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Insomnia

Foreigner

Foreigner

Bluelight Crew
Joined
Mar 18, 2009
Messages
9,797
Location
The Cosmos
Yeah I know, UTFSE, there are a million threads about this already. Except that nothing works for me. I'm THIS close to turning to narcotics, because I can't take it anymore. It would take up an entire page to list all the things I've tried, from supplements, to nutrition and exercise, to relaxation and meditation techniques, but I'm always open to suggestions. I wish a k-hole lasted longer than 15-20 minutes because I would just inject myself with a high dose.

Seriously, I am so desperate to sleep. No matter how tired I am, my body will simply not enter sleep. At night time, I fall asleep around midnight or 1am, and then wake up within an hour. I'm then awake until dawn, which understandably is ruining my life. The mere naps I get here and there are full of REM sleep, with constant dreams.

Things did get noticeably worse when daylight savings time kicked in and the days got shorter. My doctor is recommending that I buy a light box that has a minimum of 10,000 lux and shine it on my face for 30 mins a day. It's one thing I've never tried and maybe it'd help.

I have a bottle of hydromorphone here from the days of extreme pain and although it's not strictly a sedative I'm considering starting it just to knock myself the fuck out. Let's see... morphine, cannabis, melatonin, valerian, chamomile tea, ketamine, what else can I add to this to knock my fucking body out?

Don't be surprised if they find me dead from accidental suicide because I just ingested every sedative in my household. (Not really, but that's how bad the situation is.)

My doctor is reluctant to give me sleep aids because she says she just got back from a conference where they talked about all the modern research pertaining to how bad they are, and how they can cause dementia long-term. But honestly, I don't care. Just fucking tranquilize me already.
 
What do you think is causing it? Physical pain? Emotional/Mental?

Foreigner said:
Seriously, I am so desperate to sleep
Click to expand...

Sorry for pointing out the obvious but this will keep you from falling asleep. If there's no niggling physical thing which is keeping you from going deeper, such as breathing issues or muscle pain (I have this in my back, only happens at night), then it's got to be emotional/mental which is keeping you too wired to fall through the stages of relaxation.

Get to the cause before trying to medicate the symptom though.. you don't need added complications from powerful substances.
 
-=SS=- said:
What do you think is causing it? Physical pain? Emotional/Mental?



Sorry for pointing out the obvious but this will keep you from falling asleep. If there's no niggling physical thing which is keeping you from going deeper, such as breathing issues or muscle pain (I have this in my back, only happens at night), then it's got to be emotional/mental which is keeping you too wired to fall through the stages of relaxation.

Get to the cause before trying to medicate the symptom though.. you don't need added complications from powerful substances.
Click to expand...

The only thing I haven't ruled out is daylight. It may also just be that I'm a nocturnal person, dunno. I've never been a morning person, but it's never been this bad. My sleep schedule has never been this inverted before.

I get what you're saying. Stressing out about sleep prevents sleep. If I have a big day or a travel day ahead of me, the anticipation prevents me from sleeping. On the other hand, I've had a lifestyle where there are no obligations, no stress, and I am able to completely let go of mind and body. In those cases, I might enter sleep for about an hour, and then wake up. For instance, last night I was dead tired, and I fell asleep around 11:30-12 midnight. I woke up at 1:30am, and was awake until 8am. Slept for 3 more hours, then went to work. Tonight it will be rinse, lather, repeat.

I'm convinced at this point that it's biochemical, I just can't pinpoint the exact nature of it.
 
I'm answering this kinda late, but please don't start taking hydromorphone to induce sleep. For one, many opiates have 'stimulating' properties and can make the situation worse. Secondly, if you have a high enough dose to knock you out, that will also entail possibly dangerous respiratory depression. Thirdly, its badly addictive.

Has your insomnia got any better? I experience crazy insomnia and multiple sleep disturbances. I sleep for about 4 hours a night, have crazy lucid dreams, sleepwalk/talk. I have to be careful where I sleep because I get up and do things most nights, though Miss Willow just tells me to get back to bed. This has happened since I was a child. I got desperate in my late teens and started taking GABAergics for sleep and this choice made my sleeping infinitely worse and catalysed my addictions TBH. I just try to accept it now; I've no choice, its not that bad having more time to live and you get used to it.

