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Benzos Benzos Pushing Back Sleep Cycle? How Can I Reverse It? (+ a question about sub)

Bojangles2.0

Bluelighter
Joined
Apr 12, 2012
Messages
64
I started taking 1mg of xanax and 5mg of valium to help me jump off .25mg of sub. Because everytime I go lower with the sub, or try to stop, I get wikid insomnia and depression.

So I decided to drop to .125mg of sub, and slowly work in low amounts of benzos so I can sleep and my body could readjust to the lower dose of sub. Astonishingly, I was able to taper down to a point that was never possible before.

But that turned out to be a BIG mistake because my sleep schedule is completely fucked up now.

I use to go to bed around 2am and wake up around 10am. I'm self employeed so I CAN sleep at any time schedule, but I do NOT like sleeping
any later than 11am.

Thing is, with benzos I'd go to bed at 2am and wake up at 2pm!

Then because I slept so long, at night I wouldn't be tired. So I'd stay up till 3am instead, and would sleep till 3pm.

Long story short, I tried upping my dose of benzos a bit over the last couple months.

So now I take 2mg xanax and 10mg of valium. I figured if I took them earlier, I'd sleep earlier.
But I'd wind up staying up till 5am just to enjoy the sedation.

Well today was a breaking point for me. I wound up sleeping till 5pm. :X Literally as the sun was going down, I was getting out of bed. And that made me furious. So I've decided that benzos aren't helping me and are just making things worse. Not to mention they effect my ability to work and I really need my brain sharp to do what I do.

The problem though..... its now 6pm, and there is NO WAY in hell I'll be tired till at least 6am in the morning. I won't even feel "up" till midnight. My body usually likes to stay awake for 14 hours, so I could easily stay up till 8am if I want to. Maybe even 10am before I start feeling tired.

But the point is, benzos keep pushing my sleep cycle further and further back, so its time to stop this.

They're not helping me get off sub and are just making me a dysfunctional, tired, depressed zombie.

So the way I see it I have 2 choices.

1) Don't sleep at all tonight, don't take ANY benzos.

The problem with this "solution", I've been taking 1.5-2mg of xanax a day, and 10mg of valium for about 3 months, so I'm sure there will be some type of wd syndrome. And I won't really know till tomorrow.

So I've considered another option.

2) Cut my benzo dose down, and take them around midnight tonight, instead of 4pm, since I usually take them a couple hours before going to bed. So I'd take .25mg xanax (25% my normal dose) and 5mg valium (50% my normal dose) around midnight, and see if I can pass out around 3am (which may or may not happen). My goal is to stop the xanax before the valium since I find xanax a lot more addictive and also a lot more powerful.

Its unfortunate because I have a supply of over 400+ benzos, so I will either flush them or put them in the freezer with the rest of my "controlled habits" (my freezer has weed, mdma, ketamine, all habits I stopped on my own :D)

One last thing. Once I get this benzo stuff under control, my next plan is to buy a couple hundred extended release codeine.

I am an addict and prone to addiction, but nowhere near as much as I use to be.
I've managed to stop ALL of my addictions except suboxone over the last year (weed, mdma, ket and even cigs).

The longest I went w/out sub was 3 weeks but the depression / insomnia / lethargy was too much to bear (even coming off a
low dose). So I think if I replace my low dose of sub with codiene (like 60mg extended release) I should be able to tolerate the
transition, then taper off the codiene.

This is a long post but I'm looking for some thought / insight to my goals.

Should I stop the benzos completely and pull an all nighter then see how I feel tomorrow?
Should I taper the benzos and just take them a lot earlier?
And does codiene sound like a good idea for bridging off sub?

Thanks guys - Bo
 
If you find an answer, please let me know. I've never overcome the sedation of Valium and I've been on it daily for years. The only way I found around it is to lower the dose which obviously results in withdrawals starting in around the 1 week mark.

I would see if trimming the Valium dose and taking it earlier helps. I would offset it with a bit extra Xanax if you need to.

As for the addiction... Don't let Valium fool you. It may not seem as addictive as Xanax but it most certainly is. You just don't feel it as quickly because of the extremely long half life and the active metabolites with an even longer half life.
 
