Misc How Effective is Rotating Sleeping Meds?

[ChemicallyEnhanced]

I do find I use one for a while and it stops working. Flunitrazepam and Phenobarbital were the best, but due to a history of addiction, benzo's and barbiturates are off-limits to me (unless I'm being sedated for surgery or have had seizures or am being detoxed).

I occasionally get Zopiclone (my doctor will take pity on me a couple times a year and give me 6 or 7, recommending I take one every other night to avoid getting dependant on it) but on repeat rx I have:
Quetiapine 25mg
Quetiapine 100mg
Thorazine 100mg
Trazodone 150mg

Would only taking one of the three at a time work better than taking all three all the time?

Anybody who needs sleep meds: do you find rotating different meds makes a big difference in how effective they are?

 

[Conky]

Unless you're a chronic lifelong insomniac I've found the best strategy to consistent sleep is to avoid alcohol, benzos, Z-drugs, or god forbid, barbiturates and take safer drugs/plants regularly instead of flip flopping

Every 24 hours I take 3mg Haldol, 200mg Quetiapine, 200mg Trazodone, and 187.5mg Venlafaxine. I pretty much fall asleep and wake up at the same time each day.

 

[ChemicallyEnhanced]

Unless you're a chronic lifelong insomniac I've found the best strategy to consistent sleep is to avoid alcohol, benzos, Z-drugs, or god forbid, barbiturates and take safer drugs/plants regularly instead of flip flopping

Every 24 hours I take 3mg Haldol, 200mg Quetiapine, 200mg Trazodone, and 187.5mg Venlafaxine. I pretty much fall asleep and wake up at the same time each day.

I'm very definitely a life-long insomniac, even was as a little kid. And probably haven't slept naturally in 12 years.

 

[Hippy Flower Fairy]

Anybody who needs sleep meds: do you find rotating different meds makes a big difference in how effective they are?

I use to rotate sleep meds every few weeks and it seemed to help yes, untill the zopiclone made me depressed, then the mirtazapine the same, which left vallies, other benzos and promethazine, I try not to take promethazine often as tolerence builds up after a few days but still groggy

But here I lay at 3:55am after taking 50mg valium at 10:45 as wanted an early night, and 2mg xanax 2 hours after as couldn't sleep and still can't

My doctor don't know about the benzos just the promethazine and wants me to start trazodone but I've tried about 15-18 antidepressants for my mental health, fibromyalgia etc so not sure I want to try trazodone again, lasted few days on them years ago but stopped because of side effects just like all the other antidepressants but I don't want to carry on taking benzos as been off and on for about 7 years, mostly on!

I read loads of people get nightmares on trazodone and I get nightmares on almost everything apart from benzos and mirtazapine, so that puts me off too

 

[plumbus-nine]

Problem is that the mechanisms by which pills induce sleep are limited, and many drugs share the same mechanism. We have H1 antihistaminergic (quetiapine, trazodone, mirtazapine, hydroxyzine, diphenhydramine, doxylamine etc) and GABA-A (benzodiazepines, Z-drugs). Some have additional mechanisms like adrenergic antagonism, (also trazodone and quetiapine) but that's likely to be insignificant. There are now some orexin antagonists as well but I never tried them so far.

So what remains are two (or three) mechanisms and switching between them indeed can offer some limited help to avoid insomnia.

Oh yeah, trazodone induces nightmares in some ppl like myself but the worst about this was morphine.

 

[Hippy Flower Fairy]

Oh yeah, trazodone induces nightmares in some ppl like myself

Oh fucksake really, you too, bloody hell, it's the most side effect I've read on reviews but some people had good dreams on them, but any thing that lists abnormal dreams is always nightmares for me!

