Is this normal.....?

Is this normal guys..? 27 months off and still i can't get more than 4 to 4.5 hours of sleep. it's not enough, i wake up tired anxious easily triggered and filled with intrusive thoughts.

 

So this is it , there is no more healing after this point....?

 

Not to mention other issues like relentless worry and noise sensitivity

 

Thank you guys 

It looks as if you're still healing if you're dealing with sound sensitivity and intrusive thoughts so this tells me that when you do heal more, you should get more sleep.  I don't want you to lose hope, I've read success stories from those who have still been suffering years away from their last dose, I hope you'll be one of them someday.

As bad as it is, what you are going through is well within a normal timeline of healing for many people. I was pretty much where you are now at about the same point. It can take years to fully recover but that does not mean that you are at your worst the whole time and then suddenly get better. Things do start to get easier along the way. Sleep seems to take the longest time to improve, but once you can get more of it from time to time you will feel better. Lack of sleep makes everything worse.

 

You should consider adding a signature to your posts describing what you are recovering from so folks will have a better idea what you are going through.

Great idea alohafromhawaii, here are the instructions to add a signature.  Add your history/signature 

Done...! but doctor told me this is not withdrawal anymore and i passed all withdrawals, i don't want to believe this , i want to believe that there is still a room for more healing and i can sleep better someday without taking anything more..... 

It has been my experience that most doctors just don't understand benzo withdrawal. They will say that the drug is out of your system so you should no longer be having problems and not seem to realize that you are suffering from actual damage to your nervous system that needs a lot of time to heal.

 

You can research it yourself, but benzos stimulate GABA receptors and this leads to the relaxed feeling that they give you. Over time your brain detects this artificial stimulation and sees it as an imbalance in need of correction. It begins to actually work to counter the effects of the benzos and that is why it is common to need more and more to feel the same level of relaxation. When you take away the benzo the brain appears to be very slow to get that message and will continue to work against the benzo that is no longer there. This results in the loss of much of the GABA receptors' natural function until balance is restored over time. This tends to cause severe insomnia and lack of sleep itself can cause all kinds of nasty nervous symptoms. I was doubting that my GABA receptors would ever return to normal, but they did.

Done...! but doctor told me this is not withdrawal anymore and i passed all withdrawals, i don't want to believe this , i want to believe that there is still a room for more healing and i can sleep better someday without taking anything more.....

 

I was told by 5 different doctors and a psychologist that all of my symptoms and poor sleep had nothing to do with Benzos or WD.  They said I had other underlying mental conditions or illnesses for which they wanted to put me on more drugs.  I refused and completely healed. 

 

I'll be 4 years off on August 5, 2020  from 6 months of Benzo use and I concur with Aloha that sleep takes a long time to even out for some reason.  I still get nights of only 4 hours or so and often wake up several times per night.  On average I manage about 6 hours or more per night. 

 

Regardless of what you are being told, I would bet it is still the temporary damage caused by the Benzos that is messing with your sleep.

Thank you guys for your replies, today is one of those bad days i was only able to get 3 hours of sleep due to sound sensitivity and i was unable to get back to sleep, it's frustrating, pure torture. i feel more dead than alive, how am i gonna go on like this ?, i though i would be completely healed by this time, but i was wrong .... 

The biggiest mistake I made was expecting to be healed by a certain time.  Your healing and recovery is what it is and will end when it ends.  That's not very comforting but it is the truth.  If you expect to be healed by a certain date, and you are not, then you are only disappointed. 

 

Plus how you react to sleep makes a huge difference.  I often convinced myself that I should feel like crap if I didn't get enough sleep.  Instead I decided to be grateful for any and all sleep and I felt a lot better on the same amounts of sleep.

Thank you ThEwAy2, god bless you and bless all of you, i am trying and i am struggling hopefully accepting what is here.........