Sleep is Still Trash

My sleep is still terrible even after 22 months off this medication. It does not seem to be getting better or to the point it was at prior to this medication injury. I'm probably getting about five hours a night of broken, shallow sleep on weekdays. Maybe a little more on weekends. There are some dreams in the sleep too. I feel like I'm never going to overcome the anger symptoms and the fear/anxiety/depression I have without getting sleep and I'm wondering what I can do on the weeknights now. It's been a very long time of dealing with this.

 

I recently had two weeks off from work and slept better, especially during that first week with no antihistamines. Lo and behold, I started having windows after my time off. Now my sleep has been bad for the past ten days and I'm right back to feeling miserable. I have to keep a job and I can't take antihistamines every night. I don't know what to do.

Sorry man, just accept it as part of the healing process--if possible.  5 hours is actually pretty good.  Remember that some people's "trash" is other people's "gold."  I would have loved 5 hours of broken sleep when my insomnia was at it's worst. In fact,  I still get a 5 hour night here and there.  I know this is very frustrating but some just take longer for things to resolve.  If you had decent sleep in the past, you WILL have it again.  Try to stay positive.  You can beat this!  Baylissa said that she has not seen anyone NOT heal in time frame that others have healed in.  I still check out the success story page and see some people take a really long time to completely heal and write a success story.  I know that doesn't help you feel any better right now, but you could turn a corner at any time as healing and recovery is very nonlinear.

If I'm responding to antihistamines when I take them, doesn't that mean I'm out of withdrawal?

This is my issue too. The sleep I get is so so very shallow despite not feeling anxious at night. I often feel awake all night long but am probably getting some sleep cause I’d be dead otherwise. It’s been 15 months for me and I haven’t seen improvement either. I also dunno if this is even withdrawal anymore. Makes me feel like my brain just became conditioned to sleep this way. I see you had some sleeping issues prior to the benzo. I did too, my sleep issues came on after an immediate adverse reaction to Zoloft. Do you feel quite certain it’s withdrawal still or do you think there are other things that could be at play? I have no idea what to think about it for myself anymore. Sorry you are going through this torture

I did have sleep issues before this. I'm starting to think I'm normalizing and I'm just left with this sort of low-level depression, fatigue, and anger that goes along with my insomnia. I still have some burning nerve pain so I know for a fact that is withdrawal induced. However, I tend to fall asleep and wake up at like four in the morning with no ability to fall back to sleep. This is especially bad on work days.

Even this past summer I was waking up at 4:00 am on work days.  I am pretty certain it's all part of the process.  Just because you respond to an OTC medication (histamine) doesn't mean you're completely out of WD?  Some people take a long time to heal... 3-5 years or more.  Not sure why?  I just embraced waking up that early to do a little work around the house or catch up on a Netflix series.  In your response to waking up at 4:00 am lies true healing.  Don't think of waking up at 4:00 am as a bad thing.  Make it a positive thing.  On the days I woke up too early,  I went to bed that night about 8:30.  I also went through a stretch (many months) where I was awake between 3:00 and 4:00 am.  Just power through.  5 or 6 hours per night is enough until you can get more later on or on the weekends.  If you still have some symptoms that are WD related (burning nerve pain) then it stands to reason that your sleep could still be affected too?  It will probably never be perfect, especially since you said it wasn't before Benzos.  My sleep isn't perfect either, but it is usually refreshing and allows me to live a normal life.  The 7-10 hours I get pretty much every night now is so much better than ZERO or no perceived sleep or any amount less than 5 or 6 per night.

I go to bed between 10:00 and 11:00 and I usually wake up at 4:00. That's on a good night. Last night I couldn't fall asleep again and didn't fall asleep until after 12:40 when I finally took half an antihistamine.

I quit watching the clock.  I lay there fall in n out of sleep and around 4 I start a routine it's what I have to do.  I don't dwell on it.  Any sleep is better than none.

 

B

Acceptance and not caring if you sleep or not (I know way easier said than done, especially on a work night) won't make your sleep suddenly return, but it will make your mental state of mind a lot better and it will make it a lot easier to deal with nights of poor sleep.  I went to work many many times on zero, 1 or 2 hours of sleep.  Sometimes it was 2 or 3 days in a row on ZERO or no perceived sleep.  Just saying this because you are capable of a lot more than we give ourselves credit for.  I thought it was impossible to work with one night of no sleep.  I found out that is simply not true.  And looking back on work that I did during my sleep deprived year, it was actually pretty well done. 

