[Samantha]

Hey everyone. Two years ago I took propranolol and had a serious adverse drug reaction my mind felt like it had exploded this led me to complete insomnia for weeks I didn’t sleep. Eventually I landed in hospital and given lorazepam I finally got some sleep but months later they said no more lorazepam and I was crossed over to valium and now I’m coming off that the insomnia is back worse than ever. Do you think the propranolol has caused permanent damage and I’ll never sleep again. I’m totally terrified and would much appreciate some support. Regards

[Chee2308]

Most likely, nothing is broken. If it was, you would have ZERO sleep whatsoever. And by now, probably dead from that. So all I hear about is just a very frightened person relating her traumatic experience.

[Samantha]

I am frightened and I only slept by taking benzos. I lay awake most of the night. Thanks for replying

[Chee2308]

No drug and no therapy is going to be really effective if your fear is still intact. Sleeping is something everyone expects to do every night for the rest of our lives so does it make any sense to keep fearing it every single night? Do you really want to keep playing the escape game forever? Saying you are afraid your sleep is broken is like saying you are afraid your breathing or eating or drinking somehow just stopped working. Because some one-off event triggered something which made you doubt your own body. You stopped believing your body will take care of itself, that somehow your bodily organs just ceased functioning as they should and they can’t do their jobs anymore? Is that even logical? The endless doctor visits, consultations and swallowing of all kinds of meds only reinforce your fears and create an illusion that “I’m really sick and broken” and I need to keep doing xyz to sleep. Taking actions like these will only keep feeding your fears and destroy whatever confidence you might have developed if you had done absolutely nothing.

Try facing your fears head on, be willing to entertain your worst fears and nightmares, that’s how we recovered insomniacs (and you can too) grow out of them. A comfy bed, consistent bed times and an optimistic outlook are all you’ll really need. Ultimately you want be in a position where you are convinced you haven’t got a sleep problem anymore and you’re just a normal sleeper as everybody else. Good luck!

[Samantha]

Dear Chee. Thanks so much for your words I really appreciate it and what you say makes perfect sense. If I hadn’t had that reaction to propranolol I think I’d be ok. The reaction was so severe I laid awake for weeks not sleeping this is why I think I have permanent sleep damage. Prior to that I was sleeping just fine. Regards to you.

[Chee2308]

Great to hear that! Hope that was insightful. Nobody’s sleep ever stopped working suddenly over a single night just because they took or did something bizzare. It just doesn’t work like that! Most likely it’s your thoughts towards sleep that changed. But the ability never did and will never change until your last living day. Insomnia isn’t really about the inability to sleep at all because that’s next to impossible, it is the irrational fear of wakefulness as a result of ingrained and misconcepted notions. Sleep is really simple, you will get sleepy after being awake for long enough. That’s just the basic physiology of sleep which works exactly like hunger. Your situation is really analogous to developing an irrational of eating after suffering a bout of food poisoning. You had a trauma that caused you to change all your thinking about something.

But that ability is still intact; because thinking you are somehow “broken” will never negate the ability of your body to perform that essential function. Always remember that. Don’t feed the fear that’s fuelling your insomnia anymore. Also, stop the blame game, because it’s not your fault! Be kind, accommodating and patient to yourself. You may suffer a bit at first, like a drug addict experiencing withdrawal symptoms but keep reminding yourself this is only temporary, and you should focus for the long term. Short term pain for long term gain. You have what it takes and you can do this too! Best of luck.

[Samantha]

Thank you Chee. Just to confirm I took the medication for over a week and several times a day. Even though it made me sleepless I irrationally kept taking it thinking I needed more to get better. So It wasn’t just a one time thing. If I knew that this wasn’t the reason for not sleeping I’d feel a lot better. Could a medication poison you so much that you lost the ability to sleep. I know my writings are irrational but I can’t help believing my own thoughts. Thanks for your patience

[Chee2308]

I have to see any medical record that said “Sleeping for patient completely destroyed” because of taking a drug, poison or whatever! If that were true, wouldn’t that be in the common medical knowledge by now? How many people experience bizarre things every day?? Go ask people who survived a nuclear blast, can anything get worse than that? Then check their medical records and try to find any that said their sleep were obliterated by that blast! I have yet to read any single case out of the millions that survived. So the underlying notion have to be false because the facts just don’t check out. Anything that fails the observational test like this, you have to quickly and completely disregard! Otherwise, you have no end to it and you only end up suffering needlessly, unnecessarily and illogically. Your sleep will still go on regardless, but you would have carried the fear, anxiety, discomfort or whatever over some useless nothing.

[Samantha]

Chee thank you you actually made me laugh. Thank you for being so kind and helpful you have no idea how much I needed this.

[Chee2308]

You’re welcome Sam. Perhaps an admission that we are all mere mortals and that our times in this world and our interactions with it are really limited, so it’s in your interest to enjoy the time that you still have the best you can. Our entire existence is nothing more than a set of ideas, some inspires us and some detrimental. Don’t worry about sleep now, there will be a time when you will get it in unlimited amounts so why miss it so badly now? Just living your life now is what truly matters. At the end, what do you really want to remember about how you have lived: Still complaining just how horrible your sleep always is or the interesting things you did to enjoy your life to the fullest? The choice is up to you.

[Samantha]

Chee. You are so right we only have one precious life to live so glad I found this forum and so glad you responded to me. I wish you all the best.

[Author]

Posts