I have tinnitus, so absolute silence is never enjoyable for me. Music works extremely well; I fall asleep with the tv on.

I have tinnitus. Had it my whole life. I live with a fan running in every room except the kitchen and bathroom. They are on 24/7 365. The silence literally makes my head feel like it's about to pop

Tinnitus fucking sucks. I hate silence

A plus one for the white noise machine. Game changer.

I fixed that problem...I never hear silence!

All I hear is eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.......

More the opposite. I can't stand all the noise. Especially during spring & summer when you have to open your window during the night.

Yes, I can't sleep without white noise

As a teen, I needed complete silence/darkness to sleep well. Then I met my now-wife, who needed a TV on to sleep well.
It took a while, but we eventually compromised on a fan for background noise.

I need constant noise from something like a fan to sleep.

I must have earplugs and an eyemask to sleep. Always wanted pitch black and complete silence since I was a child.

I sleep with a fan. Luckily hotel A/C's have a constant fan function.

I usually fall asleep to a podcast. One that is interesting, but not so interesting that it'll keep me up. A history podcast or something like that.

If I'm not asleep by a certain time of night, "hour of the wolf", then I find it very hard to sleep without something in the background. Usually I use the sound of a babbling brook that I recorded while in Iceland.

The noise in my head is plenty loud already.

If silence is the real culprit you should try out a white noise generator, generally speaking it should overload/excite you less then music or human voices and could help you sleep faster.

Where I live silence during the night is not really an option, and I had had problems only when on vacation "away from civilization", but small stuff like white noise, a fan or similar low but continuos sounds helped me out without asking for my attention (which happens with movies, music or similar).

There are even apps that simulate different kind of sound and let you mix them (like rain, birds, wind) but I didn't have enough patience to really dig on this solution.

blameitonjorge, nexpo, night mind I've found work great as they talk in a very mellow manner. As long as you're ok falling asleep to the type of stuff they talk about lol

Most people I know sleep with a fan on for this reason. Really common, yeah.

I find it helpful to listen to .mp3s of people talking about something I'm interested in. I can focus on that and drift off to sleep and wake up not even realising I fell asleep. Also, I've found a hindu mantra that helps sometimes. It's so hypnotic, it just carries me into the navel of sleep.

Try weed. Not right before sleep but a bit earlier, while watching those stand-ups for example.

I need a fan or white noise. Silence is just "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" until I fall asleep.

My father and my son both can't sleep without a fan. Ceiling fans don't count because they're too quiet.

When we moved from the middle of town (a block from the railroad tracks, no less) out here to the country, my girlfriend had trouble sleeping because it was too quiet. Then she had trouble sleeping because of my snoring. You just can't please some people :)

I can't sleep if I can hear voices. Other noises generally don't bother me, but my brain tries to listen to whatever is being said.

Yes, I can't stand complete silence. I have a fan going at pretty much all times, summer or winter, and I definitely can't sleep without it. I have a white noise generator, but I prefer the fan because I'm so used to the airflow that the room feels dead and suffocating without it now.

Buy yourself a white noise machine. I’ve been using one for almost 10 years, it’s helped my sleep routine immensely. I prefer it to something with talking because the fluctuations of something like comedy would disrupt me. Also, I think that concentrating on something like comedy makes me want to watch it and I would woke up.

The next thing is an eye mask. Even if your room is mostly dark, I’ve found it helps me to stay asleep.

I would love absolute silence. I got Tinnitus in my right ear 24/7/365.. It will probably never disappear.. And I also sleep with a CPAP which makes annoying sounds when sleeping. So I would absolute silence.

I do this too as a way to escape my thoughts. Meditation/mindfulness has helped in the past and it’s probably the healthiest solution. I don’t do that enough though…

The only time I ever would've preferred silence to some background noise was when I was at a scout camp along the banks of a river and the cacophony of frogs and crickets at night was super fucking loud. I barely slept the whole time I was there.

Other than that, I always put on some kind of ambient sounds or yoga music.

Absolutely. A consistent noise like a fan is best, but music is good too.