This is all about home sleep. I’m ignoring downroute sleep because that’s just a mess at the best of times.
I’ve been flying long haul for just about 4 years now. The biggest difficulty I’ve found is managing sleep when I get back home. Landing day I go straight to bed (luckily for me I have a fairly short commute). I sleep for about 2-3 hours and then in the evening I tend to go to bed around about 9-9:30. That night I tend to get fairly good sleep.
However the the next few nights no matter what I do I will always wake up at 2-3 am and struggle to get back to sleep properly (or at least well) and the next morning I tend to feel crap. Then it’s back to work. I’ve got a Fitbit and ive noticed the days I feel less rubbish are the days I have more deep sleep (more than an hour).
Ive gone through all the usual stuff. No screen time in the hour before bed, just read a book. No caffeine after lunch. I’m pretty sure I don’t suffer from depression. I’m at a bit of a loss really. At the start of my long haul career I really wasn’t coping with sleep and ended up taking sleep aids (good ole CVS) but I’ve completely abandoned them and I am loathe to explore any other pharmaceutical remedies (not withstanding most of them negating the privileges of my class 1 medical).
So im going to start off by looking at the collective wisdom here. Oh and now she’s not staring over my shoulder her indoors snores so I often decamp to the spare room.