Your experience with Ambien (zolpidem)

I'm curious as to what your experiences with the Z-drug Ambien have been and how it may have affected your benzo use/withdrawal.

 

A quick background : I began Ativan use 25 years ago for panic attacks. They not only quelled anxiety but helped me sleep. I took between .5 - 1MG at night.

 

When I was put on shift work 15 years ago, I had trouble sleeping even with the Ativan, so I got a prescription from the doctor for Ambien, 10MG. It was quite effective; after about 45 minutes I would fall asleep and get a good 7 hours of sleep and have little problem with grogginess after waking.

 

Over a period of time, years, actually, I noticed that it took longer to fall asleep and I would begin waking during the night (or day, depending on the shift work). The impulse then is to take more, which I usually resisted but sometimes gave into.

 

For the past couple of years, I keep waking up every 2-3 hours. The drug will still put me to sleep, although it sometimes takes a while, and then it gives me an abrupt waking. I've learned to split up the dose, taking part at bedtime and saving the rest for one of the inevitable wakeups. I am retired now, and have no deadline or time I have to get up, but the ups and downs all night are getting very tiresome. In fact, that is what brought me to BB and helped me to make a decision to taper.

 

At least three posters told me I should get off the Ambien first and then work on the Ativan. This because of the very short half-life of Ambien. Not fully understanding what that meant, I concentrated on the Ativan, figuring I would save the Ambien for last, because it would at least let me get some sleep. I managed to go from 1MG Ativan to .35 in two months, with very little problem. I've rarely had any issues with Ativan, as far as tolerance or it not working.

 

I think I've made the mistake of not working on the Ambien first, because for the past two weeks, I've been updosing the Ativan to .5 -1MG to make up for the sleep disturbances I get from the Ambien. What I'd like to try is to taper off the Ambien, using the Ativan to help sleep and any withdrawals I may have from the reduced Ativan. I've reduced from 10MG Ambien to 7.5 and will go to 5MG tonight. If I need to take a little extra Ativan to help, I will. I feel I need to get off the Ambien first, as was advised to me, then work on the Ativan. Taking two drugs at once and then figuring out how to taper them just complicates things.

 

Going back to when I worked shift work, I developed this fear of not sleeping. I rarely had any sleepless nights, with or without medication, but there was always this fear or phobia that would cause me to take more than what was actually needed. I've had a fear of not sleeping and a fear of having anxiety, and that has made me ripe for getting into the benzo and Z-drug habits.

 

One other thing: on the information sheet I get from Walgreen's regarding Ambien, it says that if a person stops taking it, they may have one or two night's "rebound insomnia". They don't mention anything about a withdrawal syndrome. Although I'm sure there likely is a withdrawal, I do have the Ativan to back me up.

 

If anyone would happen to have had issues with both meds and how they are dealing with them or did already deal with them, I'd appreciate your comments.

 

 

My experience with Ambien is that it is not a "gentle" drug. It knocks you out and jerks you awake. It is almost guaranteed to give me sleep issues the next night after I use it. Taking the smallest amount necessary (like 1/4 to 1/2 of a 5mg. pill) seems to work best for avoiding rebound, but I still usually get only about 4 hours of sleep from it. So I find it almost useless.

 

I've used a benzo for a long time, but not continuously. It is interesting, there seems to be a lot of people who have used Ativan for a long time. I don't see any issue with you tapering the Ambien first, then the Ativan. I mean, after 25 years, what's a few more months? As long as your dose isn't escalating.

 

But I think your biggest problem is fear of not sleeping. Getting past that and being able to accept a night without sleep, or with just a few hours, and realizing that you can still function, is going to make the most difference. Once you don't have that fear, it loses a lot of it's power. Then you won't need to knock yourself out with drugs all the time. Avoiding shift work would also help tremendously.

I can't comment on tapering from both Ambien and a benzo from personal experience since I only used Ambien on a regular basis when I got into trouble, but it does sound as if the two drugs produce very similar withdrawal symptoms. It seems to me that anybody tapering off of Ambien is going to really be tempted to updose any benzo that they were also taking since the insomnia and anxiety can be pretty severe. Maybe avoiding any updosing would be a good idea since the original dose will provide some relief from the Ambien withdrawal while not making for a longer benzo withdrawal. I can see what I complicated situation you are in.

