No sleep or sleep meds

My psychiatrist told me years ago, when he first prescribed clonazepam, that I should never take more than 2mg in a 24 hour period or I should stop it. I took him seriously and took 1mg - occasionally a .5mg if I was wide awake at 2 or 3am. I set that boundary. When I moved to GA from FL and got a new doctor, she lectured me profoundly on the risks of benzos. She challenged me to decrease my Rx, which I did. Eventually, she moved out of state and the new doctor refused to prescribe them. Sent me to a psychiatrist - young and just out of med school and he was on a mission to get me benzo free. It has been a long road and not pleasant.

7.5mg at bedtime. I have no problem getting up in the morning. I wish I could sleep in - sometimes it's 4 or 4:30 and on a good night it's 7:30-8 with maybe a 2-3 hour awake period around 2-4am. UGH! I haven't found anything that helped as much as clonazepam, but if it was this hard to come off of, I wonder what it has done to my central nervous system. I'm trying to just regulate and learn to sleep again in peace (or lie awake in peace). I agree about gummies, do not want to take these nightly, but on occasion, they are really helpful.

I don't know - Benadryl works for a lot of folks, but it causes me to have jitters, does not make me sleepy at all.

CBT-I is cognitive behavioraL therapy for Insomnia. I suppose it works for some people but it did not work for me because I am not willing to get out of bed after 20 minutes of being awake over and over. I can lie there and meditate and deep breathe and practice progressive relaxation and be in a much more conducive state to fall asleep that the anxiety of having to get up over and over through the night.

Yeah, well I took 3, got to sleep, I’m still alive and sick and tired of all these fresh out of school doctors who think they know what’s good for me. Obviously I didn’t tell my doctor I was taking all 3 of my rx at once and I’m not going to. I wish they’d get over this addiction/dependency issue. I also am on pain management for degenerative disc disease and I take 2. - 7.5 hydrocodone a day. I don’t think I’m addicted to that either because sometimes if I lay around all day and don’t exert myself, I don’t experience pain so I don’t take it at all. When I had my knee replaced, that hurt like hell and I was on 2 5mg oxycodone for the pain. After two months, the pain was a lot less and I went down to 1 pill each time I needed it. When the pain subsided completely, I stopped taking them. I have never had a problem with these drugs. However, I read something on the internet recently that said people become addicted because of the euphoric effects. Well, I’ve never had a euphoric effect- just a cessation of pain. Maybe that’s why I don’t get addicted because I haven’t taken more of the pain killers than the doctor prescribed and promptly stopped once I noticed the pain was gone. Back to the sleep issue, that’s a tough one. I did take more than the doctor prescribed but I slept without side effects or any drugged feeling upon waking with the clonazapam. I have been on it for years but once the nurse practitioner reduced my dose when the doctor was on vacation and I had a temper tantrum, ripped up the prescription and threw it on the floor and left. Since this was when I was on ambien, I didn’t experience any sleep issues and I also had no problem going without clonazapam for over 4 months other than a return of my anxiety issues. After that time I returned to the doctor and he put me back on the clonazapam at my regular dose. If the ambien had continued working, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now to get sleep. I have tried literally everything since my sleep issues have been doing on since my 30s and I’m 73 now. I wish the ambien still worked.

I’ve been through cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety which didn’t do anything. My sleep issues seem to be familial as both my mother and brother had them. My mother didn’t take anything and once I asked her how she could just go through night after night without sleep and she said usually on the 3rd night she’d go to sleep on what she called the sheer exhaustion method. She was right. On the 3rd day without sleep, I’d just conk out laying on the couch watching tv and when I’d awake my husband would tell me I’d been deeply asleep for 4 hours.

Cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia.

Exactly!

7.5 mg

Working well for me. Do I have 7 hours of sleep every single night? No, but I don’t stress about it anymore and if I don’t have a grey night, I know I’ll have one soon.