Didn't get it on any kind of morphine though all that done was keep me awake, but I've not done it that much and not for ages

Sertraline was one that caused night terrors instead of nightmares though and that's when I could sleep, the difference is the amount of time it takes for the nightmares or night terrors to start, is the way to know if its a nightmare or a night terror something about REM, and because as soon as I dropped off on Sertraline I went strait into a night terror that would wake me, over and over it went, that shit fucked me up, gave me a stutter, jerky movements, shaking, MANIA, insomina apart from fits and starts and more I can't remember so I went to the doctor who upped my dose

It got worse went back and seen another doctor who could see something was wrong but had no idea, that night calls me saying you have the start of serotonin syndrome, stop the tablets!

And yep 15 maybe 20 antidepressants I've tried, only one that didn't cause nightmares was mirtazapine, I think I've been on so many I can't remember but citalopram might not of caused them

So I get tolerence to sleep meds really quickly promethazine etc, and everything else, so going on trazodone will just be the same wouldn't it, and my doctor has already said she don't want me going up from the 50mg, but she said she's putting me on it for my mental health too, but the antidepressant qualitys of it starts at 100mg not 50mg she's prescribed

 

[ChemicallyEnhanced]

Oh fucksake really, you too, bloody hell, it's the most side effect I've read on reviews but some people had good dreams on them, but any thing that lists abnormal dreams is always nightmares for me!

Didn't get it on any kind of morphine though all that done was keep me awake, but I've not done it that much and not for ages

Sertraline was one that caused night terrors instead of nightmares though and that's when I could sleep, the difference is the amount of time it takes for the nightmares or night terrors to start, is the way to know if its a nightmare or a night terror something about REM, and because as soon as I dropped off on Sertraline I went strait into a night terror that would wake me, over and over it went, that shit fucked me up, gave me a stutter, jerky movements, shaking, MANIA, insomina apart from fits and starts and more I can't remember so I went to the doctor who upped my dose

It got worse went back and seen another doctor who could see something was wrong but had no idea, that night calls me saying you have the start of serotonin syndrome, stop the tablets!

And yep 15 maybe 20 antidepressants I've tried, only one that didn't cause nightmares was mirtazapine, I think I've been on so many I can't remember but citalopram might not of caused them

So I get tolerence to sleep meds really quickly promethazine etc, and everything else, so going on trazodone will just be the same wouldn't it, and my doctor has already said she don't want me going up from the 50mg, but she said she's putting me on it for my mental health too, but the antidepressant qualitys of it starts at 100mg not 50mg she's prescribed

Morphine kept you AWAKE?

 

[Jabberwocky]

I'm very definitely a life-long insomniac, even was as a little kid. And probably haven't slept naturally in 12 years.

gah me too. even as a fucking baby i couldn't sleep and i was seeing nurses about insomnia at the age of 9.

i didn't sleep naturally for 16 years and was forced to in rehab. it was not fun. then i fucking threw away my ability to sleep naturally by overdoing booze and xanax. luckily at the point where dipenhydramine is usually sufficient and i'm trying to get back to natural sleep but its so fucking hard when you have an entires lifes worth of stress about it.

anyway, i did find that rotating sleep aids helped me. i never used any of the ones you listed though but i don't see why the principle shouldn't hold.

does weed not work for you?

 

[deficiT]

Usually I take a 600mg gabapentin, 100mg quetiapine, and 100mg hydroxyzine to get to sleep. I'm trying to get off of the heavier antipsychotics so have dropped the quetiapine to 50mg. I just feel too emotionally and mentally blunted by them. I'm also probably just going to run out of gabapentin as my doc switched me to pregabalin, which I've been taking in the afternoon. So far I'm only on 200mg so it's not very strong, I might need to start taking the pregabalin at night once I'm off the others.

I've never really tried the rotating bit, generally I find whatever combination works and stick with it, I've found success with that. At one point I was on 300mg quetiapine plus 10mg olanzapine, so I've come a long way. I'm contemplating whether I should get back on aripiprazole. It was probably the most effective AP I've taken to deal with my depression. The other two APs just felt like sledgehammers, aripiprazole felt like it was helping without absolutely crushing my emotions.

I'm on the fence about it. I've found I can't take ssri's, so am just sticking with bupropion for now. Idk if it will be enough to handle my mood issues, but I reckon I will see.

