I wake up every hour.

I wake up every 45 minutes to an hour to use the bathroom every single night. This goes on all night.  I wake up 6-8 times a night.  I have tried stopping drinking any fluids after 4pm and that makes no difference.  Is there anything that I can do to get longer periods of sleep?  Many times I wake up at 1am and I do not fall back to sleep.  Sometimes i wake up at 1am and i am up for 4-5 hours before I am able to get another hour or two of sleep.  This is madness.  Any advice? 

I has this pretty bad the first year. It gets better with time bud.

 

I got desperate and searched for everything, eventually i found bladder retraining. This works but its limited.

 

You just have to push through to urges to pee and go back to sleep. Your brain is rebooting.

 

Just like when it first booted as a little kid you had to train your bladder and nerves around your sleep schedule. You have to do this again.

 

Push through the urges to pee all day as much as you can. Make the spaces between breaks longer and longer. if you wake up and need to go, hold and go back to sleep. The first time i did this it fixed my sleep for 3 weeks. Until the sxs crept back in. But I got better and better at it over time.

 

If its only happening at night and not during the day then its not purely biological right? its nerve and psych related as well.

 

Oh my sleep is good now, no pee breaks, maybe one tops. But its not every night, many nights i get 6-7 hours restful sleep.

 

I have this too, only bursts of rem sleep, wake up several times a night. Can never go longer periods of deeper sleep. Very very unrestful and even more energy consuming than daytime when I’m not fighting the awake-sleep back and forth for so many hours.

Runner3, I could have written your post myself, literally!

The reply from pinkyandthebrain about pushing through in the night is not going to happen with me.  The need to get up and go is just way too overwhelming.

There are times, after being awake for an hour or two, that I get up to go so it doesn't bother me later, if by chance I do go to sleep.  There are a few times, when I can ignore it for maybe an hour, but that isn't often. 

Frequent urination is a symptom of WD since your nervous system is in "overdrive" it affects how often you need to relieve yourself.  Bladder incontinence

and Bladder irritation – feeling of having an infection or cystitis are listed along with others.

 

Here is a link for a comprehensive "possible" symptom list.  I say possible as not everyone gets any or all of the listed symptoms

http://w-bad.org/symptoms-list-a-z/

TheWay, so how long does withdrawal last?  I'm soon 29 months out with what seems are worsening insomnia. I have this long list of things that keep me from sleeping, but a non existent list of things that will help me sleep. I've done and tried most everything suggested on here.  I am down to 1-2 hours.

I cannot even nap anymore.

Any ideas?

I have this as well. I wake up each REM cycle. At first I thought it was SRPE (sleep related painful erections) but now I feel like it might just be a coincidence that I’m getting an erection that wakes me up each time since that happens in REM as well. This was/is one of my scariest symptoms to me mostly because I feel alone in that not many people mention it. I think there’s just too much going on in the brain between adrenaline and loads of the other stuff during REM sleep.

Gosh, guys, I forget there are other symptoms that goes on with the opposite sex.  Hopefully this goes away.

Hang in there!

TheWay, so how long does withdrawal last?  I'm soon 29 months out with what seems are worsening insomnia. I have this long list of things that keep me from sleeping, but a non existent list of things that will help me sleep. I've done and tried most everything suggested on here.  I am down to 1-2 hours.

I cannot even nap anymore.

Any ideas?

 

I wish I had the answer, but I can only guess. From your signature it looks like you started benzos and Z-drugs for insomnia.  Unfortunately healing from those won't fix your preexisting condition.  What it did for me was give me coping skills for those one-off nights I get here and there.  Mostly I sleep pretty well now even though I started Benzos for sleep issues too.

 

Have you cycled through this with sleep before?  I mean more hours that fade down to 1-2 hours per night?  I had a month long wave at 18 months off after sleeping well for 6 months or so.  I had 4 zero nights and a bunch of 1 and 2 hour nights.  It was like I was back in acute WD again.  It took about 2-3 months for it to get back on track.  I still get off nights and I am 44 months off.

 

This is very hard to do, but if you can go to bed not expecting any sleep and that you are going to just rest your body, sleep could return.  That's what helped me.  When I was younger, I would purposely stay out until 2:00 am and then have to go to work for 5:00 am.  I would go a whole week on 2 hours or so each night and it never bother me.  I always slept a lot more on the weekends.  When I stopped worrying about sleeping or what lack of sleep could do to me, it slowly came back. 

Don't really have help for it....but I know that extra adrenaline and stress makes you pee. Pretty sure there are studies about it

When my insomnia was raging I was peeing every hour. Then when I started sleeping...still woke every hour and usually went pee.

Then Finally started getting more hours at a time and less pee. Now don't get up to pee hardly ever.

