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Shallow & Fake Sleep - Why??


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I’ve been dealing with fake sleep for 23 months. It’s sleep filled with vivid dreams and nightmares. It has a very shallow feeling. I know I’m not getting deep sleep. It can be for 6.5 hours, but I still wake up exhausted with a sickening fatigue feeling. It’s an ill feeling. My face looks dead. My brain is slow. My question - why won’t my brain get past this light, fake sleep?? 23 months is a long time. I’m angry and afraid it won’t end.
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DBM... I like your description!  My sleep was exactly the opposite for almost 3 years.. total coma, no dreams, no movement.  I would wake up exhausted.  The odd times it wasn't like that, it was how you described it.. shallow.  I was thinking there was a problem with the normal sleep wave patterns.. delta waves, etc.

  So I have started sleeping better in the last 3 months.. dreaming and waking up rested.  Still up and down, but I think finally headed in the right direction.  Hang in there.  Do what you can to rest.  It does get better!

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Thanks, Turtle! I’m glad you’re getting some real sleep. I can count on both hands the times I got actual, deep sleep, and man was it amazing. I keep going over possible causes for my bad sleep in my mind - Does peanut butter have too much histamine? What about bananas? I thought I saw a post about not eating bananas. Is it my mattress? You know, it could be the memory foam off-gassing. Was it that square of chocolate I ate at noon? What about the WiFi router? Isn’t that bad? But my phone is on airplane mode. Should I meditate again to flush out the subconscious so it doesn’t pop up when I’m sleeping? Maybe it’s the cortisol. Maybe it’s inflammation. Have I taken too much ibuprofen and killed my gut bacteria? Should I be taking probiotics? Which ones? And so on...

 

Truth is I know being generally healthy with diet, exercise, and lifestyle plus time is the only way. I just wish it would hurry up!!

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I never dreamed at all (that I remember) when I was on psych meds including benzos. When I stopped Lexapro I went through close to 2 years of intense dreaming and night terrors. When I finally started to taper valium, I still dream a lot but thankfully no night terrors and I wake up often. I think it's a rebound from all those years of not dreaming. I seem to be getting the occasional night of sleep but I'm still not feeling rested. I think restful sleep probably comes in time. The lower that my dose of valium goes, the better sleep gets.
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  • 4 weeks later...
Hi,,,,,my sleep feels like that now...Shallow and Fake...…..I was in a good wave....I started to sleep better last month.....felt so refreshed like a normal sleep should.....now.....within the past week....I am going backwards...not sleeping....maybe 4 hours, then up......lay there …..when I wake up after the 4 hours....I feel so weird...it is hard to explain.....I feel exactly what you and others have described....and when I wake up my breathing is shallow....haven't had that for a long time.....for the past week have felt awful during the day.....I have not had this kind of feeling before....certainly, lack of sleep....I feel like there is an alien inside me....It is an awful feeling.....I wake up wired again too.....it is like somebody is doing a cruel joke inside my body and won't let me sleep …….
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Know what you mean, DBM. I just woke up from a night like that. After being "out" for my usual 5 hours of unconsciousness,  I woke up and  started "dreaming while awake"  several times. Anxiety and horrific exhaustion set in. Got up ever so tired.  After breakfast things got better,  surprisingly quickly this morning.
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I’m dealing with the same thing, it is the absolute worst. That is the perfect way to describe it; fake sleep! I’m not conscious, but it doesn’t really feel like sleep either, and I am constantly exhausted and feel sick. It’s been going on for over six months for me, with only a two week window where I was getting close to normal sleep. It was so wonderful, and to think I use to sleep for granted!  I have tried explaining what I am going through to family members, but I think if someone hasn’t gone through it themselves, it’s hard to fathom how much damage these nasty drugs can do. 
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Hi EE,  no point in trying to explain that. Non-benzo people just don't get it! Lucky for them, just too bad for us. We have to suffer this alone. That's why so many people visit BB. The only place you find benzo soulmates.
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Yeah for 15 months, when I can sleep, I have had the fake light sleep. Or as soon as I fall asleep a horrible nightmare will wake me right back up. That can go on all night. Or I will fall asleep and my body will jerk and that wakes me up. Just rolling over in bed will wake me up to where I cant go back to sleep for the rest of the night.

 

I hope it gets better for you. I hope it gets better for all of us.

 

 

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Yeah for 15 months, when I can sleep, I have had the fake light sleep. Or as soon as I fall asleep a horrible nightmare will wake me right back up. That can go on all night. Or I will fall asleep and my body will jerk and that wakes me up. Just rolling over in bed will wake me up to where I cant go back to sleep for the rest of the night.

 

I hope it gets better for you. I hope it gets better for all of us.

