Say Good Night to Insomnia

The Six-Week, Drug-Free Program Developed at Harvard Medical School

By: Gregg D. Jacobs PhD, Herbert Benson

Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon

Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

For nearly 20 years, sleep-deprived Americans have found natural, drug-free relief from insomnia with the help of Dr. Gregg D. Jacobs' Say Good Night to Insomnia. Jacobs' program, developed and tested at Harvard Medical School and based on cognitive behavioral therapy, has been shown to improve sleep long-term in 80 percent of patients, making it the gold standard for treatment. He provides techniques for eliminating sleeping pills; establishing sleep-promoting behaviors and lifestyle practices; and improving relaxation, reducing stress, and changing negative thoughts about sleep.

In this updated edition, Jacobs surveys the limitations and dangers of the new generation of sleeping pills, dispels misleading and confusing claims about sleep and health, and shares cutting-edge research on insomnia that proves his approach is more effective than sleeping pills.

Say Good Night to Insomnia is the definitive guide to overcoming insomnia without drugs for the thousands of Americans who are looking for a healthy night's rest.

©1998 Gregg D. Jacobs (P)2018 Tantor

Life changing!

Life-changing information for everyone but especially insomniacs. I encourage you to research beyond this book about progressive relaxation techniques because they kind of glossed over it and there is better advice out there

My experience, and how it transformed my life.

I suffered from severe insomnia, for years, I think the fact that I wasn’t sleeping, well, made my insomnia. Worse, my belief was that if you didn’t get eight hours of sleep, I could probably die. After reading this book and participating in the exercises requested, my sleep did in fact, get better, I worry less about how many hours I was getting more so how I was feeling during the day, I still suffer from insomnia, but not every night. I don’t get anxious when I can’t sleep because I know it won’t kill me and I actually function pretty well during the day for the most part. Broken sleep makes me feel better during the day, mood wise. Honestly, the book did help me tremendously, it is my go to when nights are rough.

A Great Help

I've learned quite a bit from the book and it has helped my sleep.

Don't be afraid to skip around in this book, the author likes to talk a lot around his tips for getting good sleep and tends to write just to write. He'll do everything but tell you what to do at points so bookmark frequently because a lot of this information is interesting but worthless.

Excessively thorough - but if that’s your thing, this is for you.

I think the most valuable part of this book is its chapters debunking the amount of sleep we believe we need, but I suppose everyone will take something different away from it. This book is excessively descriptive and could be one third of its current length. For many who have insomnia and already understand the usual behaviors that attribute to a poor nights sleep you’ll find the overly descriptive rehashing of these things, specifically the moments when the author describes how alcohol negatively affects sleep quality and proceeds to offer a short questionnaire to determine if you’re an alcoholic, or the nearly two hour lecture about the ineffectiveness and dangers of sleep pills to be more than a bit nauseating. Although, I must say there was some great information about the biases and very questionable ethics of the pharmaceutical industry that is worth a listen. But ultimately, I feel that the over the top thoroughness of the book takes away from the few new perspectives it shares and the seemingly effective sleep enhancing system it offers and worse yet probably induces anxiety amongst the insomnia-ridden individuals that would read it. Also, due to the detailed manual sleep tracking component of the book, it may be best to go with the physical copy rather than listening to the narrator read for four minutes the 10-15 prompts for sleep tracking at the end of most chapters.

I'm sleeping better!

This is my 3rd day listening to it and I see improvementI stopped the Benadryl on day 1 and I have not felt the need of taking another pill. I'm changing the way I think about sleep and it is really helping me. I copied the questions for the diary and printed the pages out. I searched online and there's a template with the same questions (search for sleep diary template and you'll have it) but I like mine.

With my problem, I thought that nothing was going to help (I have a non stopping mind!) I was taking up to 4 Benadryl per night and sometimes, they didn't eve work as I expected, I would lay on the bed felling very sleepy but couldn't get to fall asleep because I wouldn't stop thinking. I'm now practicing going to bed when I'm drowsy and saying in my mind that I'll fall asleep and that I don't have to sleep all night in order to rest. Well, ironically, after thinking like that I do sleep more.

Don't run, the program explains how it works from the beginning and you can start sleeping better from day 1!!!

Much deeper than the title implies.

Having been in CBT for years, the previous negative reviews are like calling the Bible simplistic platitudes. This is a complication of many deep psychological approaches to life requiring deep reflections. This is not a flippant approach to sleep but a deep approach to life.

Difficult to get through

I'm on chapter 6 and still only promises and no solution or real help. Feels like an incredibly long infomercial.

Author loves himself

Really...I’m more than half through this dribble and still no plan, no actionable steps, just never ending stories of his patients, and scientific data to justify why sleeping pills are bad, and hey now we are on to the placebo effect. Forget it.

One good thing...his reading made me drowsy.

Waste of time

This book is a waste of time. I’m 4 chapters in and all the book does is say over and over how great the program is without ever getting around to the technique. Like a very bad infomercial. Skip to chapter 5 and listen as you try to fall asleep. The book itself will put you to sleep. Good voice over however.

Why no template sleep diaries?

The weekly sleep diaries seem to be a key part of the program. But the audio book doesn't provide any template sleep diaries that I can print out and use. I think this is not fair for people like me who paid for the audible book.