[Jerry]

Hi folks,

I’m just wondering if anyone out there has ever had trouble coming off melatonin?

I’ve been stuck at 1 mg for a couple of years (4 years total on melatonin) and each time i try to stop i can no longer sleep. I even struggle with the .500 mcg, which is apparently close to the ideal dosage anyway.

I’m not sure if it’s psychological dependence or my body actually needs to be sedated a little in order to sleep.

I know melatonin seems innocuous but I have noticed an increased incidence of low mood, emotional numbness and well I feel it dumbs me down considerably.

I would love to be free of it but not at the cost of not sleeping! A real trap.

[Martin Reed]

You are almost certainly experiencing a placebo effect to the melatonin — especially when we consider how long you’ve been taking it.

Melatonin is not an effective treatment for chronic insomnia because melatonin does not trigger sleep. Melatonin is more of a signal for sleep. The body releases a pulse of melatonin at a certain point in the evening and a few hours later we become ready for sleep.

This pulse of melatonin usually happens around two or three hours before our usual bedtime but it’s impossible to know exactly when this happens without lab testing. Any supplemental melatonin you might take after this pulse happens is ignored by the body.

Even if you get lucky and manage to take a melatonin supplement before your body triggers this melatonin signal, still nothing really happens because people with chronic insomnia do not usually have a problem with melatonin production or melatonin regulation!

Is the melatonin prescribed to you by a doctor? If so, you might want to discuss a tapering-off plan with your prescribing physician. I would suggest implementing cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) techniques so you can address the real cause of your sleep difficulties (sleep-related thoughts and behaviors) and as you start to regain confidence in your natural ability to sleep you can then eliminate or taper-off the melatonin.

I hope this helps.

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