insomnia resistant to everything

thanks, guys, i really do appreciate all of your input.

i wrote that i had already tried ativan. i actually took some tonight, obviously it didn't work .

long story: ambien and lunesta are pretty close to the same thing, so i feel like if lunesta was a nightmare ambien won't be much better. and anyway, i can't take hypnotics anymore because i've overdosed twice... but before i passed out, both times, i spent hours being a fucking idiot doing stupid shit that i was embarassed to find in the morning/night/whenever i finally woke up. i call people and act like an asshat and make retarded art projects and it's just stupid.

short story: hypnotics don't work, even if i take the whole bottle at once, which i have done.

i've already taken four times my dose of ativan to try to see if it'd work, and it didn't really. i could ask for xanax or valium or some other benzos, but if ativan doesn't work i don't know if i really want to bother.

another long story: i've talked about seroquel a lot with my psych, and i'm really hesitant to take it. i do have psychological problems, and have been prescribed antipsychotics/mood stabilizers without taking them because i don't think i need them. i was on antidepressants but went off them because i don't think i need them. anything that would put me to sleep would have to be in a high enough dose to have the same effects it has on someone who's using it for the psychological effects... i was taking trazodone for insomnia at high enough doses for it to work as an antidepressant. right now all i'm taking is ativan to try to sleep and strattera to see if it might help my ADD even half as much as adderall did, and psychologically i feel better than i have since i first started taking meds. so i'm afraid to take anything that will possibly have an affect on my consciousness and my personality. medications don't seem to help me get to baseline, so i've been trying to get there the way people who don't have problems do it... by being as sober and healthy as i can. anything i take to sleep, i will have to take every night, at a high dose. i'm afraid a mood stabilizer/antipsychotic would make it impossible for me to maintain this almost-baseline feeling i've worked up to.

short story of that: it's really important to me that whatever i take doesn't have an affect on my day once i wake up, because it's taken me a lot of work to get to the point where if i manage to wake up before 2pm i can almost have a normal and productive day. it'd be too easy for even a subtle influence to completely screw up that balance.

thank you guys so much. i'm going to look into maybe taking benadryl or nyquil... if anyone has anymore suggestions i'd be grateful as hell.

 

i thought i'd add a few more paragraphs, to address everyone.

...even if i could smoke weed in my current living situation, it just gets me really enthusiastic and creative and wanting to do things, so i end up staying up all night doing stuff instead of staying up all night doing nothing.
unless i were to smoke myself comatose every single night. which would totally be the solution, if i didn't live with an ex-stoner uncle who would smell it immediately and have to tell me long boring stories about why he decided to quit and why he doesn't want me to make the mistakes he made blahblahblah.

i might try valerian root...

as to whether it's a spiritual problem... that's possible. but i've had insomnia since before elementary school. i would drive my parents nuts laying in bed singing all night, if i could find enough energy to physically force myself to go to school it would be in pajamas with unbrushed hair, i'd stay up till 4am every morning in middle school and high school, and by the time i dropped out and started homeschool i just wasn't sleeping at all, taking caffeine pills to make it through day 3. i don't remember a time when i thought 10pm was late; until halfway through elementary i still thought 4pm was a reasonable time to wake up. there's no doubt i have spiritual and psychological problems, but the sleep issue, i think, is more habit and how my body has adjusted over the years than anything else. i think my circadian rhythm has changed to where i'm most alert at night, but if i can find something that will just flat out knock me out and stick to a normal schedule for a few months straight i think i might be able to get it back on track. that's all i'm trying to do... get to the point where i don't have to take drugs most nights. but until then i do, every single night, or i simply do not sleep. sometimes i'm awake until 4 or 5, but usually it ends up being midnight the next night before i can fall asleep.



sorry this is so goddamn long :[

 

i have another question:

does anyone think my psychiatrist might let me try having a variety of sleep meds to cycle through? becuase i've found that every new thing i try will work for the first two or three days, and then stop working, even if i stop taking it for a few days. then, after a while, if i go back to it, it will work again for a few days. also, if i have a few days of sleeping at night and waking early and being really active, i can sleep at night without any sleeping pill for maybe one night before the insomnia comes back.

so, for example, if i had ativan, lunesta, sonata, and trazodone, i could take ativan for two nights, sleep one night without anything, take lunesta for two nights, one night without anything, sonata for two nights, then one night, then trazodone for two nights, one night, and by the time i get back to ativan it's been 10 days since i last took it and it might work again.

i'm sorry, i know my posting so much must be annoying, but it's 4am, and this fucking sucks.
i already try to practice good "sleep hygeine", exercise but not within 3 hours of bedtime, try not to drink any caffeine and if i do it's before 10am, i do breathing exercises, i do reiki, i meditate, i do yoga, i've even used binaural beats. it doesn't matter how calm i get or even how sleepy i am, it's like my body won't rest until it physically shuts itself down.

i just came through a suicidal phase that lasted at least 8 months, and right now the two biggest dangers to my state of mind are lingering effects of sleeping medications and the way my brain is drained of dopamine and seratonin after staying awake 24 hours. it is a very delicate balance; if i do nothing i swing too far in one direction, and if i do the wrong thing i swing too far in the opposite direction. but if i can find one thing to help me maintain equillibrium, i'm pretty sure i can make it through this.


maybe this thread should be moved to mental health because of all my rambling?

