Hi @johnbishop -

Thank you for taking the time to reply and the link. I actually came across the same article early this week. I'm a non-drinker but love my coffee so I was heartbroken when I removed caffeine entirely. The part about "catching up" is one I'll have to ignore for now. I'll take any amount of sleep, at any time of the day at this point. The path to sleep depravation psychosis is paved with missed opportunities.

I just came back from the walk-in since they require a patient to be re-seen when asking for a prescription change. I discussed my insomnia with a different doctor and that Trazodone didn't work. I mentioned the severe anxiety related to losing last 6 nights and I honestly felt like he was giving me the brush-off. I asked for a benzodiazepine since my research revealed this class of drugs is often used to treat both insomnia and anxiety in the short term. I need to break this cycle and the risks of taking a benzo is lower than total sleep depravation. He initially refused this idea out of hand, even for short term therapy, but I pushed him to allow a 1 week course of Diazepam which he begrudgingly agreed to and then lectured me on the side-effects for the next 5 minutes.

I took this medication, 30 min later I felt better and laid down to get 2 hours of sleep. This is far from enough and I woke to feeling about the same as when I started but it's moving in the right direction.