lost my job due to insomnia,will sleep ever return?

Sadly I lost my job last week due to serious insomnia I suffer for a year already.I couldn't work in rotating shifts so I lost my job.

Last psychiatrist gave me diagnosis of neurasthenia which is rare condition,I do have some symptoms of it,and I read it has correlation with insomnia and it's chronic condition.

So I became very anxious and affraid if I will ever fall asleep without meds,and when I take meds besides antipsychotics I always wake up between 2-3 a.m.

I tried them all 25 mg of seroquel,25 mg of amytripline,trazodone 75-100 mg,olanzapine 2.5-10 mg,remeron 7.5-15 mg,100 mg gabapentin.

they all give me very bad side effects tomorrow like drowsiness,sleepiness,bad hangover, etc and it's hard to function normal and live normal life.

I currently take nitrazepam 5 mg just but I know I will hit tolerance soon.

I take 20 mg of lexapro in the morning.

I really don't want to spend rest of my life taking antipsychotics for insomnia,I'm just 35.

I just want to know if sleep will ever return and I'm so affraid it will not,because a year has passed.

You've pumped a lot of different meds into your body.  While the loss of your job is not a good thing, perhaps you can salvage something positive out of it by weaning off all of those sleep meds and giving your body a chance to learn to sleep by itself again.  It won't be easy, and you should probably obtain the help of a therapist to help you get through this.

 

I did it a couple of years ago.  I went c/t from all sleep meds.  I slept 1-3 hours a night for a while, but then it slowly got better.  I never made it past around 5-6 hours on my own, but at least my body was sleeping 'organically'.

Yep I did try a lot of meds.Last psychiatrist wrote me I suffer from neurasthenia which I read about and it coexists with insomnia but the disorder is chronic.

Does it mean I will suffer with insomnia for the rest of my life?

Previous psychiatrist gave me diagnosis of depression and anxiety,for which I take lexapro but it seems  it doesn't help.

I did CT MRI of brain all fine,but EEG shows increased anxiety.

Hi paparazzo

 

Many people suffer with various sleep conditions.

 

Mine was started by anxiety, my constant worrying if I would ever sleep again.  All i can say is time should heal.  I say should because it is different for all of us.  I have been suffering from insomnia now for over 2.5 years.  Once I came off Xanax, Lexapro and Booze I have now more or less stabilized on 5mg ambien and 50mg Seroquel.  Like you I have tried many different things both Rx and some OTC to try and get sleep.  I find that once you can try to calm down you will start sleeping better and longer.  Now I am by no means healed as when I try not to take a dose of my meds I still wont sleep but to know I can from 1-1.25mg of xanax, ambien 12.5 and drinking all to get  3-4 hours of crappy sleep and I am not getting more like 6-7.5 hrs I will still have the random waves where I get some bad light sleep but the thing is I now dont let it get my anxiety going.  I just live my life best I can.

 

Try to get out of the house get some fresh air, some sun light, do some brisk walking or even light jogging.  I find the more I do to keep my mind off sleep the better I feel, even if I had a rough night of sleep.

 

Just know you are not alone and many people and tons that are not on this forum suffer from some form of sleep issue.  I think as we just get older some things like this happen which really sucks.  Wish I was a kid again and could sleep those 10 hours lol

Yep I did try a lot of meds.Last psychiatrist wrote me I suffer from neurasthenia which I read about and it coexists with insomnia but the disorder is chronic.

Does it mean I will suffer with insomnia for the rest of my life?

Previous psychiatrist gave me diagnosis of depression and anxiety,for which I take lexapro but it seems  it doesn't help.

I did CT MRI of brain all fine,but EEG shows increased anxiety.

 

I don't think you have to suffer from insomnia for the rest of your life, but it will probably take some time for your mind and your body to come to terms with sleep.  First thing to do is to stop stressing over sleep.  It will happen or it won't and worrying about it won't help.  I still have plenty of nights where I find myself awake at 4 am.  I'm good with that.  Sometimes I can fall back to sleep if I just relax.  Other times, it's clear that my mind is too hyper to let me sleep, so I open up the laptop and start doing stuff.  I'm good with that too. 

Vey sorry you lost your job. Shift work is terrible for people with insomnia. I've done swing shifts before when I worked at a paper mill and it was hard enough without sleep problems. Was there a time in your life where you did sleep well?

Sorry to hear OP, luckily I run my own business and I usually only work 4-5 hours a day at my office anyways.  I couldnt imagine having to work swing shift or graveyard.

