Insomnia

On the whole it's best to avoid regular medications because one tends to come to rely on them, as your story suggests. They are (or were) often prescribed too often as an 'easy way out' ... "Take these because I really don't have the time to work with you to establish a regular sleep pattern and I don't know/trust/can't refer you to a psychotherapist." Regular sleep is normally a habit or a pattern that often gets disrupted in adolescence. I don't know your situation or problems with it, of course, so I can't say whether medication was (or is) appropriate in your case. 'Sleeping tablets' on their own will do what they say - make you drowsy enough to go to sleep - but unless they are seen just as an AID to establishing a pattern, they can quickly become something which one depends on and they do nothing on their own, really, to help someone whose body chemistry or emotional state is such that they can't sleep effectively.