Klonopin & Gabapentin for sleep

Just wanted to comment in this thread, because I may have Klonopin induced insomnia, oddly enough. It’s given to me by trained staff at 6 PM and 7 AM daily, 1mg each time. The problem with getting it at 6 PM is I do fall asleep, before 8 PM, and I usually wake up around 1 or 2 AM. Getting back to sleep after that is hard. Last night I just stayed up all the way from 2 AM until daylight.

Unfortunately, in my living situation staff goes home at 6:30 PM, and they don’t trust me to keep my own Klonopin. We’ve yet to work out a solution to this.

Just wanted to comment in this thread, because I may have Klonopin induced insomnia, oddly enough. It’s given to me by trained staff at 6 PM and 7 AM daily, 1mg each time. The problem with getting it at 6 PM is I do fall asleep, before 8 PM, and I usually wake up around 1 or 2 AM. Getting back to sleep after that is hard. Last night I just stayed up all the way from 2 AM until daylight.

Unfortunately, in my living situation staff goes home at 6:30 PM, and they don’t trust me to keep my own Klonopin. We’ve yet to work out a solution to this.

I also take clonezepam and gabapentin. I am prescribed clonezepam for combat stress, and insomnia and the gabapentin for a ruptured disc in my neck. It turns out, I'm able to take less clonezepam if I take gabapentin (600-900 mg per day), clonezepam (1.0-1.5 MG per day). Before, I required 2.0-2.5 MG of clonezepam to keep me from having panic episodes or having sleepless nights. The Gabapentin potentiates the benzodiazepines possibly because they work on the same receptors (GABA). That's just my guess, however, we are seeing more people treated with gabapentin for anxiety. These are usually larger doses than used to treat nerve pain. The two work well together.

I’m so angry with my old doctor he should of told me about clonazapam that you can get dependent on this awful drug and Effexor xr there both terrible for me I told the psychiatrist that I couldn’t take it because of horrible comstipation and grogginess, and can’t enjoy a cup of coffee because it interacts with it badly . I’ve tried lowering the dose of clonazapam by cutting it in half I take the lowest dose .25 mg by my psychiatrist amd my legs felt so weak I went back to the .25 mg this was a few years ago never again that is to much of a taper I told her. I hate these meds so badly they have ruined my life. I went on medications ten years ago when diagnosed with type 2 diabetes for depression and anxiety. Had no support when diagnosed, the doctor wouldn’t listen to me how I felt when first diagnosed amd said I was depressed, I was overwhelmed and scared. He had me n Pristq at first and that drug is very potent, I could not function on it, he told me to suck it up I ended up in the hospital and they put me on a sleeping pill called Zoplicone I didn’t know that Pristq causes insomnia that is what the problem was. But I think they didn’t know how to get me off it so just gave me a sleeping pill for sleep then a few years on the Zoplicone found out that this can cause dependence so I told my doctor that I wanted off it he tapered me off using Ativan which I was taking to. What a hell experience that was, no sleep at all and I’m sure you don’t use Ativan to taper off Zoplicone but I trusted my doctor, I think back and I definitely was in withdraw crying lots, no sleep it was awful, Never again will I ask a doctor to taper me off anything they don’t know shit.

I’m so angry with my old doctor he should of told me about clonazapam that you can get dependent on this awful drug and Effexor xr there both terrible for me I told the psychiatrist that I couldn’t take it because of horrible comstipation and grogginess, and can’t enjoy a cup of coffee because it interacts with it badly . I’ve tried lowering the dose of clonazapam by cutting it in half I take the lowest dose .25 mg by my psychiatrist amd my legs felt so weak I went back to the .25 mg this was a few years ago never again that is to much of a taper I told her. I hate these meds so badly they have ruined my life. I went on medications ten years ago when diagnosed with type 2 diabetes for depression and anxiety. Had no support when diagnosed, the doctor wouldn’t listen to me how I felt when first diagnosed amd said I was depressed, I was overwhelmed and scared. He had me n Pristq at first and that drug is very potent, I could not function on it, he told me to suck it up I ended up in the hospital and they put me on a sleeping pill called Zoplicone I didn’t know that Pristq causes insomnia that is what the problem was. But I think they didn’t know how to get me off it so just gave me a sleeping pill for sleep then a few years on the Zoplicone found out that this can cause dependence so I told my doctor that I wanted off it he tapered me off using Ativan which I was taking to. What a hell experience that was, no sleep at all and I’m sure you don’t use Ativan to taper off Zoplicone but I trusted my doctor, I think back and I definitely was in withdraw crying lots, no sleep it was awful, Never again will I ask a doctor to taper me off anything they don’t know shit.