 

Hope you heal soon! 

I slept normal until back in May,last year.Then I started to have some stomach problems,were sent to psychiatrist and then hell came.Depression,anxiety,borderline personality disorder and now neurasthenia (some symptoms I do have)

But I went through lots of stress in this year,hospitalized 2 times,I seeked for cure for my insomnia but they threated my other conditions I mentioned above.Now I've become pathetic.

I feel empty,easily get tired,sleepy over day,depressed.I'm really worried if I have neurasthenia.

What is your sleep like now??

 

What meds are you on?  I know the Dr's love to throw meds at people.  Once I started getting clean (meaning off the majority of the drugs I was given) I started healing.

 

I am still taking seroquel 50mg and ambien usually 5mg but the combo lets me sleep 6-7.5 hours (will still have a rough window here and their) but usually I sleep decent now lets say 24 out of 30 days in a month.  I can deal with a few days here and there.

 

Don't get too down on yourself and really the best advice I can give you is get out even when you feel like crap and be active in one way or another.  I go to the gym 6 days a week, Run 2 days a week and I mean run 6-10 miles each time and I also mountain bike 2 days a week which I now enjoy so much!  I think keeping busy really helps you to not be down on yourself and to keep your thoughts off of how bad you are feeling.  When I am riding my mountain bike I dont have time to think about my shitty sleep the night before, all I am thinking about is how to handle the 3' drop off I am approaching.

 

Keep strong!

Melatonin works for Me, ask Your Doc or pharmacist . Its totally natural with NO side effects. Medical sleep aids only work for a certain period of time before fizzing out but NOT melatonin. Plus meds do not provide true sleep ask a sleep doc!

Tried even 6 mg of melatonin.Can't make me fall asleep. :'(

melatonin and OTC did nothing for me at all.

 

 

Melatonin did nothing for me until I was a few months off benzos.  Now it works wonderfully.

Yep same here. Melatonin didn't help me sleep at all and just made me feel like puking. That's just me though. If it helps someone else, fair enough.

 

Strangely enough, it does seem to help some when I drink Tart Cherry Juice (high in natural melatonin, but way less than what comes in a bottle). Some studies I've read say that the milligrams typical in OTC pills are way too high. They say micrograms are more effective in most people. You can't correlate that larger amounts will work better. 

 

http://www.easy-immune-health.com/melatonin-dosage.html

https://sleep.org/articles/how-much-melatonin-to-take/

etc.

So guys,what should I do?

I'm currently taking 12.5 mg of seroquel but I feel really zombified tomorrow all day long,nasty hangover effects,from that tiny dose.

I haven't tried 300 mg of gabapentin.

Lexapro can cause insomnia in some people, so if it isn't definitely helping you, I would get off of it.

 

You've tried all kinds of stuff, maybe it is time to quit and get back to sleeping without anything at all, as badsocref mentioned. Nothing, no OTC stuff, no ADs, nothing. You also need to get over the fear of not sleeping, having to take a pill of some sort to try and get to sleep. Start to trust your body again and let it heal naturally.

 

I did not make any headway with my insomnia until I was ready to do that. Throw out all the meds, empty the medicine cabinet, and deal with whatever sleep I would get without getting too stressed about it. It hasn't been a cake walk, but I've done better than I figured I would. Currently at about 6 hours a night in a couple of chunks.

I can switch to Zoloft if Zoloft wouldn't cause insomnia to me.

I've tried really a lot of meds.I do sleep better on antipsychotics but I can't function over day on them,so they are not an option.

Last year tried Trazodone 75-100 mg worked good for sleep then after a month stopped working.

Tried Remeron 7.5 mg-15 mg, 7,5 mg works for few days,hangover over day is tolerable,but after few days I can not fall asleep on 7.5 mg and 15 mg is too much,makes me fall asleep all day long.

12.5 mg -25 mg of seroquel,fatigue over day,sleepy,barely can function.

2.5 mg-5 mg of olanzapine drowsiness,hung over feeling,sleep good on it but drowsiness is just too much.

Last year I could sleep good on 3 mg of bromazepam for like 2 months.

I was taking nitrazepam 5 mg for a month recently,and suddenly I kept sweating and I think it caused my anxiety to go high.

Meowie how can you be sure that I can fall asleep without meds?I can't risk it,because I need to be fresh and go to job.

Few months ago I know I didn't take any meds and insomnia was so hard I couldn't sleep 5 min 3 nights in a row.

Meowie how can you be sure that I can fall asleep without meds?I can't risk it,because I need to be fresh and go to job.

