Posted by alexcanada on March 24, 2013, at 23:10:40
In reply to Re: My withdrawal is troublesome so far » alexcanada, posted by joe schmoe on March 23, 2013, at 12:26:35
normally i have not suffered from frequent awakenings. i used to be able to sleep for several hours in a row. now i wake up every 2-3 hours with a few exceptions and it often takes an extremely long time to fall asleep.
i may try some magnesium citrate tonight as i do not have melatonin.
i had to take a nap in middle of the day due to exhaustion but it took at least 2 hours to fall asleep.
perhaps it will ease up but i have been on benzos for around 6 years or more and have never been able to successfully withdrawal. when i was fully off valium for a number of weeks my mood became darker, anxiety filled, and extremely dysphoric. it felt dark and frightening. then upon starting up again of course i felt better with sufficient dose.
these days my withdrawal is much slower. from 10mg last year i'm now down to 2mg. last week it was 2.5mg. my mood is extremely poor though most of the time. i'm very withdrawn.
it's difficult to know what is my baseline anymore and what might be withdrawal but i know when i did a quick withdrawal for a day I initially felt better. Was easier to think and I was able to be more emotionally invested in things. the darkness and dysphoria would emerge the day after. though that initial feeling of better mental health was very promising. So i want to withdrawal from this mind numbing amnesia inducing garbage. my memory is mildly improving on lower dose.
these days have been rough. it's so difficult to speak to anyone. my depression is worse. very anti-social.
but i may be starting clomipramine tomorrow. perhaps it will make things more manageable. i really dont know what to expect.
> Lack of sleep can aggravate the withdrawal symptoms quite a bit, I think. I am finding melatonin to be quite a help with getting deeper more refreshing sleep.
>
> I do tend to wake up around 3 AM, but I usually can get back to sleep before long. This is actually a normal sleep pattern. There have been some articles recently about the historical evidence that humans always had a "first sleep" and a "second sleep" with several hours in between, until the invention of electric lighting.
>
> I think people who get stressed out about waking up in the middle of the night, are compounding the problem. It is kind of a pain, but an easy solution might be to go to bed earlier and schedule some "evening" activity for the time between first and second sleep, if you have trouble getting back to sleep right away. That way you could work with this sleep pattern instead of fighting it and ending up with not enough sleep total.
poster:alexcanada
thread:1032651
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20130322/msgs/1041009.html