I still use GHB to knock me out if I've had a completely sleepless night as prolonged insomnia gives me dissociative anxiety, but very sparingly and never more then once a fortnight or so...
 
I'm a sleep medicine patient; I've been put on trazodone (50 mgs) and zolpidem (10 mgs) for sleep. Trazadone didn't do much for me but zolpidem works pretty well. I live in an extreme environment in which it is dark basically 24 hours a day in winter (I live about 100 south of the Arctic Circle)...I've gone weeks and weeks before with only about 2 hours of sleep a night. I could function on that but not very well.

My "recipe" for restful sleep which usually works pretty well is: marijuana (depending on the marijuana in question...some strains are a lot better for sleep than others) + 30 mgs Nyquil Cough + heroin (smoked; not too much heroin though or else I'll start "nodding" and that's not conducive for real sleep IMO) + 10 mgs zolpidem. That usually does it. I obviously don't recommend doing that (lol) but I know from first-hand experience that sometimes desperate measures are taken just to get some sleep.
 
Insomnia is a big problem and it's causes serious damage to our body, specially in brain. If you've having this problem, stop sleeping during day time and most importantly go for a long vacation. Stay away from all electronic devices like computer, Tablet, and smartphone. Just enjoy the fresh air by visiting naturally beautiful places. I'm sure you'll get a different feeling from there.
 
I am also suffering from pretty bad insomnia. What almost always works for me is weed. Kratom works fine for me, too, and I think it´s a better choice than morphine. Also try L-Tryptophan, an amino-acid which works well for a lot of insomniacs. You can also give antihistamines like DPH a try, but they don´t do shit for me but give me one hell of a hangover.
 
I find it helpful to have down time before sleeping for at least half an hour with no technology to distract; book, listen to music, writing
 
I've taken sleeping pills for most of my adult life and frankly I will keep taking them until they are prised from my cold, dead hands. I will take a dementia risk (or a cancer risk, or a heart attack risk, or whatever the latest research is warning about) over the torture that is sleeping less than an hour a night. Insomnia is a real disorder that makes people very, very sick.
 
If you absolutely just have to knock yourself out, hydroxine (Vistaril, Atarax) have accomplished knocking me out before.

I'll give a non-pharmacological thing I discovered from a book a while back. Shower or take a bath. Be soaking wet. don't put on any clothes. Just get into your blankets. Soaking wet, struggling for warmth seems to activate some primal sleep switch, ime but others as well.
 
Still not really sleeping right. My sleep schedule is completely reversed. I'm awake until dawn and then sleep all day. To me it's a sign of extreme imbalance in my body. I had blood work done recently and I'm still severely anemic... I may need another blood transfusion this month. My heart has been stressed from the lack of iron and I have arrhythmia these days. In eastern medicine they say that if the heart is disturbed then insomnia will happen. I see it as a relationship between blood flow and brain nourishment. I get short of breath easily and oxygen deprivation doesn't help with sleeping properly. In addition I'm studying for a board exam in less than two weeks, so the "busy mind" factor is off the charts.

Trying to sleep any other way doesn't work -- I just sleep when I can at this point, even if it's just 90 minutes at a time here and there. When my eyes start to get heavy I go right to bed no matter what time of day it is (if I'm lucky enough to be at home). Doing it any other way doesn't work, so I at least get sleep. The problem is that I never see the light of day anymore, except on the days when I go to work (I work part time) when I have to get up earlier. I'm just a zombie on those days. I still exercise but I always just get to my gym before it closes because I'm starting my day when businesses are closing. The same goes for grocery shopping and whatever else.

My life is totally ruined by my sleep dysfunction right now. I hardly see friends anymore because they're awake during the day and early evening like normal people, and by the time I'm available to see anyone they're getting ready for bed.

The irony here is that my MD won't give me sleeping pills. She says she believes they are harmful long-term. She keeps going over sleep hygiene stuff with me which is a waste of my time because I already know all that stuff, probably better than her. My nutrition is solid right now too. Aside from anemia my body is healthy.

I wish cannabis worked on me. I got the heaviest, strongest indica I could find and tried it recently. It made me tired and manic. Pot is a stimulant for me, always will be. I haven't been a pot user for a few years now and don't really have a taste for it anymore, nor do I find the high enjoyable. I'm starting to feel suicidal, not even because there's a problem in my life but because my neurochemistry is so fucked up from this sleep issue. I also feel increasingly dissociated from reality because my sleep is so scattered. A few 90 minute periods here and there is the most disjointed way to live life. When I do sleep my dreams are extremely vivid, so I'm not getting deep sleep. I don't have an emotional problem or anything keeping me up at night.

