My natural sleep cycle seems to default to a 28 hour day (eg I go to bed slightly later every evening then morning) which makes interfacing with reality pretty difficult. This seems to be something shared with a number of geeks I know.
I'm pretty sure 28 hours isn't quite what my body naturally wants, but it's a lot closer than 24. After a week trying to stick to a 24h cycle I'm basically a walking zombie.
They tried to put me on melatonin when I was a kid. First dose sent me to hospital with an allergic reaction. After that we were pretty hesitant to try other remedies. My life was miserable until I went onto the 28h cycle and I realised it was possible to NOT be tired all the time.
Don't listen to all the "oh, you just aren't doing X right" people. Find a solution that works for your body and your life.
I'll share the anonymized results in a week or so. My motivation is more social than scientific.
I will inform the couple of awful sleepers I know at my hackspace so they can respond too.
I take 1 mg in slow-release form, 2-3 hours before desired bed time. My bed time is still pretty variable, shifting 2-3 hours back and forth but at least it's not hopelessly drifting forward every day.
I do sleep a lot, 9-10 hours (no alarm clock), which could be because of melatonin (1 mg is a rather large dose). See here for a lot of details about melatonin dosage and timing: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-th...
Relevant quote for non-24-hour sleep–wake disorder:
And what about non-24-hour sleep disorders? I think the goal in treatment here is to advance your phase each day by taking melatonin at the same time, so that your sleep schedule is more dependent on your own supplemental melatonin than your (screwed up) natural melatonin. I see conflicting advice about how to do this, with some people saying to use melatonin as a hypnotic (ie just before you go to bed) and others saying to use it on a typical phase advance schedule (ie nine hours after waking and seven before sleeping, plausibly about 5 PM)