One month benzo free and exhausted

I always fall asleep easily at 9:30p watching TV and go to bed at 10:30. I'm waking up nowhere between 12:30 - 3 am feeling like I'm going to explode with tension. The last 2 months I get up and jog in place while holding weights. I try to express any anger or fear while doing this. At first, I was going back to sleep by 5am and wake at 7am feeling ok.

I took last bit of valium about a month ago. Now, insomnia is brutal. I still work out but don't fall back to sleep anymore. I am in a constant state of exhaustion with only 1 or 2 days per week that I feel ok. This morning, I had a bad anxiety attack I think just from fear of having a nervous breakdown from exhaustion while trying to work. I got up and started beating pillows and screaming about frustration and wishing for death. This is very scary because I'm getting worse instead of better. I keep thinking maybe it's not withdrawal and need to go do sleep study but then I read how others here are in the same boat from withdrawal.

I also need some reassurance that this will end. Will this last months and months? Will it kill me before it heals me?

This was my welcome-to-withdrawal gift from Ativan, too. I’m so sorry you’re in this phase, but it does pass eventually.

 

At first I got 0-2 hours of sleep a night, and then it began to go up in small increments, but the terror upon awakening continued for quite a while.

 

One day sleep fell on me all of a sudden, right at the office. I fell asleep with my face flat on the desk. After that I began to be able to sleep in two four-hour chunks, inconvenient but not bad. Then the terror vanished, and I began to be able to nap again.

 

I was on Ativan for almost six years, plus other drugs, so I may have been slower to recover, but now I can sleep like a teenager again. Try to find quiet stuff to do while you’re stuck in awake-mode. The only thing that really helped me was to accept the situation instead of fearing it. I’d read posts from others about this over and over, just to hold the belief that I’d recover from insomnia that I was sure would kill me.

 

Please know that your brain will fix itself eventually, and you will totally survive this horrible phase.

 

Trust me..I feel the same way. I'm a month off and I feel like I can't do this anymore. Insomnia is brutal. My night pretty much consists of this...i dreadfully crawl into bed at 10, put on my mask and ear plugs, lay on one side for an hr or so, then my back, side, the other side again. Adjust my ice pack I keep on my head wrapped up in a blanket a thousand times. Get up at 2, go get another ice pack, lay back down, dream a little around 3-5 but could have swore I was a wake and can't  go back to sleep. I never feel sleepy at all. Just feel like I have a god awful flu.

I am having symptoms of histamine intolerance since last week. Eating just about anything causes my heart rate to skyrocket. I'm going to continue this post under the Health topic. This could be why I don't fall asleep after working out in the middle of the night.