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

Try a fan. And this one's weird, but I have an analog clock in my room and the rhythmic ticking helps me sleep.

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

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

Tinnitus fucking sucks. I hate silence

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

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

Others have made great points; I'd like to add my favourite: you can play rain sounds from Spotify (and iOS devices can do this without any subscriptions from the Hearing CC toggle)!

It helps me during nights I have a lot on my mind :)

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, but more so because of my tinitus. It fucking sucks, I can't really focus on reading books because the silence is deafening.

Same problem. I just use a box fan though for white noise.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Yep. I also have a bit of tinnitus so I prefer a bit of sound. Usually I play an episode of Frasier, Mom or Modern Family. Usually before the end of the episode I'm sleeping.

I have horrible tinnitus after years of searing guitars. I have to sleep with a white noise machine or I am completely tweaked

Yes, I can't sleep without white noise

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.

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

The noise in my head is plenty loud already.

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 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.

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

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

Silence isn't a thing.

Sound of leaves rustling, the ocean, or even gentle wind? I sleep, no problem

A house quietly creaking and my blood flowing?

I've put on music or Netflix since childhood

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

I also have a sometimes hard time falling asleep, I guess I think and overthink everything too much…

So my go-to are audio books and podcasts.