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Insomnia when tapering Valium


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Hello

 

I am tapering my last mg’s of Diazepam and suddenly my Insomnia is getting worse. I am falling a sleep very late. It really feels as if the switch is just not turned of. I'm wide awake and really high in energy at night. Just such a different feeling when I'm sleeping well. Taking a nap during the day is also not possible. But I'm having that problem for over 2 years that I'm using benzo's. I just don't sleep.

 

For 1 week now i am taking 1 mg of Diazepam instead of 1,5 mg (started 2 months ago with 5 mg) where i was sleeping very well on. It was getting worse last week until Saturday when i slept a full 8 hours. I was so reliefed and thought that i was over it. But last night i did not sleep at all.

 

Monday: 23:45 to bed. Sleep at 02:30 until 06:30 (4 hours)

Tuesday: slept from 01:30 until 06:30 (5 hours)

Wednesday: slept from 02:30 until 06:00 (3.5 hours)

Thursday: slept from 04:00 until 07:00 (3 hours)

Friday: Slept from 05:00 until 07:00 (2 hours)

Saturday: Full night sleep from 11:00 until 07:00 (8 hours)

Sunday: Full night awake (0 hours)

 

Is this pattern normal and why is it getting later and later that i am falling a sleep except for the night i slept well.

 

I am planning to have 1 mg for 2 weeks and then go to 0.5 and then stop my Diazepam.

 

Greetings Wouter

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This is very similar to what happened to me as I tapered off clonazepam - insomnia set it at the end of my taper and after I jumped off.  I hadn't been sleeping great even with benzos for while a while because I had become tolerant to them.  But after I jumped, for me it quickly became a night of zero or near-zero sleep and the next night I would sleep fairly well because I was so exhausted.  I didn't nap at all during the day either and still don't.  I understand what you mean when you say you feel like the switch is not turned off!

 

I'm over two years off now and I sleep better than I had in a very long time.  It took quite a while for natural sleep to come but I find it is better than benzo-induced sleep.  The link below was so helpful to me during those months of insomnia and I hope it will be for you as well:

 

http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=235100.0

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Thank you so much for your reply. By "switch" I mean that I am fully awake and so clear in my head. No sleepy feeling at all. Sleep just does not come. I am just so afraid that I will not be able to sleep again. But then again I was thinking the same last week and the I had a full night of sleep.

 

This really is the hardest part of tapering until now. Normally if I had a good night sleep it would just stay like that for the other nights. This one is taking really long.

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Insomnia was the hardest part of withdrawl for me as well.  It took about a year for this issue to correct for me.  I'm sorry you are there sonic1974.  Hard to keep the faith I know but please know that this issue resolves reasonable well for even the most stubborn of cases.
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Hello

 

This night again still awake at 03:00. Nothing is happening not even feeling tired after a night of no sleep. So i was in panic a bit. I took 1 mg extra just to sleep. Now I have a bad feeling about this because it took me so long to get here (1 mg). But I could feel it would be just a sleepless night again.

 

Does anybody experiences this in the same way at the end of tapering and also multiple nights awake after each other. Is this something I have to go through. It's so hard when you did not sleep a night (0) hours.

 

I find it really strange that I could sleep on 1.5 mg really well the last few weeks. And now that I am tapering to 1 mg i have such trouble with my sleep.

 

 

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It is as if the addicted brain knows you are trying to withdraw the drug and is now in rebellion. Benzo addiction is a horrible addiction to try to overcome but like Kate said to you, you simply have to keep going and finally stop the drug at some point and endure some painful waiting until natural sleep starts to return.
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I have gone for 4 nights straight without almost any sleep and I was still able to drive my car and hardly felt tired. It seems that benzo withdrawal insomnia causes a state of hyper-excitability in the brain in which you do not get tired despite not sleeping.
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  • 2 weeks later...

I have gone for 4 nights straight without almost any sleep and I was still able to drive my car and hardly felt tired. It seems that benzo withdrawal insomnia causes a state of hyper-excitability in the brain in which you do not get tired despite not sleeping.

 

Yes exactly, good point.

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  • 3 weeks later...
I'm down to 1 mg.  I will be off December 11 of this year.  I'm currently taking Lunesta and it is helping.  I think I'll continue taking it till I'm off this cursed Valium.  Then after I'm off, I'll take Lunesta ever third night till I heal. 
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Well i quit my diazepam 1.5 week ago. Slept really well for the first 6 nights but since then i am falling asleep at 11:00 and wake up constantly around 01:00 or if i am lucky 3:00 o’clock but the weird thing is that i just can not fall asleep anymore after i wake up. Is this normal after quiting Diazepam. And why did i sleep well for the first days.
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I ran into this issue with clonzepam as well.  Like clonazepam, diazepam is one of the longer-acting benzos.  It likely took several days for it to fully leave your system, hence the insomnia.  It took quite a while but I finally adjusted to sleeping without benzos - I trust this will happen for you also.
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When I had my last diazepam 0,5 mg I could sleep really well. So I really thought that sleeping would not be a problem anymore. Or is it normal to have insomnia problems after stopping all Diazepam. The last 5 days I had 2 hours of sleep per night.
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