Sleeplees memes keeping company to night owls who are past their bedtime

Giuliana Tiscioni • Writer

Sep 1, 2026 7:45 AM EDT

What's your trick for those nights when you can't sleep?

There are tons of tricks to help us go to sleep faster. Warm milk, counting sheep, focusing on your breathing, and so on. Has any of those ever worked on anybody? Because so far, we're still here, falling asleep at 4am and going to work with dark circles under our eyes.

The only thing worse than having insomnia at night is having insomnia and then being completely unable to wake up in the morning. Our sleeping schedule is turned upside down. We are sleepy during the day and afternoon, yawning and wishing to rest our heads on our pillows. But then, once we get home and we can finally have the chance to rest and have some sleep, our bodies refuse to cooperate. We're just lying there in our beds, with the lights out, staring at the ceiling, with our eyes as open and round as a dinner plate. It's awful, but we're kind of used to it by now. Our phones are off, so is the TV, and we keep wondering why our brains won't shut down even though there is no bright light to disturb them! As if that wasn't enough, it has the brilliant idea of reminding us of every stupid mistake and every cringe-worthy moment of our lives. Yeah, our brain is against us sometimes.

We were told that reading before bed helps. but not on our Kindle, an actual book, with paper pages and all that. Well, make sure you choose a very boring book, because otherwise, it'll keep you more awake than drinking a whole can of RedBull at 11pm. We can't stop reading until we get to the end; we deserve answers, and we're getting them now.

Yes, we've all heard our doctor telling us that we need a minimum of 8 hours of sleep, and we promise, we're trying our best. We just need to find a way to get relaxed and sleepy at the right time, not at 3 in the afternoon, when we're still working. Still, we know that most likely, that won't happen today or tomorrow, even. So, here we leave you a list of sleepless memes to browse while you keep trying to shut down your head.