How ChatGPT Helped Fix My Insomnia (Yes, Really)

Last spring, I started having insomnia.

Not the “can’t fall asleep” kind. The “I fall asleep fine and then my brain pops up at 1:00 AM like a toaster” kind.

I’d wake up wide awake—like BING! IS IT MORNING? Time to start the day?? (It was not morning. My body was exhausted. My brain, however, had joined a CrossFit gym.)

And more often than not, that wakefulness arrived with… heat.

On a good night, I was just uncomfortably warm.

On a bad night, I was soaking wet—like I had run a marathon in my bed.

There I was: wide awake, sweating like a racehorse, throwing the covers off… only to cool down so much that I’d start shivering and need three blankets to warm back up.

Sometime around 3:00 AM, I’d drift into a fitful sleep, only to get up a few hours later for work.

This went on for months, and I gotta be honest here, I was incredibly depressed. I would literally cry at night in desperation, because lying awake for hours—night after night—is torture.

I started dreading bedtime. I’d put off going to bed because I didn't want to deal with the whole cycle: fall asleep → wake up at 1:00 → stare into the void → crawl through the next day.

And the wild thing? Staying asleep had never been an issue for me. I used to be able to get up for my middle-of-the-night pee, roll back over, and fall back asleep like nothing happened.

Now, all of a sudden, those wake-ups became a problem.

HORMONES?! (You’re right.)

To any middle-aged (or older) woman reading this—especially the part about the night sweats—you might be thinking:

HORMONES.

And you would be correct.

You see, my gynecologist had put me on birth control pills about six months before my sleep issues started.

I’m 45, and my husband had a vasectomy before we got married, so I didn’t need them for contraceptive purposes. (Oh, the IRONY).

But I have endometriosis. In a nutshell, it’s a painful condition where tissue grows in or around the pelvic region where it’s not supposed to, and it can cause unbelievable (sometimes debilitating) pain—especially around your period.

My doctor had me taking the pill continuously to prevent ovulation and stop the pain.

I was reluctant to take the pill because I knew from past experience it could make me depressed. Because of that, he put me on a very low-dose pill—one with a very low amount of estrogen.

I took it for about six months before the sleep issues started. And even then… I didn’t connect the dots right away. It actually took seven months of suffering before I even considered that my “helpful” medication might be part of the problem.

ENTER: THE ROBOT: The Moment I Asked ChatGPT

One day, in the middle of yet another sleep-deprived haze, I sat down and asked ChatGPT: Can birth control cause sleep issues?

And that started a whole conversation.

It said that yes—hormonal contraception can affect sleep in some people. Then it asked smart follow-up questions: what pill was I on, how long had I been taking it, what exactly were my symptoms, did I have night sweats, what times was I waking up, etc.

So I gave it all of my specifics.

Based on what I told it, it suggested that a very low-estrogen pill could be contributing to both my middle-of-the-night awakenings and my issues with thermoregulation (a fancy way to say: soaking the sheets like I was training for the Olympics in my sleep).

It also suggested a few alternative pills to ask my doctor about—options with a different estrogen dose and different progestins than the ones I’d struggled with in the past.

Important note: ChatGPT didn’t “prescribe” anything. It basically helped me do what I couldn’t do in my exhausted state: generate hypotheses and questions that I could take to actual medical professionals.

Photo by Emilipothèse on Unsplash

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

I took the list to my pharmacist and asked which ones were readily available for them to order.

Once she confirmed, I went to my doctor and asked if I could try a different pill.

I’ve been on the new one for two months now, and my sleep issues are gone. Completely gone.

If anything, I’m sleeping too much. (A GREAT problem to have after seven months of feeling like a haunted Victorian child every night at 1:00 AM.)

No more night sweats. No more waking up boiling or drenched. No more shivering under three blankets like I’m camping in February.

There were also other issues caused by the low-estrogen pill that I won’t get into here, but those resolved too.

It feels pretty great to be starting to feel normal again.

And yes — I’m grateful. Because ChatGPT helped me connect the dots.

THE PART THAT MATTERS: Doctors Aren’t Omniscient

I did tell my doctor about my sleep issues, obviously. But he didn’t make the connection between the low-estrogen pill and my sleep / sweat situation.

That’s not a dig at him. Doctors are human. They’re busy. They have a lot of patients. And side effects can be weirdly non-obvious—especially when they show up months after you start something.

But this is exactly why we have to stay curious and advocate for ourselves.

A WORD OF CAUTION (And a Useful Way to Use ChatGPT)

ChatGPT can absolutely be wrong. It can hallucinate. It can sound confident while being incorrect. So none of the information it gives should be taken at face value.

But if it provides a plausible, science-based explanation—something you can then take to a pharmacist, your doctor, a reputable source—then it can be unbelievably useful.

In my case, I genuinely felt like I was in a dark place from sleep deprivation and depression. I wasn’t living, I was existing: get up, do the bare minimum, dread bedtime, repeat.

So no, I’m not saying “ChatGPT cured insomnia.”

I’m saying it helped me ask the right questions—and that helped me get my life back.

LESSONS LEARNED

1 — MEDICATIONS HAVE SIDE EFFECTS

I heard a great quote recently from author Johann Hari: There are two kinds of medications—those that don’t work, and those that have side effects.

In my experience… yes.

Always be aware of potential side effects of anything you’re taking—literally anything. Even supplements can have side effects. (“Natural” doesn’t mean “neutral.”)

2 — YOU HAVE TO BE YOUR OWN HEALTH ADVOCATE

Doctors are busy and they can’t know all the things all the time.

You have to do your own digging. You have to understand what you’re taking and what could be going on in your body.

That long list of side effects none of us read because it’s a thousand words and starts with “may include mild nausea”…?

Yeah. You have to read it. You have to know—so if something changes in your body, you have a place to start looking.

CONCLUSION

So yes, I’m really grateful I talked to a robot about my problems.

But the real win wasn’t “ChatGPT cured my insomnia.” The win was that it helped me connect dots I was too exhausted to see, so I could walk into doctor’s office with better questions.

If something in your body feels suddenly “off,” don’t gaslight yourself into thinking it’s just aging or stress or your personality now.

Get curious. Read the boring pamphlet. Ask about side effects.

And if you need a starting point for questions, fine—consult the robot. Just make sure the final decisions happen with actual professionals, not the glowing rectangle.

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

You might be asking yourself "How does this topic relate to recovery from binge-eating?" What I found is that - for me - finding new ways of thinking about life and its challenges helped me to stop stress-eating, and has been a very big part of my ability to stop binge-eating.

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