The only sleep aid I've taken in the past is zopiclone, and I didn't really feel rested the next day. I also felt like a zombie, but I know that's going to be an issue no matter what I take. Seriously, I dream of the days of being put under at the hospital. I just want to be knocked the fuck out.
 
Last edited:
Hi,

i am am new to BlueLight and have had issues with sleeping for the past month now. My doctors gave me zopiclone 3.75mg to take for one week but I don't think it's working. I didn't take it on Monday night as I felt it wasn't working and when eventually I got to sleep (4am) I woke up with extreme anxiety and my heart beating very fast and it continued for 12 hours.

could the anxiety and panic feeling all day be a result in not taking the zopiclone the previous night?
should I continue to use it despite it not helping me with getting to sleep?
 
I'd strongly consider taking Ambien for a very short period of time so you can get back into your natural sleep/wake pattern. Maybe try it for 5 nights? I guarantee you'll sleep if you take 10mg, then after 5 nights or so you'll be back in that consistant sleep pattern that your body is craving so badly right now. Good luck keep us posted ;)
 
McManus said:
Hi,

i am am new to BlueLight and have had issues with sleeping for the past month now. My doctors gave me zopiclone 3.75mg to take for one week but I don't think it's working. I didn't take it on Monday night as I felt it wasn't working and when eventually I got to sleep (4am) I woke up with extreme anxiety and my heart beating very fast and it continued for 12 hours.

could the anxiety and panic feeling all day be a result in not taking the zopiclone the previous night?
should I continue to use it despite it not helping me with getting to sleep?
Click to expand...

This thread is about my problem. Please take your medication questions to another thread.
 
Have you tackled the adrenergic side of the equation before (eg adrenergic blockade)?
 
Just my opinion, but I think it's really unfair of your doctor not to give you anything for sleep given how your insomnia has become so debilitating. There are plenty of alternatives out there to benzos and Z drugs. Vistaril and trazodone, both of which are pretty benign, have already been mentioned. In my experience, Vistaril is the better drug because it doesn't leave you with a hangover the following morning. Anyway, have you considered switching doctors? In the meantime, there is OTC melatonin (counterintuitively, the smaller the dose, the more effective it is). Also, I can't remember the name of this operant conditioning technique, but one of my rehab therapists suggested it. Don't do anything in bed except sleep or have sex, if you're lucky enough to be getting it. When you can't sleep, sit in a chair and just look at the bed and the idea is eventually you'll get sleepy. Sometimes it works for me, sometimes it doesn't.

Insomnia was one of the driving forces behind my heavy drinking and I am so glad I see an addiction psychiatrist who understands that. The last thing it sounds like you need is a lecture on sleep hygiene.
 
McManus said:
Hi,

i am am new to BlueLight and have had issues with sleeping for the past month now. My doctors gave me zopiclone 3.75mg to take for one week but I don't think it's working. I didn't take it on Monday night as I felt it wasn't working and when eventually I got to sleep (4am) I woke up with extreme anxiety and my heart beating very fast and it continued for 12 hours.

could the anxiety and panic feeling all day be a result in not taking the zopiclone the previous night?
should I continue to use it despite it not helping me with getting to sleep?
Click to expand...

Yes, what you experienced could certainly have been from stopping the zopiclone. (Granted this thread was about another matter, but I thought you might have gotten a bit more snark than you deserved).

Insofar as the original question is concerned, you might ask your doctor about ramelteon. It is a melatonin receptor agonist -- not a benzodiazapine -- that has no abuse potential, and works for some people.
 
You might try CBD oil (25 mg a day) and magnesium citrate (powder that is dissolved in juice or water). You might have to order CBD oil on line. I get a concentrated oil from CBDLife in the UK. That will help with the anxiety too. It worked for my son who had the same problem you're having. I also use it. I used to wake up 4 or 5 times a night. Sometimes I was so wide awake that I couldn't get back to sleep. It took a few days. But now we both sleep through the night. If you do any energy drinks in the afternoon or evening, you should quit those too.
 
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