Anxiety induced insomnia

Well, luckily ive been sleeping well past 3 weeks since i got stable on my dose, but decided i need to get off this .5 xanax at night at some point. Started tonight. Of course since ive built this up for a week thinking about it, i lay my head down and of course after not falling immed to sleep like i have last 3 weeks i started having rushs of adreneline basically panicking cause i wasnt able to fall to sleep. Once that happens, im wide awake and start going down that rabbit hole of worrying that im not sleeping as the hours pass by. I think its because of my history, ive been on benzos before and tapered off of them, it took me a year and man i had some bad times with insomnia during that time that would give anyone PTSD. Oh well, hope you all sleep at some point.

Have you been able to get some sleep?

Have you been able to get some sleep?

 

Yes only because i reinstated to .5....once im stable again (ive been doing good for about 3 days now) right after thanksgiving im going to try it again, this time with a better plan (plan of my own)

 

instead of the .25 every other day baloney, ive asked for .25 pills so i can cut them up into 8 pieces. Going to take out 1/8 and hold for as long as it takes to be stable then keep going 1/8 at a time. Yes its 12% cut but its about as small as you can get unless i try crushing up the pills. Im going to give this a shot first. If a no go i might then get a scale and crush pills up. I think i can do 12%, its a hella lot better than 50% every other day which was literally killing my mental state.

I'm glad you got some relief and are coming up with a new plan, it looks like you're determined and motivated. 

the night before thanksgiving i did not sleep until 5am, i was super scared that i wouldnt sleep because its first time ill get together with my kid since my divorce 3 months ago. It meant so much to me to be with him. That pressure alone i laid my head down to sleep and had a rush of adreneline go through me because of the pressure to fall asleep. Thats all it took, then came some more after that. Next thing you know i got so desperate at 5am i popped another .5 pill, thank god i fell asleep. Same thing happ last night now, laid my head down to sleep and within seconds an adreneline rush came and gave me a panick attack, then came some more. I didnt sleep one minute last night. I think all this has to due with my first thanksgiving on my own after my divorce...id been ruminating about it for days before and was super depressed all yesterday on thanksgiving. Does this happen to anyone else.

Stress and worry can cause extreme symptoms, and it sounds like you were hit hard and I know many members experience sleep anxiety, its almost like we have PTSD when our head hits the pillow.  I'm sorry you're so miserable but I'm glad its behind you now so hopefully things will settle down.  Were you able to fake it for your son, sometimes that's what we have to do when this process robs us of the joy we used to feel.

Spitfire,

I’m sorry to hear about your horrible insomnia and divorce. I hope some of it has improved.

 

I never had insomnia until I believe I hit my tolerance level during the beginning of the pandemic and upped my clonopin dose from 0.25 mg to 1mg per day. BIG MISTAKE. No idea if pandemic, other health and financial stress or tolerance or the perfect storm of all caused my new insomnia. I can fall asleep, but I awaken after a few hours and it’s all anxiety all the time. I can’t breathe right and the adrenaline rushes, nausea and endless ruminating over when this will ever stop hit. This got worse when I tapered down too quickly (- 20%) Dec 1st, 22. I’m just starting!

 

I’ve found that listening to hours long relaxation loops on YouTube (with old head phones so they don’t fall out) help as well as deep box breathing and the muscle clenching and releasing techniques help. The Honest Guys on YouTube have some very long loops of guided meditative vids. You do get used to the voice after a few minutes. It’s slightly affected. I’m sure there are tons of others out there. Another thing that helps a bit is I just say to myself “Okay. Kill me now then. Do your worse.” Speaking to the anxiety, of course. I wouldn’t say this if I’d done a CT or a huge cut, which I wouldn’t do, or had horrendous side effects, but for insomnia, it helps a bit. The whole “go with it” technique from Dr. Claire Weeks.

 

For me, I do not want to go back up on my dose. Some do. Some don’t. I’ve been on these for over 25 years, so I don’t see an easy road ahead. I know crippling anxiety/panic attacks well. I just have to hope I get to a better place without things getting much worse. It’s a possibility, but I have to look to others who have made it through. Pretty much everyone and that’s reassuring.

 

My very best to you.

❤️