I have a good friend who is a psychiatrist and she suggested taking 50 mg of Trazodone to sleep. She told me that is a small dose and at that level it should help with sleep and would have a small anti-depressive and anti-anxiety effect. I found that 50 mg made me feel really groggy in the morning, but using a pill cutter to to take 25 mg was very helpful.

I had been taking Ibuprofen for headaches every day for more that three months and think that's not good and so, at the recommendation of my friend, asked my doc to let me try Fioricet - a combo drug that has acetaminophen ann caffeine along with a barbiturate.

I had been taking a very small amount (2.5 to 5 mg) of diazepam to since about a month before my dad died in January. Before the car accident it alone made the difference between sleeping and not sleeping. After the car accident it didn't seem to do it.

Adding the Fioricet to the Tradodone and diazepam seemed like a lot of drugs - especially for someone who normally sleeps really well with no drugs. My doc, the pharmacist, and my friend the psychiatrist said there is not a problem with all three together, although my friend told me several times to not try stopping the diazepam abruptly, but to taper it down no matter what else I was doing.

I asked the pharmacist what to do about the three meds and she told me I should try different things and see what worked. I asked my friend and she said, "Experiment." I discovered that the Trazodone really helps me sleep. It's hard to tell how much the Fioricet is helping with the headaches. I may be too skittish about it to take enough. I'll have to investigate that. And maybe experiment with timing and dosage.

I think the bottom line about psych meds is that some amount of experimentation is necessary for almost everyone. If you take a drug and the first dosage of that drug works, you are amazingly lucky because most people have to to a fair amount of trial and error. I have worked as a counselor for 20 years and have heard a lot of stories about people getting frustrated with the trial and error, and concluding that their Dr. doesn't know what s/he is doing and is experimenting on them. I am not qualified to advise anyone about medications, but I have tried to reassure clients of all ages and the parents of the young ones, by commenting that the trial and error seems to be more true of psych meds than other kinds of drugs. I have no idea why that is true, but it is.

I think you have to give your Dr a lot of feedback about how you seem to be responding to the the drugs and not wait too long in between, so you can give them data for their trial and error for you. Of course, the other problem is that you may find something that is perfect, only to find that after some time it stops working and you are back to the trial and error. Another thing to try is checking with your blood relatives to see if they ever took similar meds and what worked. There does seem to be some correlation in families as to how things work.

Good luck! I hope you find something that works for you