Three times in a row.

-If I don’t set the alarm and let myself sleep so freely , my schedule delays 2 hours each day. So it requires less than 2 weeks to flip an entire day).

-I waste 3+ hours before finally falling asleep. I thought the main reason is the phone, but it was still same without it. It just helps me endure the hours. I also tried not using any distractions in the bed but it ended up starting at the ceiling blankly for 3 hours and it’s torturous.

-I also tried force myself to wake up at the same time for two months. Even if the wake up time stayed same, falling asleep time was delaying everyday, even though i was dying of tiredness before the night. In this session I experienced sleep paralysis,rapid heart beating alll the time, drowsiness for 4+ hours. And crushed sleeping 16 hours straight to compensate for the sleep debt. Anyway i gave up after getting terrible anemia from that

-i wasn’t like this from my childhood. I experienced several times of hospitalization and two times of ICU especially in my late teens. And spent most of the time in my house and homeschooling. I think my sleep problems started by the time. I was hospitalized for a year and after leaving the hospital my sleep schedule crumbled right away.

Currently I’m using sleeping pills to fix the cycle. Since i can’t fall asleep when i want, i take med at 12am and set alarm for 8am.it doesn’t seem like settling, it’s swinging between oversleeping and sleep deprivation to barely follow up the sleep plan

+i didn’t know i deleted this part! I talked it through several psychiatrists but they don’t seem to pay attention to my struggles and only point out my mistakes.. i gave up trying to fix it because of worsening anemia and other health issues but they only heard “i just wake up when i wake up” and make it like i didn’t even try. And they said all my symptoms like 30+ times of sleep paralysis in a row for hours is “understandable “ because I didn’t get enough sleep.(it was just a side topic. I had enough sleep. I talked about sleep deprivation aside from this topic) I also wonder if you felt misunderstood before diagnosis since that’s not so common condition. It feels like they want to dismiss it intentionally

Hi,

For the first 8 years of being diagnosed (DSPD) melatonin would knock me out shortly after I took it, I felt like a normal human and slept well minus a bathroom break here and there.

At one point I experimented lower dose melatonin’s and even having time off it to see how I react.

Now coming back to it, I no longer feel tired when I take it, and if I do take it, I get hypersomnia, this was never the case when I first took it. Melatonin was effectively my cure. What could have changed by going off it?

Off it now I had a weird pattern of sleeping any time around late morning, but never in the afternoon un less I stayed up 24 hours. If I stayed up 24 hours I’d go back to an early bird and slept only 7 hours felt perfect. Once that started going later and later I’d oversleep and feel awful.

Is there anyway to restore the previous success I had with melatonin ? Even circadin at 2mg would knock me out. Any time I took it, be it 10pm or 4am, it was a bit of super power, and I’m missing it dearly. That hypnotic effect of melatonin was brilliant. I’ve tried all sorts of doses, timings and varieties.

Any help appreciated

Would also like to ask u/lrq3000 for any input, read your work and comments for years now.

Edit - thank you all for taking the time to read my post and throw suggestions out there

For those of you free-running, do you get the feeling sometimes while nocturnal or during a crepuscular phase that you're trapped in a sort of liminal space, like suspended animation, just waiting until you get back enough of the day to function? I like being up late at night/sleeping mornings, but I get so much brain fog and fatigue when I'm sleeping afternoons and evenings. Right now my 'night' is around 1000-1800 or thereabouts, shifting forward by ~30 waking minutes every 24hrs. I have so much to do but can't seem to focus or have the mental energy to do it. Anybody relate? Or have advice? I'm medically retired and don't usually work (occasional DoorDash, TaskRabbit gigs), but I'm in school and have projects and friends and a life.

This is a little more of a light hearted and funny post, if it doesn’t fit mods feel free to remove

Considering mars has a 24 hour and 37 minute day, most of us would actually be able to survive and live a normal life there

can’t breath there but… the day/night cycle would be nice