A sleep seed people have taken for nearly 2,000 years. 6 reasons people who wake up at 3am are drinking it in a hot cocoa

1. The day he asked his pharmacist if he was addicted to melatonin

Marcus had taken melatonin every night for 9 years. It started with 1 gummy, then 2, then the 5s, then the 10s.

He fell asleep fine and woke at 3 almost every night, then lay there listening to his wife Denise breathe until the 5am alarm.

One Saturday he set the empty bottle on the pharmacy counter and asked Priya, his pharmacist for 9 years, if he was addicted. The man behind him in line laughed. Priya picked up the bottle. "Marcus, these are the 10s.

You were buying the 5s in March."

2. He quit the gummies and went natural. He was still up at 3.

Marcus quit the gummies that weekend and went natural. Tart cherry juice. Chamomile. A reishi capsule from the vitamin aisle. A grocery-store magnesium that only sent him to the bathroom.

He read that jujube was an old Chinese sleep remedy, so he bought a bag of dried jujubes at the Asian market and ate 6 every night before bed.

Without melatonin he took an hour to fall asleep, and he still woke at 3. Every one of them was one ingredient, taken on its own.

3. A plant chemist showed him he'd been eating the wrong part of the jujube

Marcus's neighbor Theo is a plant chemist. He put a small flat seed from a jar under the microscope. "You ate the fruit. The old recipe used the seed of the sour jujube, the wild kind," Theo said.

"A Chinese physician wrote it down around 200 AD for people too restless to sleep: jujube seeds simmered with four other herbs. That recipe was five herbs in one warm cup.

And between 2 and 4 your stress hormones start climbing, right when sleep is at its lightest. For the 3am wake-up you want ashwagandha."

4. A hot cocoa with the jujube seed, for falling asleep and staying asleep

Theo drinks Mellow most nights and gave Marcus a pouch from his pantry. It's a hot cocoa with no melatonin, one scoop in hot milk 30 minutes before bed.

It has the jujube seed, plus valerian and reishi, all taken for sleep for centuries. To fall asleep, magnesium glycinate relaxes your muscles and L-theanine quiets the racing thoughts. Magnesium L-threonate is the form made to reach the brain.

To stay asleep past 3, ashwagandha lowers cortisol, the stress hormone that climbs before dawn: in its own 60-day trial it dropped 28% against 8% on placebo.

5. Night 1 he still woke at 3. By week 5 he slept to his 5am alarm.

Night 1 was ordinary: asleep by 10:30, awake at 3, back asleep around 4. Night 5 he slept until 4:15.

Week 2: he was out within minutes of his head hitting the pillow, and on the nights he still woke at 3, he was back asleep in 10 minutes. Week 3: at breakfast Denise said, "You stopped tossing at 3.

I'm sleeping better too." Week 5: four nights in a row straight through to the 5am alarm, and no fog on his route.

6. Back at Priya's counter, he hadn't bought a gummy in 4 months

Last month Marcus was back at Priya's counter to pick up Denise's prescription. Priya asked about the gummies. He hadn't bought a bottle in 4 months, and he told her about the cocoa.

This time the man behind him in line asked him to spell Mellow. One pouch is 30 cups. Your first box comes with a free sleep mask and frother, and shipping is free.

If you aren't sleeping better within 60 nights, email us and we refund every dollar, and you keep the pouch.