Kind of off topic ramble, but just needed to get it out somewhere and this is generally about psych meds.

 

[plumbus-nine]

Morphine kept you AWAKE?

Same here, in the beginnings when I didn't have tolerance, also heroin kept me awake and created a weird, vast and empty 3D scenery with eyes closed, not unlike what I sometimes got from dissociatives but they usually populate it.

Trazodone, umm.. from all the weird dreams I had, was it one of the more passable ones, I'd sink into the mattress, turn around and fly away etc. to tell it nightmares is wrong but it wasn't that pleasurable either.
I now, after buprenorphine, have seemingly permanent REM sleep movement disorder syndrome, I'd speak and shout during dreams, in non-understandable gibberish because dream time moves faster but weirdly sometimes I say understandable nonsense. It's so embarrassing, I have a girlfriend who tolerates this (I'd rather love her to tolerate drugs, which - at least dissociatives - somehow stop me from speaking during REM - but it's how it is) but I see dark future ahead of me. Dunno, other people snore the hell out of them and have relationships but this is worse..

Nowadays I also can take 30, or 90mg mirtazapine and get NO effects whatsoever. In other times 15mg would have knocked me out. Dissociative tolerance changes so many circuits seemingly (it's the only permatolerance and I have lots of it - but then again, many people I spoke to report that with time and age drug effects decrease even when something hasn't been taken for a decade, it'd be less strong than in the adolescence. The DXM people speak of a 50 trip limit, wonder whether this is related. And what the hell it means for sober performance. I feel like I changed, not to the better nor to the worse, just changed. Can't nail it down so far.

In my teens 25mg seroquel would induce HEAVY tiredness, guess today 100mg would do nothing as well besides some brain fog from D2 antagonism.
Feel that I tried the majority if not almost all psychopharms available nowadays, with the exception of some rare antipsychotics and tricyclics. None of them did any benefit, like I get from recreational drugs (they have their own downsides of course, some more than others).

Also I'm hooked on SSRIs. Wrote another thread about this, and yeah, being hooked is the correct terminology, even with fluoxetine and it's week long half life I fail to quit. Morphine was easy in comparison.

Oh, as heroin metabolizes into morphine, I always thought them to have similar or same side effects but I keep reading that H is different..

 

[Hippy Flower Fairy]

Morphine kept you AWAKE?

Yeah if I took it to early before bed, and co co codamol, codeine, tramadol etc, morphine like oramoroth and oxymorm especially kept me awake for hours, to the point I never bought oxynorm again, my gawd one of the worse sleeps on that stuff, or should I say non sleep and overthinking so much more than normal tossing and turning just horrible like 5 hours of it, I was gouching out on it before bed, get into bed to sleep, and wide awake

Opioids are stimulating for me, heroin 21 years ago wasn't stimulating though but been clean around 21 years heroin actually had heroin in it back then, no other opioid well its an opiate has been anything similar, it's the only one that wasn't stimulating apart from when I done oxycodone for ten days, all was alright, falling asslep after lines of it, then day ten boom, total opposite effect on 80mg, so I flushed it as by that point in just ten days, I had bad spots, lost weight, looked ill, all in just ten days, if that oxy hadn't turned into a stimulating effect, I'd of carried on, till the only vendor I know got busted then I'd of been screwed

 

[Pickledlemons]

I've found that rotating sleep drugs does help in a way - you don't become dependent on any single one and can avoid some tolerance problems. But still, you will find them less effective with time and when you stop it will be even harder to find sleep.

 

[Pickledlemons]

You might find some luck only using sleep aids every other night or every third night. That way your body doesn't completely forget how to fall asleep on its own while also you get a break with some solid sleep on the night that you do take meds.

 

[Hippy Flower Fairy]

You might find some luck only using sleep aids every other night or every third night. That way your body doesn't completely forget how to fall asleep on its own while also you get a break with some solid sleep on the night that you do take meds

Mine did I started using them 2 or 3 times a week then couldn't sleep on the other nights because my brain was waiting for the sleeping pills

 

[emkee_reinvented]

I read loads of people get nightmares on trazodone and I get nightmares on almost everything apart from benzos and mirtazapine, so that puts me off too

Since my Epileptic insult Mirtazepine's effect on vivid dreaming is keeping mee awake.