 

Earlier I did a lot of searching for info on Ambien withdrawal and found the same thing that you saw. For some reason the drug companies really want to downplay how serious it can be. Because of what I read, I expected a few days to maybe a couple of weeks of some sleep problems, but got something very different instead. It is very possible that most people don't run into much trouble getting off of Ambien and that we only hear about the ones that do. It just seems to me that the problems are more likely if the user first hits tolerance to the drug. Remember reacting to tolerance by upping the dose is not taking the drug as recommended, so any bad withdrawal possibilities will not be addressed in the drug literature.

 

It seems that most, if not all of us entered withdrawal with some fear of not sleeping. I thought for sure that I would sicken and perhaps die if it went on long enough. After awhile you just sort of come to terms with it and perhaps even become surprised at just how well you can do on very little sleep. It seems that prior to reaching any sort of breaking point, your body has a way of allowing enough sleep to settle in to get by. Also, it seems that we get more sleep than we think at night (as long as we are in bed trying for it).

I can't comment on tapering from both Ambien and a benzo from personal experience since I only used Ambien on a regular basis when I got into trouble, but it does sound as if the two drugs produce very similar withdrawal symptoms. It seems to me that anybody tapering off of Ambien is going to really be tempted to updose any benzo that they were also taking since the insomnia and anxiety can be pretty severe. Maybe avoiding any updosing would be a good idea since the original dose will provide some relief from the Ambien withdrawal while not making for a longer benzo withdrawal. I can see what I complicated situation you are in.

 

Earlier I did a lot of searching for info on Ambien withdrawal and found the same thing that you saw. For some reason the drug companies really want to downplay how serious it can be. Because of what I read, I expected a few days to maybe a couple of weeks of some sleep problems, but got something very different instead. It is very possible that most people don't run into much trouble getting off of Ambien and that we only hear about the ones that do. It just seems to me that the problems are more likely if the user first hits tolerance to the drug. Remember reacting to tolerance by upping the dose is not taking the drug as recommended, so any bad withdrawal possibilities will not be addressed in the drug literature.

 

It seems that most, if not all of us entered withdrawal with some fear of not sleeping. I thought for sure that I would sicken and perhaps die if it went on long enough. After awhile you just sort of come to terms with it and perhaps even become surprised at just how well you can do on very little sleep. It seems that prior to reaching any sort of breaking point, your body has a way of allowing enough sleep to settle in to get by. Also, it seems that we get more sleep than we think at night (as long as we are in bed trying for it).

 

 

Hi Aloha,

 

When I first mentioned my desire to taper off these meds to my doctor, he said that I might have trouble coming off the Ativan but not the Ambien. Unless he has personal experience with the withdrawal or knows anyone that has, I don't see how he would know any better. Like I said, the fact sheet from Walgreens says if you stop them abruptly you will have one or two nights of "rebound insomnia" but it mentions nothing about withdrawal. Someone like yourself knows better, and it's probably a good idea that  people know that this stuff is not to be taken lightly.

 

I've done research on the net and found that Z-drugs are chemically similar to benzos, and yes, they do have withdrawal symptoms and are supposed to be gradually tapered off.

 

Getting back to fear of insomnia and how much lack of sleep we can get by with, there was a time when I first started taking the Ativan, way before I started the Ambien. I took a few extra here and there and ran out a week early and couldn't get it refilled. That was my cold turkey episode, it lasted only 5 days til I got the refill, but I was sleeping only three hours a night, yet going to work for 8 hours and actually not feeling too bad except for the light-headedness and low-grade anxiety. I wouldn't want to go through that experience again if I could avoid it or at least minimize it through slow tapering.

 

I'm going down to 5MG tonight and see how that works and play it by ear after that.

 

Best wishes to you and everyone else!

I never seem to run out of things to say when it comes to Ambien. The current safety info on Ambien states that the recommended maximum dosage is 10 mg. for males and 5 mg. for females (they process it differently). It also states that the drug is not intended for continuous use beyond 3 weeks. If taken within those guidelines a person would probably only experience a couple nights of disrupted sleep when they stop. It is interesting to note that not much is said about what could happen if the guidelines are not followed.

