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Klonopin & Gabapentin for sleep

Sleep Health | Last Active: Oct 1 8:49am | Replies (85)

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@con123

The only advice I can give you is to find a reputable sleep medicine doctor who knows the medications and can guide you to find a solution. All the sleep meds say "short term use" but with primary long-term insomnia, sometimes the benefits of staying on it outweigh the risks. Trust me, if I could sleep without help, that would be amazing, but having tried everything imaginable, and still was not sleeping, I'm ok with taking it long term. I did not have any major issues with Klonopin and it was great for sleep. It was terribly addictive but I didn't know that until I had to taper off, because I never increased my dose or craved it. Stopping just about any sleep aide is going to result in rebound insomnia. Only some people have the sleep walking side effects with hypnotics - I have had no issues at all. If I wake up in the night for any reason and need to get out of bed, I feel perfectly fine, and falling back to sleep is fairly easy. Any drug you take could have side effects, but it might not. For example, I took Ambien for several weeks and it put me to sleep well, no night-time shenanigans, but I had the side effects of morning nausea and daytime anxiety, so it was not a good fit for me. Everyone is different. Listen to your doctor and if you don't like what they offer, find another one. My psychiatrist (who I was sent to when primary care would not prescribe benzos at all anymore) felt it was better to not sleep at all than to take sleep medication. He made me come off Klonopin without a good exit plan, leaving me with terrible insomnia and anxiety. He also told me not to take CBD and said, " Stop looking for something outside of yourself to help you sleep". Remeron did very little, if anything for my sleep issues, while it makes other people very groggy, like it did you. Best of luck to you!

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Replies to "The only advice I can give you is to find a reputable sleep medicine doctor who..."

Exactly Right! The benefits of staying on a sleep med far outweigh not sleeping!!! So what do you take now? Hopefully something that works! Shame on the doctor who made you stop taking Klonopin! My doctor also sent me to a psychiatrist who had me try Mirtazapine...didn't work. So I'm staying on Lorazepam and my primary doctor is finally okay with it.

Agree that finding a reputable sleep doctor is important. I was on Ativan (lorazepam); she was not thrilled with long term use of benzos. Connected me with sleep therapist and I did CBI. Did not work for me. But Ativan was no longer working and I didn’t want to increase it. Do she sent me to another therapist who worked with me to find the right med. (lunesta didn’t work and it’s not meant for long term) I now take Remeron (mirtazapine), I successfully tapered off of Ativan, and I sleep through the night about 95% of the time. I have done grogginess in the morning but it’s worth it. I feel so much better and my pcp (who no longer wanted to prescribe Ativan) is on board. (He is happy with this class of drugs.)
I was falling into severe depression and felt lousy all day without sleep. Now, if I have a bad night, I just tell myself that I’ll have a better one tonight. Makes such a difference to find out what works for each of us as individuals.