RorerQuaalude714
Bluelighter
Hi all. I know that there's likely a ton of threads out there about the abuse potential of zolpidem. However, as a recovering addict, I'm not interested in whether it'll get me high or not, I'm just wondering what the relative abuse potential for this med is, when taken as properly directed. I'm currently on Invega 6 mg qam, Tegretol 200 mg qam 400 mg hs, Modafinil 100 mg prn qam, Lamictal 100 mg hs, Suboxone 16 mg sl qam, Rivotril/Klonopin 1 mg qam, 2 mg hs and Imovane (zopiclone) 7.5 mg prn hs. Now, I absolutely can't stand zopiclone from a therapeutic point of view. I find that its side effects are too much, it's not especially effective and that it strangely enough, leaves me really groggy and disoriented in the morning (btw, I'm never groggy in the morning when I take my hs dose of clonazepam alone).
So, now that zolpidem is finally marketed in Canada as Subunox, I want to talk to my psychiatrist about switching over to that from zopiclone. I know one of the first things that he'll bring up is abuse potential and cross-tolerance with benzos. I'll just bring up that zopiclone is already cross-tolerant with benzos, so it's already not an issue, in that respect. It's just the abuse potential argument that he'll bring up. I'm browsing around some medical journal articles and they're all saying that zolpidem isn't especially high in the abuse potential category, but I've seen many reports on BL indicating that yes, people do actually have a decent time with zolpidem. The other thing is that he has clinical experience with treating patients that were heavily abusing and actually physically addicted to so-called "less addictive" hypnotics, specifically zopiclone and zaleplon 8) so he's very cautious with EVERYTHING. I was only put on clonazepam because of PTSD after a nasty car accident.
So, I ask this, just what can I say to show to him that it's not especially abuse-prone. He knows that I'm not going to go out of my way to abuse it as I've been consistently clean and sober for 2 years now, but he's very cautious when it comes to prescribing me hypnotics. My request to switch from zopiclone to Restoril didn't go well
. The irony of it all is that he has me on a large enough dose of clonazepam 
. I know that in the old days of the OD forums on BL, asking questions like this were frowned upon, since we were never in the business of telling people how to score medication. I'm not looking to score medication (I could just go to a really unscrupulous doctor at a pill mill I know if I wanted to do that...), I'm just looking for a good counter-argument for my psychiatrist when he balks at switching me over from zopiclone (which Canadian docs LOVE to prescribe, lol) to something that I feel will be more therapeutically effective.
tl;dr- is zolpidem really all that prone to abuse when taken exactly as directed?
So, now that zolpidem is finally marketed in Canada as Subunox, I want to talk to my psychiatrist about switching over to that from zopiclone. I know one of the first things that he'll bring up is abuse potential and cross-tolerance with benzos. I'll just bring up that zopiclone is already cross-tolerant with benzos, so it's already not an issue, in that respect. It's just the abuse potential argument that he'll bring up. I'm browsing around some medical journal articles and they're all saying that zolpidem isn't especially high in the abuse potential category, but I've seen many reports on BL indicating that yes, people do actually have a decent time with zolpidem. The other thing is that he has clinical experience with treating patients that were heavily abusing and actually physically addicted to so-called "less addictive" hypnotics, specifically zopiclone and zaleplon 8) so he's very cautious with EVERYTHING. I was only put on clonazepam because of PTSD after a nasty car accident.
So, I ask this, just what can I say to show to him that it's not especially abuse-prone. He knows that I'm not going to go out of my way to abuse it as I've been consistently clean and sober for 2 years now, but he's very cautious when it comes to prescribing me hypnotics. My request to switch from zopiclone to Restoril didn't go well
. The irony of it all is that he has me on a large enough dose of clonazepam . I know that in the old days of the OD forums on BL, asking questions like this were frowned upon, since we were never in the business of telling people how to score medication. I'm not looking to score medication (I could just go to a really unscrupulous doctor at a pill mill I know if I wanted to do that...), I'm just looking for a good counter-argument for my psychiatrist when he balks at switching me over from zopiclone (which Canadian docs LOVE to prescribe, lol) to something that I feel will be more therapeutically effective. tl;dr- is zolpidem really all that prone to abuse when taken exactly as directed?
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