Few months ago I know I didn't take any meds and insomnia was so hard I couldn't sleep 5 min 3 nights in a row.

 

This is the thinking trap that will keep you on sleep meds forever. Your body was not designed to sleep only with meds, it can do a perfectly fine job without meds if we just get out of the way. I know how difficult it is to get off meds and OTC stuff--it is like jumping off a cliff, but it is the only way to get off the roller coaster. Every time you take a medication, you are activating the systems in your body that keep you awake, and the body has to recover from this disturbance, which takes time.

 

Yes, you will have a period of very poor sleep. But you will survive and gradually get better. I had to function with nights of only 0 to 2 hours, but somehow the body adjusts. The biggest hurdle is the psychological part, because the fear of not sleeping will definitely interfere with sleep when it is so fragile. Somehow you have to get to the point where you trust your body to do what it needs to do.

 

Otherwise you can resign yourself to endless sleep drugs, if so hopefully you can find something that works without too many side effects and a lot of long-term damage.

Meowie thanks for reply,but I wonder why did you took all these meds for sleep?

I mean you could do same what you wrote me,wait to fall asleep without meds.

Yes, I did take a lot of meds for a lot of years! And I thought for a good portion of the time, that they were "working well" for me. But my memory is not what it should be. Things finally came to a head, drugs weren't working so well anymore, and I had to go through the process I just described in March. The cold turkey that I did was one of the best decisions I have ever made, it hasn't been easy, but things are looking much better now, and I am totally DRUG FREE! for the first time in 35 years.

Why you think sleep should return if it didn't for a year?

Once I stopped to take antidepressant and didn't take nothing to fall asleep.I could barely last 3 nights.For 3 nights I slept 5-10 minutes maybe,

Which seem odd,right?

sleep meds are tricky they work great on some people and on others they are a slippery slope.

 

I think meowie is giving you sound advice but stopping CT for many of us is hard or impossible as we are too scared to go too many nights in a row on very little sleep.  IME so far if i take nothing I get 0 sleep.  I have been making great improvement and I sleep better now that I did when I was on high doses of meds.  It is tricky and seems like you are very sensitive to certain meds.  I take 50mg seroquel at night which helps allow me to sleep longer but that alone doesnt seem to put me into lala land so i take the 5mg ambien when i turn off the lights.  Took me a few days to not have that next day groggy feeling but now I feel pretty darn good.  I obviously dont want to stay on these meds for ever but i will for a while until I feel up to the challenge again to start cutting, which might be sooner than later.

 

The main thing is to try and learn how to cope with this and relax.  It is all anxiety and mental based and it feeds on itself.  Good luck!

Yes, I did take a lot of meds for a lot of years! And I thought for a good portion of the time, that they were "working well" for me. But my memory is not what it should be. Things finally came to a head, drugs weren't working so well anymore, and I had to go through the process I just described in March. The cold turkey that I did was one of the best decisions I have ever made, it hasn't been easy, but things are looking much better now, and I am totally DRUG FREE! for the first time in 35 years.

 

Hi Meowie,

I agree that sometimes you just have to go cold-turkey with z-drugs. Doing a taper just puts more of the crap into your system before you finally are able to jump. It has been a rough year + for me since I threw out all of meds one day, but I have not taken a single pill since then and I do not plan on ever taking one again.

 

I still go back and forth with sleep.  Some nights are more like my early withdrawal period while others are now pretty much normal sleeps. I'm not sure if things would have been better or worse if I got off the Ambien slower, but I do know that I could not take what was happening to me at the time and felt that I just had to get off the pills.

 

Congratulations on being drug free! After 35 years that is a huge accomplishment. Now you can enjoy experiencing your normal life returning to you.

Last night I woke up at 2:30 exactly.I always wake up around that time.And can not fall asleep anymore.This is killing me.

The worse thing in last 2 weeks, is I'm having lack of concentration I have nausea over day,gut problems,bad apetite,which I didn't had before.

This could be a lot stress related,but seems like my brain is just wired to wake up around same time.

What can I do about that?

This insomnia is symptom of something,but what could it be??

I thought to do some hormones test,because no psychiatirst told me what is the reason for this particular insomnia.

They excluded organic issues like tyroid hormones and that,but something wakes me up and I can't solve the problem,and it lasts too long.

 

I would get a second opinion on that diagnosis. Take this time as a break. You'll bounce back on your feet soon. You need this time to chill. I'm getting off all meds that help with sleep. It's in natural to take a drug to sleep.