No sleep or sleep meds

I asked my Dr. that exact question when she told me I had to stop taking alprazolam. Even taking one a night, I seldom got more than 5 hours of sleep ( I’ve been taking for over 10 years) . So I cut down to .25 mg and got less than 2 hours a night. So I tried supplementing with melatonin - no luck, cannabis- still no luck. Thus, I posed your question to her & I never got a real answer, so I went back to my .5 mg and started getting some sleep. Everything you read says how important sleep is. If I had a disease they would treat it, so why do Drs. resist treating insomnia?

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Have you had an overnight sleep study? I did, and love my sleep doc.
Have you absolutely stopped the intake of any and all caffeines?
Decaf is not non-caf. No colas, no green or black teas, no chocolate. Life can still be worth living without chocolate. I know that’s hard to imagine, but try it.

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this is funny because my family doctor put me on 0.5mg of Xanax for sleep. Supposed to be as needed. That was over a year ago and now I need it every night. She doesn’t see a problem with that.
However, I am seeing a therapist for chronic anxiety and depression and I cannot get any meds for that until the family doc gets me off Xanax. I went to ge a second opinion from a psychiatrist and got the same answer: no one will talk to me about any antidepressants or any meds at all until the Xanax is out of the picture.
It seems using it as a treatment for sleep is a no-no because its addictive.

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Oh, no doubt it is addictive, but if it helps with sleep and is not being abused, aren’t we better off getting sleep than being awake all night?

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I have been off ambien for 6 months now. I also have had insomnia since my mid 30s and I’m now 73. I have gone through every sleep med there is and ambien was the best until after 10 years it stopped working. I am prescribed 3 - 1 mg. clonazapam as needed per day for anxiety. Currently I’m not taking them as prescribed because I find taken together, they will knock me out for about 4 hours. So not wanting to take them at 11 pm and then wake up at 3 am and worry about everything, I watch tv until 3 am and then take them to get some much needed sleep. That way I get up and go about my day without having to worry about things because I’m busy. I resent the doctors not wanting to give out stronger benzos because of their potential addictive properties. Who should really care if at my age I do get addicted if I could get 7 to 8 hours of sleep every night. Someone else in these sleep discussions once said - what’s worse, using benzos or not getting sleep at all. That’s so true. I’ve gone through all the normally prescribed sleeping meds including the new ones, the psychiatric meds that make you sleepy, marijuana, everything, but the only thing that really makes me sleep is a strong benzo. I don’t understand the doctors’ attitudes. It seems they would just rather have the patient not sleep at all which will probably cause worse health problems. I have gone up to 3 days without taking the clonazapam and had no sleep for that time period. And for those of you who would say I’m addicted to it, I don’t think so. I’ve been on that drug for years for anxiety using it as prescribed and one time the nurse practitioner said she was going to cut my dose and wrote out a rx for .5 clonazapam. I was angry and told her to keep her rx and left. I went 6 months without it with no problems other than my anxiety returned. At that time, the ambien was still working so I was getting adequate sleep. I finally returned to the doctor and asked for the 1 mg. clonazapam again and after ascertaining that I had experienced no withdrawals from it after so abruptly quitting it, I was given a rx for 1 mg. again.

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I have been off ambien for 6 months now. I also have had insomnia since my mid 30s and I’m now 73. I have gone through every sleep med there is and ambien was the best until after 10 years it stopped working. I am prescribed 3 - 1 mg. clonazapam as needed per day for anxiety. Currently I’m not taking them as prescribed because I find taken together, they will knock me out for about 4 hours. So not wanting to take them at 11 pm and then wake up at 3 am and worry about everything, I watch tv until 3 am and then take them to get some much needed sleep. That way I get up and go about my day without having to worry about things because I’m busy. I resent the doctors not wanting to give out stronger benzos because of their potential addictive properties. Who should really care if at my age I do get addicted if I could get 7 to 8 hours of sleep every night. Someone else in these sleep discussions once said - what’s worse, using benzos or not getting sleep at all. That’s so true. I’ve gone through all the normally prescribed sleeping meds including the new ones, the psychiatric meds that make you sleepy, marijuana, everything, but the only thing that really makes me sleep is a strong benzo. I don’t understand the doctors’ attitudes. It seems they would just rather have the patient not sleep at all which will probably cause worse health problems. I have gone up to 3 days without taking the clonazapam and had no sleep for that time period. And for those of you who would say I’m addicted to it, I don’t think so. I’ve been on that drug for years for anxiety using it as prescribed and one time the nurse practitioner said she was going to cut my dose and wrote out a rx for .5 clonazapam. I was angry and told her to keep her rx and left. I went 6 months without it with no problems other than my anxiety returned. At that time, the ambien was still working so I was getting adequate sleep. I finally returned to the doctor and asked for the 1 mg. clonazapam again and after ascertaining that I had experienced no withdrawals from it after so abruptly quitting it, I was given a rx for 1 mg. again.

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Hi Cindisue, you’re 100% right. And just so you know, the doctors kept saying I suffered from depression which I do and insisted on putting me on the new SSRIs and Seroquel which is being used off label. Well, those drugs caused me to develop tachycardia and bradycardia which ultimately led to heart disease. Now I am Afib and Aflutter. I have a pacemaker now and am scheduled for a Watchman implantation as well. I really think if I had had enough sleep in my life, maybe I wouldn’t have developed the heart condition. I also think doctors are all to willing to put you on the newest drugs before all side effects have been discovered and ignore the tried and true drugs. While I was hospitalized with the heart issues, the doctors took me off all of my medications and then slowly 2 at a time starting to let me take them again. They gave me the clonazapam back right away because it doesn’t affect the heart. At the end of my 6 day hospitalization, I was back on everything but the SSRI antidepressant and the Seroquel. They told me never to take those psychiatric drugs again because of the side effects to the heart. I found it interesting that the cardiologists didn’t see clonazapam as a threat which is a benzo.

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