Posted by zeugma on March 11, 2006, at 6:32:24
In reply to Re: Hypnopompia? » River1924, posted by tizza on March 10, 2006, at 18:44:25
> interesting River, I have suffered from this since I was about 4, sleep paralysis, excessive daytime sleepiness, terrible nightmares that continue into my bedroom and I can't move but not narcalepsy. I have just become use to it. Paul.>>
The drugs that block sleep paralysis and excessive REM are tricyclics, MAOI's, and last and least, SSRI's (this last class of drugs actually causes REM behavior disorder at a rate far higher than any other class of psychotropic med). Unfortunately, I cannot become used to it, because I do not merely experience visual, but also tactile hallucinations, intense pain that shoots my body and makes me feels as though I had fallen asleep in an electric chair. My REM latency, unmedicated, is zero- in fact on my current mix of meds (Provigil for EDS and ADHD, clonazepam for extreme social anxiety, and nortriptyline, an old TCA, for REM blockade and depression, with buspirone, a poor anxiolytic but with antidepressant properties, for additional REM blockade-)
staying awake is essential for me on this mix. Provigil does not block REM, so it actually makes me more vulnerable to sleep paralysis hypnagogic hallucinations etc. The first day I took clonazepam, I went immediately into REM when I fell asleep (so I know that clonazepam alters sleep architecture in some way that collapses sleep stages 1-4, leading to easier entry into REM).So I take lots of caffeine, that helps the general fog, and I try to avoid excessive emotion (that is a well known trigger for cataplexy, and I believe that corticosterone increases REM pressure, and corticosterone is released during stress), but avoidance of excessive emotion, although it is the reason I relentlessly analyze every stimulus I encounter in order to drain it as much as possible of emotional significance in order to avoid increasing the REM pressure (a tactic I intuitively adopted when faced with increased hallucinations/paralysis when stressed) is not really possible in this world.
-z
poster:zeugma
thread:616710
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060310/msgs/618730.html