So wish I had something to make it better!

Theway2, I lost this thread for a few days.  Finally found it, so here goes.

My insomnia was caused by the stress of sleeping with a husband who snores horribly. Early on, if I could fall asleep first, I did fairly well. As time went on and the first child was born, the sleep was interrupted by nightly feedings and colic.

Time moved on as did the constant snoring. Eventually I went to the living room sofa and finally to the basement where our son's old bunk bed was.

The quiet was amazing and I did sleep.  My husband, the ever so difficult person, was upset I was downstairs. His temper grew short and my stress long.

I saw a psychiatrist while taking myself to marriage counseling and she quickly put me on clonazepam, ambien and welbutrin. Strange as I was not depressed.

Within 9 months, I tapered off of the welbutrin. The benzos stayed for a year, when I attempted to taper off on my own. I went right to zero sleep, so went back on. The shrink had stressed I HAD to have sleep.

The years went by with less and less sleep. Eventually I found the Benzo buddy site and the rest is history. I was successful finally tapering off of clonazepam. I had CT the Ambien a year or two before that.

I stopped drinking any alcohol and ate mostly healthy.

Here I am on 4/9/2020 sleeping so very little.

You suggest I not care if I sleep or not. I try telling myself not to care, but when I feel so awful from not sleeping, I have no idea how to get to the "I don't care mindset."

Any suggestions are welcome.

You are a deeply caring person, who does an amazing job trying to help us. Thanks so very much.

NG

 

 

Thank you for your kind words and sharing your story.  It's a bit of a contradiction trying not to care if you sleep or not.  Of course I wanted to sleep and still do, but I tried to go to bed with the idea I wasn't going to expect any sleep, zero, none.  I was just going to rest my body because even if I couldn't get much sleep, my body still needed rest.

 

I set the expectations very very low, which was very very hard to do.  I could say out loud I don't expect to get any sleep, but my conscious mind was telling me, "no you need to get some sleep."  It took awhile, but when I could finally go to bed without expecting any sleep, it slowly started to come back.  Don't get me wrong, it probably would have come back anyway, but I think more came back a bit quicker by not expecting any?  It put my mind in a state where I wasn't freaking out and tossing and turning and punching the pillow.  Why would I do that when I wasn't suppose to be sleeping anyway?

 

So it was more about learning to cope and deal with the lack of sleep.  You are far enough out that maybe CBT-I could help?  Otherwise short of OTC remedies such as low dose (0.3mg) of melatonin or CBD products, I don't know what might help you.  It seems that your insomnia was psychologically driven to begin with and maybe that is where it is once again?  It could still be a combination of WD and anxiety/stress?

 

Have you ever had a sleep study done?  They usually look for apnea, but could also check out your sleep cycle, etc.  Unless you have insurance that would pay for it, they are expensive.

 

I wish I had more advice to give you.  I was mentally very weak when this started and now I am so much stronger.  I know lack of sleep will not kill me or anyone else.  Sometimes PCPs and Psychologists can do more harm than good? 

Hi ThEwAy2

I am like many on here in that what works once to help my sleep, does not work as well the 2nd night and then stops.

I've tried melatonin and had some strange reactions to it. It has been long enough ago, I don't remember exactly what happened.

As for the CBT-1, I've not tried that either. I'll read up on it, though.

Trying supplements has not worked very well for me, so I'm just winging it, without anything else.

 

A few years before I found BB and started my taper, I went to a sleep specialist that my PCP recommended for help getting off of clonazepam and Ambien.

When the guy walked into the exam room, the very first words out of his mouth were, "if you are here for more drugs, you aren't going to get them."

I replied, "actually I am here for help to get off of the drugs I am on."

He then questioned me as why I had taken an antibiotic nine months before. I had to wrack my brain to remember even taking an antibiotic.

The doctor was incredibly rude. He recommended melatonin, yellow glasses for computer/tv viewing and one other thing I don't remember.

He then gave me a device to wear for 24 hours. He decided from that, I did not have sleep apnea. I'm not a snorer except when I have a head cold.

Once I returned the device to him, I never felt like going back.

 

I've considered finding another sleep specialist for a sleep study, but my neighbors both have had studies done without any good results with their sleep issues.

 

My insurance will cover the costs.

 

I'm thinking that maybe my sleep has gotten worse because of my situation as well as the pandemic. I'm concerned about my very elderly widowed mother living alone on the farm, 600 miles from me,  and the people who stop by to check on her who are not concerned about the virus.  Good grief.

 

I'm hanging on by a thread, so as long as it doesn't break, I'm can only trust things will get better one day.

 

My sleep did improve last year  for a period of time, so hopefully I can get back to that again.

 

Take care,

NG