 

Unfortunately, most doctors will continue prescribing Ambien to patients month after month and even year after year with the belief that it is okay if taken within the maximum safe dosage level. This relaxed attitude toward prescribing leads to the false belief amongst users that the drug is actually fairly safe. This makes it much more likely that a person would feel like it is probably not too dangerous to up their dose when sleep becomes extra difficult. I actually had a doctor that smiled and said that he "didn't want to hear it" when I told him that I needed to take 20 mg. to get any sleep. The message that I got from that was that 20 mg probably was not a great idea, but it also wasn't overly dangerous. The doctor should have figured out that I was dealing with drug tolerance from misuse and that I was facing a hard withdrawal. In short, Ambien is a very useful drug if taken within the stated guidelines. It helped me with sleep for many years until I got careless with it. I think that patients need a lot more education about how to use it.

 

I hope that reducing down to 5 mg. works for you. Maybe along with a modest hit of Ativan you will be able to get enough sleep to make this work out okay after all. Good luck.

My experience:

 

Ambien = the drug from HELL!!!

 

Briefly, I was addicted to Ativan for a few years. I did an 8-month taper from 2mg Ativan to 0 between Apr 2015 and Nov 2015. By the end of the taper I was experiencing severe insomnia. A doctor prescribed Ambien, and I naively took it for 1 week. I didn't realize that I was effectively taking another benzo, and that it would badly kindle my fragile nervous system that was trying to heal from the Ativan. The Ambien did make me sleep - I was out cold within 5 minutes of taking it (this is scary in itself). But I learned there are worse things than not sleeping. Each day after taking Ambien to sleep, at around noon like clockwork, I'd go into a *severe* interdose withdrawal reaction. I don't even know how to characterize it - I guess "anxiety attack" would be the closest term, but it was *much* worse than any anxiety attack I had experienced withdrawing from Ativan. It was anxiety colored with an overwhelming sense of doom. Like being trapped in a horror movie. It was suicidally bad anxiety. Plus the Ambien was mucking with my mind and my memory - I couldn't remember things that happened the day before, couldn't construct a timeline of recent events. It was truly scary stuff. I figured out it was the Ambien causing all this and stopped it in less than a week. But I had to re-instate the Ativan in an attempt to stabilize myself. 1 week of Ambien entirely un-did the 8 months of work I had done tapering Ativan. It took me another month just to stabilize. Now I am doing taper #2. This time I know to stay far far away from any Z drugs during this taper.

 

I don't know what to advise you other than to drop the Ambien NOW. It is even worse than Ativan (which itself is pretty bad). Then you'll need to stabilize and work on your Ativan taper. You might consider crossing to Valium which is an easier drug to taper from and is pretty sedating (so maybe you'll have fewer problems with insomnia). That said, insomnia is an almost inevitable symptom of tapering off any benzo. You'll need to accept that and figure out how you're going to deal with it in a way that doesn't involve getting addicted to even worse drugs than the one you're trying to get off of.

 

Take care and best wishes,

 

Chessplayer

I LOVED IT!

 

I didn't sleep for 14 days, and I was given zopiclone, I took it and it felt like I'd just had a glass of gin I was floating on air, I slept amazingly and I was like "Great I'm cured"

 

I took it for 3 months to get back to normal then came off it for a year, then when insomnia came back I took it again, but then I started to not be able to sleep without it, when that happened I took it, to this day every day for 9 years now, and I went from 3.75 (lowest dose) to 7.5 to now 15mg

 

I think it's the best sleeping pill to use against all the benzo's but it still has all the same crap that benzos caused

http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=97331.640;topicseen

 

Check this group

http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=97331.640;topicseen

 

Check this group

 

 

Thanks for that link!

 

When I first started the Ativan taper, I found that I was taking more of the Ambien, I guess to compensate. Or like I say, robbing Peter to pay Paul. I can only handle one thing at a time, otherwise I'm overwhelmed and I'm not going to get any progress done. So I'm telling myself, taper off the Ambien first. Don't worry about the Ativan, just don't take a huge amount. Although they are two different drugs, I'm hoping the Ativan will help me deal with Ambien withdrawal.

 

As has been said, Ambien is a very harsh drug. I don't like those abrupt awakenings. I'm going to concentrate on gradually eliminating it.

I were you I'd cross entirely to Valium, i.e. get off both the Ativan and the Ambien via a cross to Valium.

The short-acting benzos & Z-drugs are very harsh; they're the most addictive and the hardest to taper from.

And you're on two of them. Both bad.

 

10mg/day of Valium should be about right to cross to. You can taper from there.

 

F...ing nightmare!

