If it's any comfort.... you're not the only one!!

I'm a nightowl myself lately. There's one thing I learned a lonnnnnnnng time ago. When your body needs sleep, you'll sleep.

When your mind starts racing like that, I know from experience how it'll just wake you up! Think about boring things. Does a cup of tea relax you? Warm milk? Cold milk? A drink?

Generally when I can't sleep and need to, I'll get up and do something rather boring and try to concentrate on it. At least I'm doing something productive and sometimes that good feeling will relax you. Wash some dishes, clean a toilet, sort mail or put in a load of laundry. Whatever you have. Or put on some soft, relaxing music. Or watch a boring infomercial! There's been certain movies that just put me to sleep at times so I might pop in a movie and see what happens.

Another thing that can help is breathing exercises. Concentrate on deep breathing. Inhale through your nose to a count of ten, hold it for 5-10 seconds and exhale slowly through your mouth. Gets some extra oxygen in the body and really does help relax you. I use that often when I'm stressed.

Otherwise, play a game, call another nightowl, catch up on email, update your antivirus, Windows Updates and malware definitions. Go take a walk or a drive. Sometimes just being in a "rut" causes it for no good reason.

Sleep well! :)

Just letting you know your not alone, I am almost always up late, seems to have become my normal routine lately.
Hope you can get to sleep soon, I am going to go watch some TV !

Reading sometimes helps for me. After a few pages I get drowsy, shut of the lights and am off to sleep. However, there are some nights when I'm just wide awake. As you said, just like caffeine overdose when you know you haven't had any. Generally it happens when I have to be up early the next day. Never seems to happen when I can sleep in.

When I can't sleep, I put on TV. Even if I stay awake all night, I find I sleep really well the following night.

Like some of the others above, I am wired but I can't understand why. Lately, it is the heat that makes falling asleep difficult. I tune the TV to an all music channel, turned low, and lay there just trying to listen to the lyrics. I'm going to remember Cynics breathing exercises and try that next time. Or, I do the alphabet thing. Pick a subject, mens names, womens name, flowers food, cities or what ever and try to mentally list them in alphabetical order. Usually, I don't get through the whole alphabet.
I hope you can find a solution that works for you, Teresava.