"I've tried melatonin and it doesn't work anymore" is one of the most common things tired people say. Usually the problem is not the melatonin. It is that melatonin is being asked to do a job it was never built for.
Melatonin does not knock you out. Your body releases it in the evening as darkness falls, and its role is to tell your system what time it is. It is a timing signal — closer to a time-zone announcement than a tranquilizer. That single distinction predicts almost everything about when supplementing works and when it doesn't.
It tends to help when the problem is genuinely one of timing: jet lag, shift rotations, or a body clock that has drifted so late that midnight does not feel remotely like bedtime. In those cases you are using it as intended, to move a clock. It tends to do very little when the problem is that your mind will not stop running, or that you wake at 3am and cannot get back down. No amount of clock signal fixes an arousal problem. If you fall asleep fine and the night falls apart later, melatonin was never the right tool.
More is also not better. The doses on most shelves are far larger than anything the body produces on its own, and for timing purposes the research has generally not found bigger doses to work better. Very large doses are mostly just more likely to leave you groggy the next morning — the "melatonin hangover" that leads people to conclude it stopped working. There is a second wrinkle worth knowing: in the United States melatonin is sold as a supplement rather than regulated as a drug, and testing has repeatedly found that what is in the bottle can differ from what is on the label. If you use it, a brand that does third-party testing is a reasonable precaution.
Timing is the part people get wrong most often. Taken at the moment you switch the light off, melatonin is being used as a sedative, and it will mostly disappoint. Used as a clock-shifter, timing is the whole game, and the right timing depends on which direction you are trying to move your sleep — genuinely worth asking a pharmacist or doctor about rather than guessing, particularly alongside other medication. Worth saying plainly too: it should not be a default for children, in pregnancy, or with other medications without a professional weighing in.
For most people whose sleep is simply bad rather than mistimed, the unglamorous things outperform any supplement. A wake time that does not move, including weekends. Bright light early and dim light late, because your clock reads light far more than it reads intention. Getting out of bed when you have been lying there awake and frustrated, instead of continuing to teach your brain that bed means struggle. And caffeine earlier than feels necessary, because it lingers far longer than most people assume.
Chronic trouble sleeping is worth a doctor's time, particularly alongside snoring, gasping, morning headaches, or legs that crawl at night. This is education, not medical advice, and some sleep problems are medical.
If your nights are more of a pattern than a timing glitch, the 30-Day Sleep Reset works that angle instead: a personal sleep window computed from your own answers, one action a night, adjusted weekly by how you actually slept. No pills involved, one payment, and it ends after thirty days.