F...ing nightmare!

 

Hi Cindys,

 

How are you doing these days? Is your sleep improving at all? I'm not sure where you are in your withdrawal. My sleep is becoming more and more reliable and I am no longer living in a sleep deprived fog. Still get ringing in my ears that drives me nuts once in a while and now that I am trying to get back into shape I really realize just how out of shape I became. I hope that your are starting to enter into a happier place.

My experience:

 

Ambien = the drug from HELL!!!

 

Briefly, I was addicted to Ativan for a few years. I did an 8-month taper from 2mg Ativan to 0 between Apr 2015 and Nov 2015. By the end of the taper I was experiencing severe insomnia. A doctor prescribed Ambien, and I naively took it for 1 week. I didn't realize that I was effectively taking another benzo, and that it would badly kindle my fragile nervous system that was trying to heal from the Ativan. The Ambien did make me sleep - I was out cold within 5 minutes of taking it (this is scary in itself). But I learned there are worse things than not sleeping. Each day after taking Ambien to sleep, at around noon like clockwork, I'd go into a *severe* interdose withdrawal reaction. I don't even know how to characterize it - I guess "anxiety attack" would be the closest term, but it was *much* worse than any anxiety attack I had experienced withdrawing from Ativan. It was anxiety colored with an overwhelming sense of doom. Like being trapped in a horror movie. It was suicidally bad anxiety. Plus the Ambien was mucking with my mind and my memory - I couldn't remember things that happened the day before, couldn't construct a timeline of recent events. It was truly scary stuff. I figured out it was the Ambien causing all this and stopped it in less than a week. But I had to re-instate the Ativan in an attempt to stabilize myself. 1 week of Ambien entirely un-did the 8 months of work I had done tapering Ativan. It took me another month just to stabilize. Now I am doing taper #2. This time I know to stay far far away from any Z drugs during this taper.

 

I don't know what to advise you other than to drop the Ambien NOW. It is even worse than Ativan (which itself is pretty bad). Then you'll need to stabilize and work on your Ativan taper. You might consider crossing to Valium which is an easier drug to taper from and is pretty sedating (so maybe you'll have fewer problems with insomnia). That said, insomnia is an almost inevitable symptom of tapering off any benzo. You'll need to accept that and figure out how you're going to deal with it in a way that doesn't involve getting addicted to even worse drugs than the one you're trying to get off of.

 

Take care and best wishes,

 

Chessplayer

 

Chessplayer,

 

Until you wrote about it, I forgot all about that sense of doom thing. I had it too. I now remember feeling like something bad was going to happen throughout every waking minute (and I did not sleep much). Never could put my finger on it. It just felt that something was very horribly wrong and was about to come crashing down around me at any minute. On one particularly bad night I put a blood pressure cuff on and could not believe the unusually high reading I got. I tried again a short time later after trying to calm myself and it was back down to my normal low. What fun memories.

Wow I have the sense of doom!!!!! Every day I have this weird feeling that everything is going to end.. Like the world is going to end, (but not that the world is going to end) but the same feeling you would get if it was!!

 

 

re: "f***ing nightmare": cindys, that's a succinct summary of how I feel about Ambien!!!

re: "f***ing nightmare": cindys, that's a succinct summary of how I feel about Ambien!!!

 

 

How is your present Valium taper compared to your Ativan taper? I know you said that you thought I should crossover from Ativan to Valium, I just wondered what the difference is, if it's significant enough to make it worth it.

My Valium taper is going well, thanks. No symptoms yet. The longer half-life and sedating properties of Valium make it easier to taper from. I think it's worth crossing to.

 

Chessplayer

My Valium taper is going well, thanks. No symptoms yet. The longer half-life and sedating properties of Valium make it easier to taper from. I think it's worth crossing to.

 

Chessplayer

 

 

Thanks for your quick reply!

 

I hat a stopping point, I got myself down to .35 Ativan for two weeks then found myself increasing the Ambien! Now I'm kind of levelling off on each. I see my family doctor Tuesday. I don't expect him to have any answers; he hasn't had any yet. But I'll ask him if he can recommend someone who will perhaps know something about benzo addiction, someone that might recommend valium and a schedule to go with it. Though I could make the schedule myself (and probably will) I want to see what they have to say.

 

I tried that "benzodocs" link, and all I got was a "GoDaddy" domain advertisement.

 

Best wishes to you!