Question: It just became crystal clear I have DSPS and have since I was a child. I managed years on normal sleep schedules but only with brutally fastidious habits. As a kid, I already had numerous tricks for forcing sleep. My favorite was to sing “The Ants Go Marching” over and over until I slept. It rarely worked though, and I usually had to sleep in until noon on weekends to make up for my sleep debt.
As I entered college (at Stanford where I was very aware of Dr. Dement) or later when work took me across time zones, my life started to fall apart. I started the vicious cycle of not waking when socially acceptable or of accruing massive sleep debt. I suffer from depression and something like ADD. I always thought those were the cause of my struggle to sleep but I now think causation runs the other way. I think instead of fighting my DSPS, I may try to work with it.