Have you tried taking sleep meds other than xanax some nights? Lately I've been doing seroquel, seroquel, xanax and repeat. It sucks to need sleep aids every night but at least I'm not addicted to benzos and I still get that stress relief twice a week.
I have been on everything off-label they will prescribe for sleep. We'd be here all day if I named it all. At this point the only things I haven't been prescribed are some of the more hypnotic/potent benzos and GHB. I'd give anything for a doctor to prescribe me Xyrem. I've never seen one in real life, never heard of someone getting it through a doctor either but I know it's legal as a last line medication.
I suffer from really bad insomnia and non-24 hour sleep cycles. I've lived with it for all of my adult life. To maintain a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd shift schedule forces me to live in constant jet lag and miss nights of sleep weekly. My week looks something like this when I have a regular gig:
-wake up at 1pm
-"morning" routine
-report to work at 4pm
-do my shift
-get off work at 12-2am
-unwind
-try to sleep
-if sleep wake up at 3-4pm (I slipped an hour, see?)
-repeat
-probably don't sleep this night
-stay up all the way until 4pm (unable to nap)
-do my work shift
-come home and pass out without a shower and/or be unable to sleep again
and it goes on and on. Sometimes I'm up 3 days in a row trying to get to Friday. Then I sleep
a lot and miss all of Saturday. I do my laundry and stuff Sunday and maybe get to watch a couple of hours of TV with the family. Then I repeat it the next week. Often unable to sleep Sunday night because I slept so much the night before.
When I don't have a work schedule like that I get into a free-running sleep cycle. I need to keep a journal and track it better. I do this thing where I stay up for 36-48 hours. Then I sleep for 16 hours. If I am sleeping every night somehow the time I fall asleep keeps getting push backed. It'll look something like: 9pm -> 11pm -> 3am -> 6am ->10am with waking the same delayed set of hours. My brain has no concept of the sun meaning it's time to be awake. Nor am I true night owl.
As you can imagine this makes it very difficult to interact with family, friends, work and make appointments. I can not schedule an appointment far in advance and ever know if I'll be fresh for it. It's a total gamble with where my cycle is on that particular week/day. I also have a big problem sometimes with staying asleep. I'll have been up say 40 hours. I'll be dead tired and pass out quickly. Then I'll wake up 6 hours later and feel so amped up I can't go back to sleep. This usually leads to another 24 hours of being awake.
I figured it up one time and I've been awake longer than the average person my age by a wide margin. It has actually gotten more stable as I've aged. It used to be so much worse...
Doctors do not take me serious despite family telling them it's true. They always throw some off-label antidepressant or seroquel-like medication at me. These do not work for me and cause me horrible side effects. I've got bottles and bottles of these SSRIs and antipsychotics all prescribed for sleep. The best I can get out of them is a weak xanax. When I first got injured they gave me blue xanax like candy and I rarely even took it. One of my asshole friends stole my bottle with 120 of them in it and I didn't even notice for weeks.
I really wish I knew what was wrong with me. I've had multiple CT scans done. I know my brain is broken somehow but none of the doctors seem interested in helping me. I am terrified that I might have CTE or will develop fatal insomnia.
