Synthetic marijuana

Hi--

I've been doing a slow titration taper from 2 mg Lorazepam for a month, and am now at 10%--yay! Here's what helps me sleep: two 5 mg Melatonin plus two 2.5 mg Dronabinol (Marinol)--synthetic marijuana. I was given Dronabinol for nausea when I was on chemotherapy, when the usual anti-nausea medications didn't do much. It also made me drowsy. I ran the Dronobinol + Melatonin combination by my oncologist, who's OK with it and says it's much safer than Ativan.

A friend of mine takes regular marijuana, in the form of gummies (!), for her insomnia, after consulting a cannabis clinician and going to a dispensary. I have no idea how it compares to Marinol, but it's another option. 

I would be careful supplementing with melatonin every day.  Melatonin is a hormone that the body makes naturally.  Most forms you can purchase are synthetic. Your body might stop producing it or produce lower amounts as a result of nightly supplementation?

For primary insomnia (insomnia that is not related to a medical or environmental causes), melatonin seems to shorten the amount of time it takes to fall asleep, but only by about 12 minutes. Melatonin does not appear to improve "sleep efficiency," the percentage of time that a person actually spends sleeping during the time set aside for sleeping. Some people say melatonin makes them sleep better, even though tests do not agree. There is some evidence that melatonin is more likely to help older people than younger people or children. This may be because older people have less melatonin in their bodies to start with. There is some interest in finding out whether melatonin might help with "secondary insomnia." This is trouble sleeping that is related to other conditions such as Alzheimer's disease; depression; schizophrenia; hospitalization; and "ICU syndrome," which involves sleep disturbances in the intensive care unit. Research to date suggests that melatonin might not help to reduce the time it takes to fall asleep in secondary insomnia, but it might improve sleep efficiency.

Withdrawal from drugs called benzodiazepines. Early research suggests that taking the controlled-release form of melatonin by mouth seems to help older people with insomnia related to withdrawal from drugs called benzodiazepines. But the majority of research shows that taking melatonin does not help with benzodiazepine withdrawal in most patients.