Insomnia Support Group

Insomnia is a symptom, rather than a disease, and is characterized by inadequate quantity or quality of sleep. People with insomnia complain of difficulty falling or staying asleep, which results in significant impairment of daytime functioning. Insomnia is categorized as transient (shorter than one week), short-term (one to three weeks) or chronic (longer than three...

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SadEyes1979
SadEyes1979
I have had insomnia for around a year. I try OTC medications which i normally have to double or triple to sleep. My physician prescribed lunesta which takes me at least an hour to fall asleep and im awake in 2 hours and cant fall back asleep. HELP! any advice?

SadEyes1979
deleted_user
deleted_user
Yes. My suggestion is to ask your doctor what medical condition the lunesta is treating.

If the answer is insomnia, and there is no underlying medical condition causing it, then this suggests you are only treating the symptom and not the underlying cause.

Getting to the nonmedical roots of insomnia is essential if you want to sleep better permanently. Many people have used CBT specifically for insomnia to do this. There is a very good reason for this.

It works.
Tez62
Tez62
SadEyes1979, Sleeptraining is correct, you need to workout what is the cause, it is normally, anxiety, worry or stress or a mixture. If the meds work, it will only be a short term fix and the problems will come back so you won't have fixed the insomnia just put it off for a while. The other thing to check that it is not a sleep disorder, keep us updated on how you go.
deleted_user
deleted_user
Look what I found on wikipedia when researching Lunesta...

"There were 43 million prescriptions issued for insomnia medications during 2005 in the USA which generated a total of $2.7 billion for pharmaceutical companies.[3] Eszopiclone (Lunesta) along with other "Z Drugs" including zolpidem (Ambien), zaleplon (Sonata) are the most commonly prescribed sedative hypnotics in the USA."

OMG! They made $2.7 billion?!

Anyway, you can't fall a sleep and with Lunesta, you do but only for 2 hours. You're also on the depression forum.

So, if that means you are depressed, well, did anyone tell you that depression causes insomnia?

Will you be the type to take drugs? if so, why not ask the doctor to prescribe antidepressants?

If you'd rather try a natural way of dealing with it, go buy yourself some 5HTP ($10 at wal-mart). 5HTP will help you deal with your depression and the side effect is sleep. Just don't mix it with antidepressants.