A healthy cortisol curve peaks shortly after waking and tapers to nothing by night. When that rhythm inverts, you drag through the day on stimulants, then get a wired second wind exactly when you should be winding down.
The 3 a.m. wake-up is the tell. As you sleep, your liver releases glycogen to keep blood sugar stable. If that supply runs dry, the body treats it as an emergency and dumps adrenaline to mobilize fuel — and adrenaline is not a sensation you sleep through.
Why the usual advice fails
Sleeping pills and meditation apps address the feeling of being awake. They do nothing about the fuel shortage that triggered the alarm in the first place.
You cannot meditate your way out of a physiological fuel crisis.
Re-establishing the curve means restoring the morning peak and stabilizing overnight glucose so the emergency release never fires. Fix the fuel, and the nights go quiet.