 

Ocean this is exactly what I have although at night I manage to get in some sleep thanks to trazodone plus gabapentin. However if I ever try to sleep without these I can't due to the exact body/brain reaction you're describing. That's the reason why I'm holding. The rest of the symptoms are bad but that one is the worst by far and I really need to be functional in my life. I can't risk getting worse than this.

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I also go through periods of "fake sleep". I am unconscious but I don't feel like I slept. It's getting better but even one of those nights is hard to bear and a string of them is very disheartening.

This seems to be one of those things that happen with antidepressants and benzos.

At least we're getting some rest?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yeah for 15 months, when I can sleep, I have had the fake light sleep. Or as soon as I fall asleep a horrible nightmare will wake me right back up. That can go on all night. Or I will fall asleep and my body will jerk and that wakes me up. Just rolling over in bed will wake me up to where I cant go back to sleep for the rest of the night.

 

I hope it gets better for you. I hope it gets better for all of us.

 

Ocean this is exactly what I have although at night I manage to get in some sleep thanks to trazodone plus gabapentin. However if I ever try to sleep without these I can't due to the exact body/brain reaction you're describing. That's the reason why I'm holding. The rest of the symptoms are bad but that one is the worst by far and I really need to be functional in my life. I can't risk getting worse than this.

 

I hope it gets better for you. It crazy when the body has been on the meds for so long and then we try to do normal activities with out them. Like sleep, something others take for granted, is something that we are struggling with every night.

 

Just keep pushing thru it. I am sure that it will get better for all of us.

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...Sleep is prompted by natural cycles of activity in the brain and consists of two basic states: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM (NREM) sleep, which consists of 4 stages.

 

During sleep, the body cycles between non-REM and REM sleep. Typically, people begin the sleep cycle with a period of non-REM sleep followed by a very short period of REM sleep. Vivid dreams tend to occur during REM sleep.

 

 

....During NREM sleep, the body repairs and regenerates tissues, builds bone and muscle, and appears to strengthen the immune system. As you get older, you get less NREM sleep. People under age 30 have about two hours of restorative sleep every night, while those over 65 might get only 30 minutes.

 

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/12148-sleep-basics

 

It is my understanding the benzo use interrupts the sleep cycle and prevents the body from attaining  stages 3 & 4 of "Non-Rem" sleep (restorative "slow wave" sleep)  which is why we wake up so tired. Vivid dreams (which I get every night) is indicative of REM sleep, which is not restorative sleep for the body. 

 

 

 

 

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Thanks, Top. Have you heard of REM-only sleep lasting for a long time? How long have you had this issue? My face looks dead and my eyes are purple. I know I’m not getting past REM. I have gotten deep sleep a few times, and I looked and felt like a different person. I feel like I’m deteriorating.
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  • 3 weeks later...
I’m sorry, this is exactly how I would describe my sleep too (if and when I sleep). Every night for the last 15 months has been exactly the same. Like I feel awake, but I’m somehow sleeping. It’s as though I’m having dream like thoughts, rather than real dreams in a real sleep. It’s exhausting and has rly broken me down. Did this only start for you once off or tapering benzos?
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Yes... its pretty much been since tapering and once I got lower and more so since totally off.  The only way I really know I have get any kind of sleep is because of the vivid dreams. For instance, I woke up early this morning  about 4am like I usually do.  So I got up and got on this website and read something about Justin Beber going through withdrawal from Xanax.  Then I went back to bed for a while and.... what do  you know... I had a dream about Justin Beber getting arrested and somehow I ended up having to babysit his kids (which he doesn't have)..... weird.

 

And yes, unfortunately, I have seen others report "fake sleep" going on for years, but like all other

sxs, generally gets better with time.

 

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Hard to tell.  I known many have reported long periods of little or no sleep but eventually got

better.... but not linear. From what I understand "insomnia" can be caused by PTSD and benzos

and just stress in general. I believe it has to do with "sensitization" of our nervous system... no

matter what was the original catalyst.

 

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Agreed it is bizarre. I would guess that if you didn’t have this type of sleep before the benzos then it’s likely not ptsd but for me it’s hard to know because I went on Ativan after a horrible and extremely scary reaction to Zoloft so now I dunno if my system was sensitized from that episode or from the Ativan
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It's really annoying I don't know what's what. It could be a new ptsd reaction to benzo wd. If it's ptsd it's likely never going to go away. If it's bwd maybe it will improve over time. I'm almost 11 months.
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Assume it will go away. The alternative is to obsess about it which is not going to make you feel any better. I have experienced very long periods that felt like I didn't sleep at all. Then I slept a few nights and felt much better and then broken sleep again. It comes and goes. That's the nature of benzo w/d.
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