Avoiding stimulants and exercise work the best. Do you know that in 2001 I didn't sleep for 12 days. This was in The Netherlands so no pills would EVER be offered.
I can't make it > 3 days w/o sleep. My brain starts to "micro-nap" regardless of what I'm doing. This is hella dangerous for the same obvious reasons one shouldn't hand a live chainsaw to a narcoleptic, and I stopped doing the Narconomicon Dance™ years ago in favor of sleep optimization.
On day 13 I was taking my GF to hospital for some minor procedure and I had a grand mal seizure IN the hospital.
The term "Grand Mal seizure" sounds so stately and regal, like it's in Grand Central Station and warrants pomp & circumstance, catered wine & champagne, Swedish meatballs & hors d'oeuvres… Mmm… I need to find a good cocktail party to attend
they got worried and injected diazemuls. It STILL didn't stop so the consultant made a 'heroic' decision to inject me with clomethiazole (Heminevrin) which she had never used before. It took 400mg to stop me.
That's what they gave ppl w/DTs back in the 1940s - 1980s, clomethiazole. Idk about "heroic decision" tho – their malpractice insurance provider might think otherwise had that gone poorly
I woke up TOTALLY lost, naked in a bed I didn't recognise with all of the lights switched off. It was almost pitch black, just pin-lights and it was 10PM.
Or as I call it: morning. Lol, j/k. That sucks, man. I have a friend w/epilepsy who describes similar “time-travels”, shall we say? Fade from black to a hospital bed and temporary retrograde amnesia. Doesn't sound fun.
After that my career using computers was over. I have to stop for 30 minutes every couple of hours
Well… I think you're supposed to do that anyway for your vision and mental clarity
or I get NESD (non-epileptic seizure disorder) and it feels like the screen is sucking me in....
I am reminded of the Aphex Twin video for
Come To Daddy. I'm not adding the link bc the video could cause seizures, ironically enough.
Poor Abuelita.
I've been curious about those types of sounds for sleep but I was worried about what subjecting my ears to 7 hrs of low frequency audio every night would do to my hearing.
As long as the decibels are low, I think you're ok. More problematic to me is the music is too cheesy like most "New Age" music. Anyway, aren't you the lead singer of Sonic Youth?
I had school at 7 am and hockey from mindight to 1:30 AM and still couldn't sleep.
Well no wonder. That's a terrible schedule for getting adequate sleep. Consider:
school @ 7 AM, but
hockey practice from midnight until 1:30 AM??? And you see no problem with this?
If your practice ends at 1:30 AM, realistically you have to first travel home, first, right?, take off your hockey accoutrements and put stuff away / into laundry bins, ok
then!☞ take a shower, dry off, brush your teeth, etc. By now it's 2:30am and you were
just working-out rigorously only 1 hr ago. Your body needs another ~45 min still to wind down, meaning you're not
asleep asleep until 3 AM or later.
Being up that late with school at 7 AM does not for a healthy sleep schedule make, my guy.
Insomnia is a real condition and that is not questionable.....
Perhaps you have a condition, but how could anyone know if you only give yourself 3 hrs to sleep most nights?
I kind of was about to blowback on your first post, instead it got a heart after some critical thinking.
Much obliged
For some of us the brain does not turn off at the end of the night despite physical fatigue.
So you suffer from chronic primary insomnia with no underlying cause? That sucks; I'm sorry. When was this diagnosed by your doctor, and how long was it going on prior to your diagnosis?
barbs trump benzos (opinion?)
Not as far as safety profiles go. Barbiturates will body jokers up. They have significantly less distance between active dose and LD50 compared to BZDs, and this is the primary reason benzodiazepines have largely replaced barbiturates in both the pharmaceutical industry and as a street drug.
so I guess I figured best would be most euphoric and hardest hitting.
I feel like these two qualities are almost mutually exclusive. You know, every benzo has the same properties, just at different levels, right? So they're all sedative, hypnotic, inebriating, CNS depressing, disinhibiting, appetite inducing, calming/relaxing, anticonvulsant, somnolent, amnesic, and anxiolytic, but some are more suited to these qualities than others depending on various factors such as how they affect GABA and at which subtype sites. Xanax and Valium for example are better anxiolytics than say Flubromazolam which tends to be more sedative and somnolent. There is also variance in the duration of action, half-life to elimination, and onset.
Drug-Induced Euphoria
And different still from these qualities is "euphoria".
Drug-induced euphoria has several varieties in my opinion. Here's a list of six I came up with:
- stimulant euphoria
- entactogen euphoria
- opioid euphoria
- musculoskeletal euphoria
- psychedelic euphoria
- dissociated euphoria
There is some overlap of course, so maybe this could have better taxonomy.
And now, here's a partial list / data chart for…
Benzos Prescribed For Insomnia
| DRUG NAME (BRAND) | HALF-LIFE TO ELIMINATION | APPROXIMATE DOSE | NOTES |
|---|
| Estazolam (ProSom) | 10-24 hrs | 1-2 mg | Desmethylalprazolam (Xanax minus a CH₃ group) |
| Flunitrazepam (Rohypnol) | 18-26 hrs | 1 mg | Roofies, never brought to market in the U.S. |
| Flurazepam (Dalmane) | 40-250 hrs | 15-30 mg | For short-term treatment of insomnia. Long-acting benzodiazepine |
| Loprazolam (Dormonoct) | 6-12 hrs | 1-2 mg | Intermediate duration, widely prescribed |
| Lormetazepam (Noctamid) | 10-12 hrs | 1-2 mg | 3-hydroxy BZD derivative and temazepam analogue, well tolerated |
| Nitrazepam (Mogadon) | 15-38 hrs | 10 mg | Mostly limited to acute seizure management |
| Quazepam (Doral) | 25-100 hrs | 20 mg | Less respiratory depression & ataxia, selective to type 1 BZD receptors |
| Temazepam (Restoril) | 8-22 hrs | 20 mg | For cases of severe insomnia |
| Triazolam (Halcion) | 2 hrs | 0.5 mg | Short half-life is good for short sleep sessions but won't help one stay asleep |
Has anyone had a prescription for Halcion? I believe it was popular back in the day, but is seldomly used these days.
I've never had my own script, but I've taken triazolam before as ℞ Halcion. To me, it's very much like Xanax, or perhaps a like a Valium high if it were distilled into 120 minutes. I could see that becoming problematic for the compulsive…
