Medication induced insomnia, *Please* help!
 

I'm slowly going out of my mind. :(

And this is why I didn't start the Chantix right away... Since starting the Mirapex insomnia is becoming a *huge* issue. I've never had insomnia before. Not like this.

My NP gave me Vistaril. Now the problem with Vistaril is, for me, it gives me a drug hangover all the next day. I want to do nothing more than go back to bed yet with this insomnia can't sleep! :-/ I told her nurse that when the nurse called and said Jennifer wanted to try me on the Vistaril. I already take Atarax so I knew what the Vistaril was going to do. But at the nurses insistence I gave it a try. Did it work? NO. I waited 3 hours to even feel groggy and nothing.

Next up to bat is Ambien. NP said take 5mg's before bed. I'm normally sensitive to meds and don't need as much of things as most people normally do. Did the Ambien help? A big fat no. I looked up the dosages for it and people normally start at 10mgs. So last night I took 10mgs. Got to sleep just fine but here it is 6:45 AM and I've been up since 6:00. Got to sleep about 2:00 AM.

I'm at the lowest dose of Mirapex given @ 0.125 mgs. And that's not even considered a therapeutic dose. If I stop taking the Mirapex I can't sleep because of the RLS. AARRGGHH! The Mirapex is working wonderfully!

This is going to be a *very* long day. I've got to find something that works. Mostly I'm hoping this is a temporary thing and after I've been on the Mirapex a little longer it'll go away. That seems to be the best I can hope for. I've been on the Mirapex a little over 2 weeks. By 6 weeks all sides should be known and some of them may or may not abate. So far the only issue I've had is insomnia. In the meantime I'm a walking zombie. I don't do well with even minimal sleep deprivation.

Anyone have any wisdom regarding finding something to help me sleep?

unfortunately...
 

Every drug so far that our system has come up with that affects neurotransmitters in the brain, causes some very significant down sides.

Some of these negative effects become serious. There is just no way around that. Starting a cocktail of other drugs to pay the piper, just aggravates the
condition.

I would start with the Mirapex and seriously evaluate your benefits vs risk.
And starting a drug like Chantix with Mirapex? NEVER... both affect dopamine in significant ways.

Already Chantix with antidepressants is getting some negative press.
You just might become a statistic by taking Mirapex with Chantix.

If you decide to stay with Mirapex, I strongly urge you to not do the Chantix.
At this time I don't think there are answers for you...it will be trial and error.
But I would try Melatonin before Rx drugs.

Experience with Wellbutrin, and SSRIs has shown that when you alter neurotransmitters in the brain, you cause downregulation of others.
SSRIs downregulate dopamine (this is why people get movement side effects).
Wellbutrin (which raises dopamine) tends to downregulate serotonin, and cause insomnia.
So trying the melatonin may help since melatonin is made from serotonin and if serotonin goes down, so would melatonin.

Ambien? Well this drug has the potential of causing amnesiac behaviors ...sleep walking and other uncontrolled things--some violent. It is not understood how it affects arousal in the brain, and it is now being used to bring people out of comas. Combined with a drug like Mirapex? Who knows what it will do to YOU? I would be very careful.

I am no authority on anything, but I wouldn't trade my 1mg of ativan for anything. I have tried ambien and lunesta and they were no go's for me. I get at least seven hours a night with my ativan, been on it for six years....

I wonder if I can talk my doc into that for a week or so. I've used Ativan in the past but it gives me a drug hangover...groggy for the entire next day and more... Although at this point if something worked to help me sleep it might be worth the hangover the next day. Right now nothing is working yet I still have the drug hangover from Vistaril. Ambien was pretty much like taking nothing at all.

Having been a lifelong imsoniac, and having tried EVERYTHING under the sun, the best pill I ever took was Ambien. 10 mgs. Did the trick. Went out like a light.

My insurance didn't cover it and I could no longer afford it. I was given samples of Lunesta. Did absolutely nothing.

Then I discovered the magic powers of xanax (without really knowing what the heck I was doing).

I took the generic version, Alprazolam. I began taking 1 and one half mgs of xanax to sleep every night. Worked like a charm. My whole body just relaxed and I drifted off to sleep. Now I have lots of stuff going on in my mind so I needed this break.

But after almost 2 years of this, I read where it's not good to take xanax to sleep. That it's better to take a sleep aid. I really did not know the difference. How clueless of me.