I used to be nocturnal. I'm a musician and i used to work solely night shifts.
In those days - about 3 years ago that i worked and played exclusively at night - the hours you describe (waking at sunset, dawn being bedtime) used to be more-or-less my norm.

When I got a 9-5 job to more comfortably pay the bills, I found that my sleep pattern persisted, no matter what I tried (be it downer-type drugs, sleep deprivation in attempt to force myself to sleep at the "required time" or anything else).
Rather than gradually shift my circadian rhythm, I instead found that I wound up going to work each day having slept less than 2 or 3 hours.
After about 18 months of this, I reached a point of physical and mental collapse; I got sick, I went nuts.
To be expected really - I reached the end of my tether, so to speak.

Having consulted a number of medical people over the years for this problem (I've always been a night owl; sometimes it causes problems), I found a great doctor who understood my problem.
He explained not only how our sleep rhythms are created and maintained, but also how to take control of the situation; for me, the answer was melatonin.

For the first time in my life I am in control of when I sleep (benzos don't really help, or only do in the short term) and my quality of sleep is great (unlike benzos).
Melatonin is a prescription drug in my country of residence (australia) so I would recommend discussing it with a clued-in doctor about how to best use it to re-train your sleeping patterns (it is an OTC supplement in the USA, so I find it much, much cheaper to import it from the states, but either way, it is fantastic stuff and helped me a great deal).
I don't wake up groggy, or when I do, I stand in the sun and drink some coffee - melatonin production is naturally "switched off" (for want of a better term!) when bright light reaches our eyes - and it is produced, or released, in the brain in periods of darkness. So, it works on the principles of sleep in natural lighting which have been rendered a thing of the past with the use of artificial lighting, computer monitors, tv screens etc.
I take some melatonin (I prefer 5mg slow release tablets, but you can take less) half an hour or so before I want to sleep, then sit in a dimly lit room and read a book or something that doesn't involve looking at an illuminated screen - and miraculously, within a short period of time I feel sleepy and ready for bed.

As someone that finds it hard to mentally turn down the volume of my thoughts at bedtime, this is like a miracle. I might sound like I'm schilling for melatonin - but I can assure you I'm not!

I recommend it because unlike herbs or pharmaceuticals intended to help people sleep, this stuff actually worked for me. Sure, it might not knock you out after a stimulant binge - and of course YMMV - but I had a similar issue to you, and it worked a treat.

All the best - I completely understand your concern at the situation you find yourself in.

As for the tapering questions - I would taper off the sub and forget about codeine; at a guess, it would likely be useless with your tolerance anyway. And benzos must be tapered if you have any habit, suddenly ceasing to take them is dangerous if you have developed a physical dependence to them.
i should mention also that a lot of people find bupe to be more than enough to hold them (some say it even works better, paradoxically) at sub-milligram doses.

As well as this, as I mentioned above, doing all-nighters did nothing to reset my sleep pattern.
I really recommend looking into melatonin (if you haven't already). It's natural and not habit forming - your brain produces it every night, and suppplementing it simply changes the sleep body clock.
Magical stuff for insomniacs IMHO.

Good luck!
 
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As was already mentioned, Melatonin is the best option to reset a sleep cycle. Its a natural chemical created by the brain when your brain is expecting sleep because of the current sleep cycle. So if you are going to sleep at around 2 AM everyday for 3 weeks, that is when your body is churning out melatonin so you will end up falling asleep quick. Try to sleep at 10 pm (4 hours earlier) instead and your brain doesn't produce the melatonin you need to fall asleep so you probably end up laying in bed until 2 AM and then fall asleep.

I also will mention that the suggested Melatonin dosage is often way more than necessary. Studies have shown that it does not take much to help with sleep. I was using 1 mg tablets and IMO it was too much. I also researched it and found that there were studies showing much smaller doses to be more effective and with less side effects, like .1-.5 mg. One time I had taken 1 or 2 mg (not sure exactly how much it was) and ended up having the worst, most lucid and disturbing dream I ever had. At the time I had been using it to help sleep issues associated with post-acute withdrawal from Oxycodone dependence. I had been using it for about a week and probably didn't need it, or at least not nearly that much of a dose. What I experienced wasn't even a dream, more like the condition where you are in bed and feel awake, but cannot move, apparently its called "sleep paralysis". It was an awful experience, during it I thought I might've been having a stroke, so I was mentally aware but unable to actually get up.