 

As Bnotafraid said, any sleep is better than none or very little.

The problem for me is I'm back in acute levels of suffering. I'm 22 months off now. Even when I was my most depressed, like months 5-9, I would fall asleep quickly, and then have broken sleep for most of the night. Now I'm back to not being able to fall asleep at all right when I go to bed. It feels like acute in some ways because I have no reason to be stressed at all.

MTFan gave great advice on another thread in the insomnia board.  Focus on the sleep you get, not on the negative thoughts and patterns of what you don't get or how short it may be.  That negative thinking only reinforces what you are already upset about and frustrated with.  It can create "sleep  anxiety."  You go to bed and when you don't fall asleep as fast as you'd like to, you start going to  the negative thinking that only releases more cortisol that in turn keeps you awake longer.  You can go through cycles where you feel like you are back in acute.  I already mentioned that at 18 months off and 30 months off I had insomnia only spells that felt just like acute.  But those passed and sleep evened out. 

 

The sucky part of this journey is it plays out differently for everyone.  This could be the storm before some healing?  I remember right before I started getting stretches of some sleep 4 or 5 nights in a row I had a period of very poor sleep for a few weeks in a row.  Your response to this can make it easier or way harder to deal with.  Maybe it doesn't feel like it, but you are slowly getting there!

 

Quote from MTFan:

You've gotten some excellent comments and advice here from some old pros, UN. When I look back on my super long stretches of zero perceived sleep or the every other night mixed in with short sleeps or and long times of 1-4 hours, I have some things I wish I'd known then. I wish I hadn't spent so much time feeding the thoughts in my mind (the bad wolf) and churning over what terrible thing must be wrong with me, feeding the belief that I was broken and would never get better, entertaining repeatedly the belief I was permanently brain damaged, etc. Those thoughts just kept my nervous system activated, kept me in this state of heightened terror, and made sleep more difficult.

 

As sucky as it sounds, it takes however long it takes. But the fact is, it does get better. The 4 hours of sleep is an excellent sign. I know I harp on this a lot, but try to shift your mind over to celebrating what sleep you got instead of what you didn't get. Every time you let your brain focus on your upset about the sleep you didn't get or about the horrors of having insomnia, your system releases adrenalin and cortisol.

 

Of course your mind is going to spit out those thoughts so what do you do? Martin Luther used this metaphor: the birds are going to fly above your head, but you don't have to let them build a nest on your head. So when the catastrophic thoughts come up, notice them, and bring yourself back to something else in your present-your breath, the sounds around you, something you see (really focus on a patch on a tree or somewhere in your house and study it), or even a household chore. It's similar to changing the channel when something offensive comes on. You don't have to sit there and watch or scream at the TV. Just, "Oh, that's not good for me so I'm going to watch something else."

I took one of these herbatonin supplements last night and slept all night. Very low dose at .3 milligrams. I'm going to test it out this week and see if my sleep comes back.

 

[nobbc]https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Health-International-Herbatonin-Supply/dp/B006H9T94Q/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=herbatonin&qid=1579535445&sr=8-4[/nobbc]

 

Edit: Deactivated commercial link.

Great....most of the issues with melatonin supplements are twofold:  1) the dose is way too high 2) it is usually some synthetic form. 

 

This product is low dose and natural.  I really hope this continues to help you!

 

I might try this too for those off nights I get here and there?

Still feeling generally nuts today with symptoms I would attribute to withdrawal, however. Angry for no reason. Everything at work seems too hard. Don't want to talk to anybody. Body burning. Eye pressure. I would assume better sleep is going to help long term.

I'm sure taking this low dose of melatonin is more safe than taking Remeron or trazadone in the long run. And probably even safer than taking antihistamines.

Melatonin is completely safe compared to trazodone and especially Remeron (Mirtazapine).  Some argue that if you supplement too much with melatonin, your body might stop making it? But that is very low risk compared to the possible side effects of Rx drugs regardless of how "safe" some say they are.

 

Sorry you are still having symptoms.  I had a few months of feeling "angry."  The nice thing for me was after my sleep started to return, my symptoms slowly faded in terms of intensity and how long they lasted.

 

Do your best to ignore the symptoms, if possible. They are only "feelings" and not something "real."  Sure they feel real and you feel angry, have burning body sensations, etc., but there is no medical reason for those symptoms other than WD.