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

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.

On chapter 7. Still no plan

I am currently on Chapter 7 and we still don't have the plan. There has been an incredible amount of wasted time to explain; 1. Drugs don't work 2. The author did really good in his career, so far. Monks can control their body temperature. Not bad information to hear once but I cant get past it to find out the steps to say good night to insomnia. I will update this when I finish but please don't drive while listening to the first part.

Donald Trump of Sleep Science

As far as shameless self promotion, wrong information and nonsensical blabbering, this author (if he is a sleep specialist as he claims), is the Donald Trump of Harvard Medical School.

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.

Good Info, but not written for impatient listeners

TL;DR - be patient with the way the material is presented. Look past the fluff and filler and you will find useful information to improve your relationship to sleep and start getting better sleep.

Thank you to the author for their contribution to the body of scientific knowledge related to sleep. It has definitely helped me sleep better. For someone suffering from poor sleep and just wanting a set of steps to implement to correct bad habits and patterns, this audiobook is not the proper format. Perhaps the physical book is, but the audiobook format needs some serious navigation friction attention.

There's a healthy dose of academic wanking done by the author which on a small level adds to credibility, but on a bigger one is just annoying and comes across as egotistical. It is unnecessary filler. If all the "I"s in this text were stacked end on end, bet we'd have a cheap ladder to climb to the moon. Highly doubtful the author performed all the cited research in a vacuum without the help of several teams of researchers and collaborators but there's no "we" mentioned. There are better choices to present material such as this to people experiencing several of the symptoms described in the book. If there's a revision, new editor please take that into account for future readers.

Also, audiobook experience on Audible fails to meet expectations. In 2022, any kind of checklist or worksheet available in the text should be downloadable and accessible to the listener. Additionally "chapter 1" in the outline is not at all useful for navigating the material, the expectation is that there is actual chapter titles that provide context to the content contained within. Audible would put its Users First by evolving what audobook standards are for user experience and back-porting that standard to all existing titles. Honestly, the membership price isn't worth the quality of product. The world expects more from tech companies, especially one attached to Amazon. Please use the service and experience it as your customers do.

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.

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!!!

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.

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.

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