While before, a few year's back, it seemed like the perfect sleep aid. With additional anxiolytic, anti- depressive and more appetite effect's.

Mulungu was amazing stuff. Maybe I should get some myself if its still available. The main reason that I rule out placebo with my one trial with was because both the extract as the whole bark had the same effect in equipotent dosages.

 

[Hippy Flower Fairy]

Mirtazepine's effect on vivid dreaming is keeping mee awake

That was one of the only ones I didn't get nightmares on, but my tolerance went up and up then I reached 30mg and got the start of serotonin syndrome and was really depressed on it in the end, got banned from it after being took to hospital for the serotonin syndrome but it was during coronavirus so when they said the waits 5 and a half hours I'd been sat there in a wheelchair for over 2 hours, which is horrible when you can't sit up for long as have fibromyalgia so I said I need to leave, I can't sit up anymore and by the time I'm seen there won't be a bus home, so I just left, some medication nightmares was worse than others think I'm very sensitive to that side effect

 

[ChemicallyEnhanced]

Now I feel dumb. I actually took Trazodone for a while because I was having night terrors and thought it would help no wonder it didn't work.

 

[ChemicallyEnhanced]

Since my Epileptic insult Mirtazepine's effect on vivid dreaming is keeping mee awake.

While before, a few year's back, it seemed like the perfect sleep aid. With additional anxiolytic, anti- depressive and more appetite effect's.

Mulungu was amazing stuff. Maybe I should get some myself if its still available. The main reason that I rule out placebo with my one trial with was because both the extract as the whole bark had the same effect in equipotent dosages.

Wait, what do anti-epileptics do to Mirtazapine? (I'm not on it, but it is comparable to Quetiapine and Olanzapine in terms of its effects of weight and sleep)?
I'm not epileptic, but I do have have a non-epileptiform seizure disorder so I take Valproate (Depakote)?

 

[emkee_reinvented]

Wait, what do anti-epileptics do to Mirtazapine? (I'm not on it, but it is comparable to Quetiapine and Olanzapine in terms of its effects of weight and sleep)?
I'm not epileptic, but I do have have a non-epileptiform seizure disorder so I take Valproate (Depakote)?

They are save together. But Mirtazepine has effect's on dreaming, which I used to like and tolerate, it caused vivid dreaming. And raises your appetite.

But now its keeping me awake if i would take it. As my dreams are vivid enough by them selves. If I sleep.
Also the anti-histaminergic action which would cause sleep just doesn't work anymore.

So its more like what does Mirtazepine do to someone with Epilepsy and a sleeping disorder. This in my case.

 

[ChemicallyEnhanced]

They are save together. But Mirtazepine has effect's on dreaming, which I used to like and tolerate, it caused vivid dreaming. And raises your appetite.

But now its keeping me awake if i would take it. As my dreams are vivid enough by them selves. If I sleep.
Also the anti-histaminergic action which would cause sleep just doesn't work anymore.

So its more like what does Mirtazepine do to someone with Epilepsy and a sleeping disorder. This in my case.

Yeah Olanzapine, Questiapine and Mirtazapine are the three worst meds there are for weight gain (100lbs+ for some people). I never gained any weight on them, but I'm diabetic (my pancreas is only functioning at 5 percent so my body only absorbs ~5% of the carbs I eat so the ridiculous sugar-cravings these cause hasn't made me gain weight, but it's cause extensive nerve damage in my legs due to chronically sustained very high blood sugar levels (as much as 36 instead of 4-7).

Do you take Mirtaz for sleep? If so, have you tried taking LESS? Just like with Quetiapine, it's actually LESS sedating the more you take as the histaminergic effects diminish and then stop as dose increases. Like, a 15mg pill will make sure sleep better than a 45mg.