Possibly helpful: half-fill a )I use an empty soda) bottle with water and freeze it, then when you go to bed, put it next to your bed with your pills. Then, it will be cool water when you need it, and in reach with minimum effort. (If room temperature water will do, or is prefered, don't freeze the bottle.
And for keeping track of wake/dream, try keeping a notebook next to your bed, and if you think you are awake, write down the time. That should give you a rough idea.
I know that you can't always be awake enough to do this, but it would be a start.
And remember, extra hydration can usually help almost anything.
I'm not sure the notebook idea would work. Given appropriate stimulus, I have been known to perform a non-trivial but routine task, and respond to questions, and go back to sleep, without being at any time aware of being awake -- actually, I didn't have any memory of the event in the morning. On some other occasion, I have written in a notebook (I kept a dream journal at the time) but instead what I had thought I was writing, it turned out to be a piece of dada. And then there's what d'Glenn is mentioning; the dream paralysis that partially carries over to the awake state. So, one might be mentally awake and have the complete sensorium available for conscious examination, yet be unable to harness the motor functions to do the scribbling.
I liked doing the dream journal. Perhaps I should start doing that again.
I recall hearing on the radio several years ago that there's something like a fifteen-minute threshold for staying asleep or retroactively having woken up ... that if the Q&A or routine task lasts less than that, there's a very good chance that you won't remember it and in any sense that counts you will have done the entire thing in your sleep, but if it lasts longer than that, it'll be as if you'd been awake from the start of it.
I'm not sure whether this is related to the ability to drive up to twenty minutes while asleep (aparently the transitions from wake to sleep and from sleep to wake while driving are considerably more dangerous than the twenty-minute driving-while-asleep span -- I'm not sure what happens after twenty minutes)
Human sleep is a very odd phenomenon. Or set of phenomena.
(Hmm. Thinking about the driving-while-asleep thing, I recall in my younger and less-willing-to-pull-over-for-a -nap days, I found it disconcerting to wake up on a different highway than the last one I remembered driving on. Apparently I managed to negotiate a familiar exit ramp in my sleep. A couple of those experiences, and I got scared enough to put a blanket in the car and start trying to figure out when I needed to stop and rest.)
Sometimes I worry that forcing myself that little bit more awake so I can write down the time will make it harder to get back to sleep, so I just try to memorize the time. This usually works (I do keep a sleep log, in addition to tracking when I take what drugs), but when things get really wonky I can no longer reliably keep track.
(no subject)
And for keeping track of wake/dream, try keeping a notebook next to your bed, and if you think you are awake, write down the time. That should give you a rough idea.
I know that you can't always be awake enough to do this, but it would be a start.
And remember, extra hydration can usually help almost anything.
(no subject)
I liked doing the dream journal. Perhaps I should start doing that again.
(no subject)
I'm not sure whether this is related to the ability to drive up to twenty minutes while asleep (aparently the transitions from wake to sleep and from sleep to wake while driving are considerably more dangerous than the twenty-minute driving-while-asleep span -- I'm not sure what happens after twenty minutes)
Human sleep is a very odd phenomenon. Or set of phenomena.
(Hmm. Thinking about the driving-while-asleep thing, I recall in my younger and less-willing-to-pull-over-for-a -nap days, I found it disconcerting to wake up on a different highway than the last one I remembered driving on. Apparently I managed to negotiate a familiar exit ramp in my sleep. A couple of those experiences, and I got scared enough to put a blanket in the car and start trying to figure out when I needed to stop and rest.)
(no subject)