I have had memory problems over this.

So I decided to wean myself off. Not the most intelligent thing I ever did. But I am now stable at 1 mg. Not lowering it any more.

But it's nothing like when I was on the 1 1/2 mg of the stuff.

I could take 1 mg at 11 p.m. and be wide awake till 12:30 a.m. . I have no idea why this is.

And if, god forbid a bird sings at 6:30 a.m. , I'm wide awake.

Sometimes if it's quiet, I'll sleep till 9 like I did this morning.

Some nights the sleep cycle is not good. Sometimes it is.

Maybe my body is not liking the 1 mg of the alprazolam and wants more. I'm not taking any more.

I want to be drug free. I want my mental faculties sharp.

I've noticed a difference in my memory already. When I try to remember something and I get it, well I GET IT!!!

But I shudder to think what's going to happen when I am off the alprazolam for good. I'll probably never sleep again.

Oh well.

I did this all my life.

I expected the Ambien to help too! Boy was I surprised. And guess what. I didn't take any last night...why take it if it's not going to work? And here I am up since 4:00 AM and didn't get to sleep til a bit after 2:00 AM. This time my sinuses contributed. I got plugged up on one side. Felt like I had a brick shoved up my nose. Stirred up a lot of dust yesterday piddling around with plants, repotting and such. Going to try and sleep again in just a little bit.

I am so sorry to hear you didn't get the sleep your tired body deserves again last night. My sisters and I all react adversely in different ways to medications, so we know it has to be our genetics. It amazes me how different we all react to meds.
I began ativan almost six years ago, my grandson had just been diagnosed with the "bad" leukemia, we were all out on the coast while Joey began his treatment at Seattle's Childrens. I had always been the family rock, I could handle any and everything, it took me two weeks of no sleep and vomiting and losing 12 lbs. to realize my rock had crumbled and I needed help. Joey and I both lost 12 lbs in two weeks, I only weighed 110 at the time. My daughter called my obgyn back in Montana, he called in ativan and insisted I take it round the clock. I did in the beginning and later only at bedtime, seems to be a female thing to crawl into bed and begin to analize and solve the "world problems", ativan took that away, I began to sleep soundly. Eventually I quit taking it, then I spent a wildly painful night in February four years ago, nothing touched the pain. I had my husband take me to the ER because I thought I was having a heart attack, turns out no heart attack, but the lexapro I had started a couple of days before was causing aniexty. They couldn't explain the pain, but gave me ativan and sent me home. I didn't know where to turn for the foot pain so I went to ortho, by some stoke of luck he has PN, enter gabapentin.
I just quit the lexapro, turned out to be a god send, my daughter got suddenly ill and I couldn't have made it through the two and a half months of watching her body shut down, and then recover only to be taken by septic shock. On the day we were told she had hours to live her twin and I went to the ER at U of WA. for calming meds at a nurses insistance. They gave us ambien and lunesta, that's how I found out those two drugs didn't work at all for either of us. For the next three weeks Amber spent her days at Childrens with Joey for his quarterly cancer assessment while I stayed at my daughters bedside playing James Taylor for her and massaging her massively swollen legs and feet, we would return to Ronald McDonald house each night exhausted and our only sleep came from ativan. When it became clear she wasn't going to survive her twin and I made the decision to let her go.
She had disseminated HSV which resulted in fulminant hepatic failure, unheard of in a healthy person, until she got sick. My point is I couldn't have survived the way my life was then if it wasn't for lexapro and ativan, my rock was nonexistance and I still haven't gotten it back.
I could write a book on my life, I still don't believe I lived it, it still feels like it happened to someone else. I think stress whether it be from illness or life events changes you and I believe if it weren't for the meds I take I couldn't function. The irony is I used to turn my nose up at people that used meds for any reason, now I know the reasons are endless, and I believe if you are in pain be it mental or physical you certainly won't get a "rush" from it, only relief.
I wish for you eight hours of uninterrupted sleep no matter how it is accomplished, you deserve it!!!!!

Wow, Jannaw:

You've been though the mill haven't you!!! Don't blame you one bit for doing WHATEVER you need to do to get any sleep.

I am surprised that what works for some DOES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for others.

We are now awaiting the infusion nurse for Alan's infusion. He took his pre-meds at 9:30 a.m. Tylenol and one benedryl.

He's conked out like a light, on my couch. He will probably sleep through his infusion.