A link to support the lower dose as being more effective:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1999/melatonin.html

Basically the study found .3 mg of melatonin to be significantly more effective than 3 mg. Even the "great" Dr Oz advocates for a dose between .3-1 mg. I myself found it helped more by just breaking off small pieces of a 1 mg pill. A whole 1 mg was too much, I think the only time you are in need of >1 mg doses is when you are completely resetting a sleep cycle. But if you have gotten to a point where the cycle is back to where you want it via the Melatonin, your body is already making its own Melatonin at bed time, so you might only need a little boost like <.3 mg.
 
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Awesome! Thanks for the great advice guys.

I've never tried melatonin so I'm definitely giving this a shot.

I dropped my xanax down to .5mg yesterday (instead of .25 like I wanted) and took 5mg of valium.
I went to bed at 5am and woke up at 4pm. So I did manage to get up 1 hour earlier than yesterday.

Today I'm going to cut down the benzos again, and see if I can get up at 3pm tomorrow. I will also
buy some melatonin.

I'm not feeling any type of wds so I think if I keep this going, and add melatonin to the mix, hopefully
I can get back to waking up before noon.

I honestly can't remember the last time I went to bed before 2am. It must have been over a decade
ago when I was still in college. And I've tried every sleep pill you can think of. Diphen, trazadone,
barbituates, seroquel and now benzos. Its becoming crystal clear (ime) that all these drugs do is make
you sleep longer, which in turn makes you stay up longer, and makes you wake up later.

There is no sleep drug that has ever helped me go to be early and wake up early. Nothing.

So I'll try the melatonin with some good old fashion will power and I'll see how much that can do. :)

Thanks again folks,

-Bo
 
I work night shifts so when I want to reset my sleeping pattern I will pull an all nighter and go to bed at like 10pm
Consider pulling an all nighter to reset your sleeping pattern because you will easily get to sleep at a normal hour if you have been awake more than 24 hours
 
3 months on benzos is pretty long. I always try to keeo it to 3 weeks or less if I have to.

I just got on sub, 3days ago. I need the benzo ( have valium and xanax) to sleep. Using xanax at the moment. I figure with it's short half life it wont be as adictive since I only use it at night. Probably a big mistake but I can't just lie there all night.


Use your valium and taper. one night 10 mg and the next night none. then 5 mg valium and the next none. It's a wicked long time in your system so that should be a kind taper.
 
Ok quick update!

Last night I dropped my benzo dose down to 50% of what I normally take, I took 1mg of melatonin
and woke up at 1:45pm today! I still went to bed around 5am, but this is good news because tonight
I can definitely go to bed earlier.

And overall, this is a 3+ hour improvement of my worst day when I woke up at 5pm.

So it seems that even with a tolerance to benzos, the amount I sleep is somewhat proportionate to the
amount of benzos I take.

I also noticed that I felt a lot more refreshed when I woke up. Like I wasn't in a brain fog for hours on end
before my mind actually woke up. My head is much clearer today, I can articulate words much better, I
have a lot more energy, so I'm going to continue tapering off these evil pills.

Well, I really shouldn't call them evil. Its my inability to regulate usage that is really "evil".

And my willingness to buy 400 at a time like I'm stockpiling for the end of the world.

Benzos are definitely useful in killing anxiety, and helping you sleep, but they are far too powerful to take
on a daily basis. So my goal is to come off them completely in a few more days. Then I will bury most of my
stash in hidden swamp area where I go running. Noone ever goes down there. And the ground will be freezing
soon so it'll be a PITA to dig them out.

I will keep a smaller amount in my home to use during social occassions / holidays.

Anything more than that is likely to cause problems.

Just wanted to update that I'm seeing good progress.
And thanks all for the advice.

-Bo
 
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