I’m so angry with my old doctor he should of told me about clonazapam that you can get dependent on this awful drug and Effexor xr there both terrible for me I told the psychiatrist that I couldn’t take it because of horrible comstipation and grogginess, and can’t enjoy a cup of coffee because it interacts with it badly . I’ve tried lowering the dose of clonazapam by cutting it in half I take the lowest dose .25 mg by my psychiatrist amd my legs felt so weak I went back to the .25 mg this was a few years ago never again that is to much of a taper I told her. I hate these meds so badly they have ruined my life. I went on medications ten years ago when diagnosed with type 2 diabetes for depression and anxiety. Had no support when diagnosed, the doctor wouldn’t listen to me how I felt when first diagnosed amd said I was depressed, I was overwhelmed and scared. He had me n Pristq at first and that drug is very potent, I could not function on it, he told me to suck it up I ended up in the hospital and they put me on a sleeping pill called Zoplicone I didn’t know that Pristq causes insomnia that is what the problem was. But I think they didn’t know how to get me off it so just gave me a sleeping pill for sleep then a few years on the Zoplicone found out that this can cause dependence so I told my doctor that I wanted off it he tapered me off using Ativan which I was taking to. What a hell experience that was, no sleep at all and I’m sure you don’t use Ativan to taper off Zoplicone but I trusted my doctor, I think back and I definitely was in withdraw crying lots, no sleep it was awful, Never again will I ask a doctor to taper me off anything they don’t know shit.

I finally got to see a psychiatrist through the VA. After reviewing my list of medications, she told me not to take alprazolam/Xanax (I'd been taking 0.5 mg for many years. I asked her why, since I take such a small amount--never more than 0.5 mg's, and ofter go 3-5 days without taking any at all. She said that doctors should not prescribe Benzos--never, and when I asked her why, she replied, "because they may impair your cognitive abilities." I got up and walked over to her where she was holding the list of meds I'd given her and proceded to point out six med's on the list which were more likely to cause memory problems: Depakote (for being bipolar), Lexipro (anti-depressant), Lipitor (because I'd had a mini-stroke several years ago), Gabapentin ( for pain/sleep--had service-connected injuries while in Vietnam and whenever I'd roll over in bed, I'd awaken from sharp pains in either of the surgicall-repaired shoulders), and Celebrex--also for pain. Every one of the above-mentioned med's are worse than the small doseage of Benzos I'd been taking, and I when I asked her why those med's shoulden't be removed from my prescriptions, she simply looked down, kept entering notes into her desktop, and when I questioned her again, she simply gave me a stern look and went back to her notes. You want to know how I feel about doctors. They're people who seem as if they're underpaid while making $3-4 hundred thousand dollars a year plus benefits, and exactly as you stated, "...don't know shit." I personally research all the medication the doctors prescribe, including the chemical structures, speak to pharmacists who usually know a heck of a lot more than the quacks I've seen, and most of them should have their licenses revoked. I have yet to find a doctor through Medicare or the VA who will even prescribe a couple of miligrams/month of Benzos so that I can titrate off the crap they had originally prescribed. Every time I see a neurologist (for Parkinson's), or a primary care physician, or in the last case an uncaring robot-like psychiatrist, I expect the worst (and usually get it--especially the being talked down to as if I were too stupid to respect their god-like superiority), or ask to be titrated off most of the med's I'm taking, my words fall on deaf ears. Doctors use their patients as guinea pigs while getting kick-backs from the sales reps for Big Pharma. Healthcare in this country is just another rotten business.