It was a gradual process from insomnia and Klonopin to today

Hi; I'm new here. I'm a middle-aged health professional (non-medical).

It started when I went to see a psychiatrist in 2010 to talk about a sex problem. I wasn't seeking meds, and I chose the psychiatrist because she allegedly specialized in helping people with the type of problem I had. After I described my sex problem, she told me there was nothing wrong with me, I was just dating the wrong men. But in the course of her taking my history it came out that I had once been on Zoloft. Like most doctors, she decided: Once depressed, always depressed. Let me tell you that I'm a psychotherapist and I've helped many people overcome mild depression and anxiety with no drugs and I've gotten some thank you letters years later! I knew this was bogus, but rather than trying to argue about what depression is I simply told her I could not take Zoloft again because it caused insomnia. She replied that people who have insomnia from Zoloft should take Klonopin. I also knew that that was ridiculous because I knew Klonopin was a highly addictive controlled substance that should not be taken daily, and Zoloft has to be taken daily! She wrote me scrips for Zoloft and Klonopin. Why argue? After I got home I shredded the Zoloft scrip but decided to fill the Klonopin scrip because I did have insomnia. I decided I would only take it once in awhile. What happened over the next couple of years is my Klonopin usage went from three to four times a month to twice a week. But it didn't seem to have any side effects, unlike Benadryl which made me groggy the next day. By 2013 it was more like three times a week and I went through a period in early 2014 of taking it nightly. It then stopped working so I stopped taking it for awhile and had bad insomnia that I mistakenly attributed to jet lag from a European trip. I started taking it again occasionally later in 2014 but quit for good in early 2015 because it had stopped working again and I also found, frighteningly, that all other sleep meds including melatonin and OTC Benadryl also weren't working. For the next five months I took no sleep aids and  I could not sleep more than 5 and a half hours a night, and I'm a 7-8 hour sleeper. I saw a different psychiatrist and asked her if Klonopin withdrawal could take five months? She said, "it could take even longer, and some doctors believe some people's brains NEVER re-set" 

But it got better. After the five months I started sleeping a bit better and the hopeless feeling and depression I'd developed started to go away. I started tracking how many hours of sleep I was getting per night in a journal, and realized there were some nights when I was sleeping 7 or 7 and a half hours. Taking a trip to the West coast helped because it caused reverse jet lag; I was sleepy at 9 p.m. as it was midnight in my time zone.

In early 2016 I still wasn't ever getting 8 hours sleep though, so I spoke to my primary care doctor. She prescribed trazodone, which I took for a few days and slept 8 hours each night. I continued to take the trazodone occasionally into 2017 and it worked fairly well for my insomnia, but I started to realize it was causing an anxiety disorder. I completely discontinued the trazodone in early 2017. At the same time I installed sound-proofing windows in my apartment to reduce nighttime noise. I relied on melatonin to treat occasional insomnia, or once in awhile 24-hour cetirizine (Zyrtec in the US, 24-hour Benadryl in the UK, technically allergy medication). I also began to cut down on caffeine.

Today I take half a Zyrtec (5 mg cetirizine) a couple of nights a week for insomnia and nothing the other nights. I sleep 6-8 hours a night, and this is enough for me now. I've come to the realization that the soundproofing windows have been helping and so does reducing caffeine. I also sometimes drink tart cherry juice which has natural melatonin. The cetirizine is in fact much better than other sleep aids because it's extended release and this means no rebound effect. I'd like to eliminate that too but that's a long term goal. I'm not depressed and I'm not anxious. I now look back and see that the Klonopin had been causing a low grade anxiety disorder, just the same way the trazodone also did. Psych meds are not for me!

So happy for you.

I wish you continued success!

Thank you for sharing your story, reading of successes like yours are very helpful to see.

Congratulations on being klonopin free!