He takes 1 and one half of the alprazolam so the neuropathy between his toes calms down at night and he gets his full 8 hours.

I asked him "if benedryl conks you out, why not take benedryl at night?" He said 'I'm going to ask Dr. Fred" I told him "don't you dare stop this all at once, you ask the doctor".

So how come some things like Lunest and Ambien, and benedryl work for some (I could take Lunesta till the cows come home, it did nothing for me).

And last night, I took my 1 mg of alprazolam at 10:45 and by 11:15, I was sound asleep and the alarm woke me up at 7 a.m. If no alarm, I would have slept till 9. I know my body.

So again, why some things work for some, and not others.

Shouldn't a sleep aid like Lunesta, do the exact same thing as ambien?? I will NEVER forget the first time the doctor gave me an ambien. It was like a gift. Do you know what it's like to have NEVER slept through the night, and all of a sudden you take this little pill and you drift of and you wake up 8 hours later??

Believe me, that WAS A GIFT!!

Melody

Jannaw, my heart goes out to you. I've had a bit of a spin in this life myself. Nothing close to losing a child though. I lost my husband to suicide in '92, 6 months after he came home drunk one night...so drunk right and wrong didn't exist for him. He attempted to rape my eldest who was 12 at the time. There were other things going on with him but we'll never know for sure what it all was. There were drugs (to this day I don't know what all he was into) but he was also hearing voices and seeing things. When they found his body, and this is the short story, my best friend dropped everything and came to me. She got me to my doctor and insisted I needed something just to take the edge off and to get me through the next week. That was Ativan. At that time I had 4 kids at home from 12 down to 3, I was working part time, going to RN school full time. Stress?? Heck, I laughed and said I gave new meaning to stressed out. I actually suffered a break down and should have been in the hospital or something. But I'd been under so much stress for so long I really didn't recognise when I lost it. That happened about 3 weeks before he died. His suicide was the icing on the cake. It wouldn't be until 2001 that I actually crashed and burned though.

As odd as this may sound, in the past no matter how bad things got sleeping was never the issue. This is the first time I've ever experienced this kind of insomnia. It's from the Mirapex. My hope is that soon this side effect will ease off. I did sleep for about 3 or 4 hours solid this morning. That's the most sleep I've gotten since the first night of the Mirapex.

We're all chemically different. What works for one may not work for another. Our bodies individual chemistries decide how a drug such as Ambien and the SSRI's and such will affect us. For instance, many people take Celexa and now Lexapro ( Lex is the daughter of Celexa - they split the Celexa isomer and got Lex) with great success. I was on Celexa and it turned me into a zombie and I gained over 50 lbs in a little over 14 months. Enter Effexor. I've heard so many horror stories about Effexor but it was a like a miracle for me. It literally gave me back my life, as if someone flipped a switch and said, "you get to be you again". There are many many drugs that do the same thing for all of us across the board. But there are drug classes such as the SSRI's and if you look at how Ambien and others work, that class of drugs too, what works differs based on body and brain chemistry and genetics obviously play a role in all that.

I'm leery of meds. I always look them up when I'm given a new one. There have been a few times that I've refused to take a drug because I thought the risks did not outweigh the possible benefit for me. Sudden death as a risk from a drug given to me to treat possible gout? No thank you. While the toe joint pain is a pain it's bearable and certainly not to the point of taking a drug that could cause sudden death for crying out loud. Vit D has got that under control now whatever the cause is or was. I became suicidal on Neurontin. That was what really made me leery. But as far anxiety and depression these need to be treated when they don't self limit and become extreme. Pain needs to be treated effectively.

As for the Chantix, I've read the horror stories and I've read the good ones too. For me the benefits of being able to quit smoking will outweigh the risk of possible sides from the drug. I've never been able to get past the physical addiction to nicotine. If I can beat that part I can and will quit smoking. To me for my healths sake it's imperative that I quit. I've not been able to do that on my own. Now I have hope that I'll actually get this monkey off my back once and for all. And the Mirapex? Unless you suffer from RLS you can't know what that feels like and how hard it is to live with. It's like PN, unless and until you've experienced it you can't know how bad it can be. Many of us with PN and RLS especially give no outward sign that anything is wrong. People look at us and say we look so healthy. Looks can be deceiving.

Popped in to say hi . . . .








Insomniac tonight . . . . :(