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...
Has anyone here ever been prescribed both Restoril and Seroquel together? I had primary insomnia 4 months ago (didn't sleep for 3 or 4 days straignt couldn't even get tired during the day after excercising) and was prescribed Seroquel and Restoril at the same time. Now I've been on them for 4 months (30 mg Restoril, 100 mg Seroquel) and my brain is going down the tubes. I don't know if I will ever be able to sleep without them and think I may be building a tolerance to them. Any words of advice/encouragement -- or anyone else who's going through this -- I'd love to hear from you.
I've read the stuff about benzo addiction and I'm scared to death of trying to quit. And I know the Seroquel is just as bad. But if I stop taking either of them -- I may never sleep again. I just don't know what to do. Just please don't tell me anything like, "woa, you're screwed." I'm hanging on by a thread here.
I've read the stuff about benzo addiction and I'm scared to death of trying to quit. And I know the Seroquel is just as bad. But if I stop taking either of them -- I may never sleep again. I just don't know what to do. Just please don't tell me anything like, "woa, you're screwed." I'm hanging on by a thread here.
Advice, don't stop the benzo cold turkey. Ask your doctor to help you taper off. Ask your doctor about getting off of seroquel as it is not supposed to be addictive.
Then, you can restore what benzo and seroquel drained from you by asking a health foods expert. As I recall, benzo drains GABA and GABA is produced by your brain via L-Glutamin and the supporting vitamins.
Seroquel, I kind of forgot what it drains. I think Acetly-L-Carnitine and choline should help restore those levels.
Yep. Been there, done that. Never doing it again.
Are you seeing a therapist at all? I might suggest seeing a therapist to learn some coping skills to deal with insomnia, and to learn some effective sleep strategies so you feel more confident, and then if you want, at that point, talk to your Dr about lowering your medication doses, then from there taper off them completely if that is your goal.
All the best,
Sonny
From your description, you were prescribed powerful anti-psychotics for primary insomnia, which is sleeping diffiulties with no underlying medical or psychiatric condition. This does seem excessive.
My suggestion would be to consult with a medical doctor who specializes in sleep. This person will examine you and determine what's going in that is interfering with sleep in the first place. If it's primary insomnia, it's usually some combination of bad sleep habits and excessive worry about the idea of sleep, neither of which pass the threshold for being a medical psychiatric condition.
Which is why many sleep specialists take the position that drugs to force sleep may do more harm than good because they treat only the symptom and not the true root of the problem, and tend to reinforce the solution to insomnia is external and resides out of your self-control.
Your sleep doc will help you with a tapering strategy for the drugs, and likely implement a CBT sleep training program. CBT helps most people who try it, and is completely drug-free.
Good luck.
Good Luck