 

yes seroquil will knock you right out or just find a nice indica strain

 

I went through a 6 month bout of insomnia a couple years ago. Took Restoril, Trazodone, Elavil, Xanax, Valium, tincure of opium, and a myriad of other meds (not at the same time, hehe). The meds which did induce sleep left me with a waking haze the nest day, and the sleep I did recieve was of poor quality (no dreams, no REM, no deep sleep). I finally decided to discontinue any meds and "wait it out". Got a couple hours sleep after a couple days, then more and more, until I got to 7 hours of great sleep. I now sleep like a baby.

 

maybe what i should do is just try to find an activity that is the next best thing to sleep... hold an asana and try deep meditation for those hours of the night? spend more time with binaural beats to get as close to sleeping brainwaves as possible? mantra? some combination of all of those things? maybe i'll try doing all of those things while outside where when it's night, it's night, and you can't close the window and turn on a light and forget.

it's starting to look like seroquel is my only option, and i'm so opposed to taking it i might rather just deal with not being able to sleep.

has anyone ever been successfull on a schedule where they force themselves to be awake every morning and do certain things (like go to work or school or exercise) whether they slept or not, either using things to help them stay up or not?
i remember when i was working every day last summer, that's what i had to do. i remember a few days where it was torture, and a few days where i actually fell asleep for short periods through the day, but i guess if you have to do something you get through it. the hard part is learning to genuinely not care what people think about the way you act because everyone thinks you've got a drug problem.

 

My insomnia has been so much better for the past few months, but I know how bad it can be. When I was in high school I went to sleep every night from 3 to 6. Sometimes my mom would find me in the morning drawing "dream genies" on the wall. I would hop in the shower go to school, fall asleep in my first two classes or tell the teacher "Please dont ask me any questions, I havent slept". Everyday I have to hear from anyone "are you tired? You look like a zombie, etc. When I manage to go to school for a complete week, my classmates would clap to congratulate me and my teachers were like "you didnt miss any day this week? Wow". There were days when I just couldnt get up, sleeping a few hours every night, eventually gets to you.
On top of that, I always get depressed. I just wanted (want) to feel normal, in the sense that I can get up in the morning, do things and fall asleep in the night. Instead of being awake late at night, alone, writing, drawing, cutting every magazine in the house to make something, organizing my closet by color, taking pictures. I like doing those things, but I wish I did them at another time. I love mornings and I hated to feel like I wasnt a part of them. I could spend entire nights in bed, staring at the ceiling, just thinking and imagining things, to the point that I almost feel like Im asleep and having a dream, but if I open my eyes, the ceiling is still there and so is my lack of energy.
I dont know exactly when it started, but I remember since I was seven, going into my mom's bed and waking her up, just to talk and feel lonely when I saw she was falling back asleep. I too, always look like a mess in the morning. Im just not there.
It comes and goes, but I definitely feel more energized and alert at night. Im extremely sensitive to caffeine. I've never taken any sleeping pills. Lots of people talk to me about melatonin, it's the only thing I've considered, because I just hate feeling so unproductive. Even when I wake up at 8am, it takes me about three hours to REALLY wake up.
When I had a job, I was definitely more on scheduled, because I work full time and when you get home you feel tired, but still sometimes, I just couldnt sleep. If I have any problem, anything bothering me, anything negative in my mind at all, I wont sleep, but analyze the whole thing. I keep a lot of things to myself for a period of time, so they just seem to haunt me at night. Even when I do sleep, my dreams feel are so vivid and at the same time Im so in tune with my surroundings, sounds, movements, that it doesnt really feel like Im sleeping.
I too made a commitment to myself of living and being more balanced. Eating healthy and organized meals, instead of just when I feel like it. I started eating breakfast, exercising, lots of fruits, veggies. Reducing the caffeine and it has worked a lot, but it's so easy to get out of track and the slightest thing I allow myself to do, throws away all the progress.
If John is in bed with me I fall asleep so much quicker, if not I get out of bed like 5 times and just lay there thinking. I guess I feel secure next to someone I love, there's a feeling of being safe. When I couldnt sleep when I was younger, I just ended sleeping in bed with my mom, but it just makes it easier, it doesnt really take the problem away.

 

my only advice is at least try Benadryl, see if it works. (maybe like 100mg) Also, with weed, theres different strains. Indica, sativa. one gets you stoned (sleepy), the other gets you high, which was probly your creative wanting-to-do-stuff thing. most common weed is a mix of both. just a thought....

 

75-100mg of Benadryl WILL make you sleep, but you may have that nagging antihistamine hangover the next day.

As far as your question of if your doctor would let you switch meds every few days, I'm not sure. Mine gives me 15 Ativan and 30 Ambien, so one night will be ativan, the next will be ambien, the next i might try just benadryl, and then back to ativan again, and so on. It helps the tolerance that comes with these types of drugs. You can ask your doctor what he thinks about doing that with whatever medicines you're comfortable trying. You said you don't want to try Ambien although I will say its completely different than Lunesta.

Whatever you end up trying, let us know.

 

is ambien really different from lunesta? what's it like in comparison?
switching between ativan and ambien sounds like a pretty good system, actually. maybe i could get my doctor to let me try that, with some sonata for the third night. it might work.


thanks so much, everyone