Only sleeping every other night

From personal experience, even 4 hours a night is better than 8 hours every other night. You can always try it yourself though and see how you feel. You could also just not go to bed until you actually feel tired and use that time to study as opposed to tossing and turning in bed.
With over the counter sleeping tablets, have you tried the antihistamine ones or just the herbal ones? I have complex chronic sleep and mental health issues and the best over the counter medication for me has been Sominex (generic name promethazine). I actually find that this works better than prescribed sleeping pills as those do get me to sleep but I wake up really quickly after taking them, whereas the Sominex actually keeps me asleep if it gets me to sleep. It can make you feel super drowsy in the morning though but I find that once I'm out of bed and get a coffee down me, I'm OK. I use it on advice from my GP but I don't use it regularly - I'm not sure if using it regularly would be OK to do.
If you are willing to try melatonin again, it tends to work better at lower doses and if taken at least 2 hrs after food and without alcohol (I have had melatonin prescribed and this is what the instructions said - when I didn't take it like this, it didn't work).
Cutting out alcohol can also help.

From personal experience, even 4 hours a night is better than 8 hours every other night. You can always try it yourself though and see how you feel. You could also just not go to bed until you actually feel tired and use that time to study as opposed to tossing and turning in bed.
With over the counter sleeping tablets, have you tried the antihistamine ones or just the herbal ones? I have complex chronic sleep and mental health issues and the best over the counter medication for me has been Sominex (generic name promethazine). I actually find that this works better than prescribed sleeping pills as those do get me to sleep but I wake up really quickly after taking them, whereas the Sominex actually keeps me asleep if it gets me to sleep. It can make you feel super drowsy in the morning though but I find that once I'm out of bed and get a coffee down me, I'm OK. I use it on advice from my GP but I don't use it regularly - I'm not sure if using it regularly would be OK to do.
If you are willing to try melatonin again, it tends to work better at lower doses and if taken at least 2 hrs after food and without alcohol (I have had melatonin prescribed and this is what the instructions said - when I didn't take it like this, it didn't work).
Cutting out alcohol can also help.

I’m tired all the time lol 😭 I just can’t get to sleep even when I feel exhausted, I will go to bed and will still lie there for hours unable to sleep

Tired and sleepy are very different things

I have trouble getting to sleep, it takes me never fewer than 2-3 hours and sometimes 6-8 hours to get to sleep each night. I go to bed around 10 and will usually get to sleep for around 2 then wake up before 7 so I end up having been in bed for over 8 hours but getting around 4-5 hours of sleep a night.
I’ve tried everything I can find online to help, like breathing exercises, reading, switching off screens, herbal remedies and over the counter tablets to try and help me sleep, and melatonin I bought in America but nothing makes a difference. I’ve been to the doctors about this (along with bad headaches I get nearly every day) but was told that that’s just how it is for some people, I was given an MRI but after they told me everything was clear they just sent me away with no further remedy. I’ve never been given prescription sleeping pills which I need.
So at this point I’m thinking of switching to only going to bed every other night in the hopes that by that point I will be exhausted enough to instantly fall asleep and instead of losing hours a day on lying awake I will be able to use my nights awake productively. Does anyone have experience with keeping a sleep schedule like this or know what the effects are likely to be?
Obviously I know the effects of sleep deprivation but I’m already suffering from those so surely it wouldn’t make a difference to shift my sleeping from 4 hours every night to 8 hours every other night and 0 every other night. I’m particularly concerned about how it will affect my studying though. I’m a law student and my degree/results are very important to me so it would be good to have the extra 4 hours I’m currently losing each day to study but I don’t want the potentially additional sleep deprivation to make my grades fall.

i sleep quite well so i’m probably not the best person to make a comment, but as your a student why not try doing two days worth of studying on one day (which will probably be quite tiring) and go to sleep at 10 (like you said you usually do) so on one day you get 4 hours of sleep and then on the next day do to sleep MUCH, MUCH earlier so you get 8hours sleep. Also meaning you have more energy to study double
obvs i’m not the best person to talk abt it and i’ve no idea if that would work for you particularly but that’s what comes to mind for me . idk tho bc doing double studying on one day might just be absolutely awful, especially with the basic necessities like eating, being social, working and other normal non-studying stuff.

Studying double would be 16 hours a day and working for such extended periods of time has been shown to be less productive than doing 8 hours a day with breaks

Not willing to cut out alcohol lol. And yeah I take phenergan (promethazine) most nights and doesn’t really help, it helped at first but after about a week it stopped working

I have trouble getting to sleep, it takes me never fewer than 2-3 hours and sometimes 6-8 hours to get to sleep each night. I go to bed around 10 and will usually get to sleep for around 2 then wake up before 7 so I end up having been in bed for over 8 hours but getting around 4-5 hours of sleep a night.
I’ve tried everything I can find online to help, like breathing exercises, reading, switching off screens, herbal remedies and over the counter tablets to try and help me sleep, and melatonin I bought in America but nothing makes a difference. I’ve been to the doctors about this (along with bad headaches I get nearly every day) but was told that that’s just how it is for some people, I was given an MRI but after they told me everything was clear they just sent me away with no further remedy. I’ve never been given prescription sleeping pills which I need.
So at this point I’m thinking of switching to only going to bed every other night in the hopes that by that point I will be exhausted enough to instantly fall asleep and instead of losing hours a day on lying awake I will be able to use my nights awake productively. Does anyone have experience with keeping a sleep schedule like this or know what the effects are likely to be?
Obviously I know the effects of sleep deprivation but I’m already suffering from those so surely it wouldn’t make a difference to shift my sleeping from 4 hours every night to 8 hours every other night and 0 every other night. I’m particularly concerned about how it will affect my studying though. I’m a law student and my degree/results are very important to me so it would be good to have the extra 4 hours I’m currently losing each day to study but I don’t want the potentially additional sleep deprivation to make my grades fall.

I know you are not. But alcohol has a really negative effect on sleep and is definitely not helping. If you are still under-eating, that will not help either.

Drinking too much and not eating enough should be making me tireder and making it easier to get to sleep

get pro help op!!!