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Thanks for the heads up, Slimon.
It’s ok, I understood the chronology of your posts in regards to one of them awaiting moderation.
Maybe I’ll keep the valium thing up until my neuro appointment then. I can’t wait to get an opinion on this from him. Too bad I only get a couple of appointments a year.
Thanks again.
Hi Steve,
No, I don’t practice sleep restriction, except for the part that says “avoid naps”. And I only practice that because my brain won’t let me do otherwise… In fact, I think that is part of the reason why I tend to initially fall asleep so easily.
I honestly doubt that putting a lot of focus on sleep would do me good, I think it would only drive me even more crazy. Go to bed, wait 15 min, get up, do something boring until you feel sleepy, go back to bed, wait another 15 min, try again…
I’m happy it helps some people, for sure, but I feel it would only do me harm.
Also, I’m glad meditation works for you. I don’t think I could ever relax enough. DISTRACTION is the key for me, not CONCENTRATION.
We’ll wait for Martin, but I personally feel that whatever helps you go to sleep can’t be bad?
Thanks to both of you for your advice.
I am dependent on Valium, I suppose. But my doc had wanted me dependent on it anyways, so…
My dosage isn’t big, usually I split the pill and take 2.5 mg, I think it’s more a placebo effect than anything else.
In any case I’m not upping the dose, you’re absolutely right. What saddens me is the fact that even without Valium I will still wake up too soon.
But like you said, Steve, at this point I might as well stop taking it, it does me no good anyways.
Hi,
Well, there’s a bit of a story there.
Like I said before, I have multiple sclerosis. I’ve had it for a long time, though I’m still too young for it to cause me any pain or discomfort.
4 years ago, this primary condition -my MS – lead to an epileptic attack. That sort of thing can happen with MS, unfortunately. So, my neuro prescribed three new drugs to treat the epilepsy, and one of those new drugs was Valium, 5 mg , to be taken nightly.
I decided right off the bat that I am not taking the Valium, just the other two drugs – Trileptal and Depachine.
Time went by and I just stored the Valium in my shelf,didn’t even think about using it.
Then, I started having this increased insomnia thing, this early morning awakening. At first, it was waking me up at around 5:30, after about 7 hrs of sleep. After about 2-3 months I succumbed and took a Valium to try and get back to sleep. It worked great, but I didn’t want to get hooked so I made a deal with myself. I will only take it when I wake up waaay to early, like 3 or 4. If I wake up at 5:30 or 6, I won’t take it.
For about a year and a half it worked pretty well. I only took the Valium once or twice a week when I got much less than 7 hrs of sleep.
Now, I’ve been waking up around 4 in the morning most nights, and thus I have been taking Valium most nights.
So to answer your question in short – I have been taking it for about 3 years, but not for epilepsy, as it’s been prescribed. I take it for sleep. The first two years I took it only on occasion, but the last year I take more often than not.
But I have to point out – my early awakenings started for an unknown reason. It was only after about a couple of months of this that I even tried Valium. So I can’t say Valium was the trigger. It may have, however, contributed to this shift from 5:30 to 4, which is why I’m going to try to quit.
Quit, or change to something else.
Steve, all your questions are spot-on, I really like the way you write.
I am married, no kids, full time job.
What I do is I force myself to do the things I use to be able to do, I never refuse an offer for a drink, but of course in the back of my head I know my friends and acquaintances must be wondering why I look as crappy as I do even on the weekends, they’re just too polite to say anything. Some only say “rough night,huh”, after which we come up with some dumb joke and move on. Also just having normal conversations with them is really hard, coming up with things to say or reacting properly to, say, jokes. It’s like a drunk man is trying to hold a conversation, it’s awful.
My marital life is definitely sufffering, as I feel I would be a far better husband if I could sleep normally, and I don’t mean this only in a sexual way. I think one of the reasons why we don’t have kids is the fact that I can’t sleep normally even in normal circumstances, so how would I manage having a child, as my wife mentioned once.
As for work, I have to keep writing everything down lest I forget. I am able to meet deadlines this way, but sometimes just barely in time.
My life has been curtailed severely by this as well. My days come down to waking up tired and waiting for the next night and the next chance to try to sleep again. And that circle just repeats itself day in and day out.
One person on another forum called it “a rubbish way to live”, and I couldn’t agree more.
I take a self-imposed combination of Valium and melatonin when I wake up in the middle of the night.
But lately things got worse, it’s not nearly as efficient as before, so I’m reporting my sleep problems to my neurologist and seeing what he thinks. Hopefully he will prescribe something else, something more efficient.
I think it’s highly unlikely that you sleep that little, there’s probably some of that sleep misperception thing that everybody mentions thrown in there . Also, you probably doze off often during the day but don’t take it into account when talking about your sleep.
Still, it must be really tough to go through what you are describing. Amazing how insomnia can just turn up out of the blue and linger on for so long. That’s why I think it should finally be recognized as an illness in and of itself, not always a symptom of anxiety , depression or some other thing.
Sailguy – I agree that anxiety is probably the culprit behind all this. Too bad there isn’t much to do when it wakes you up in the middle of the night or too early in the morning. I hope we can all find relief one day, too. As I keep saying , maybe this will all go away one day as abruptly as it’s come.
Martin – I do struggle, yes. But not quite to stay awake, I struggle with general fatigue from not being able to sleep. I know most people struggle to stay awake and so doze off, leading to trouble going to sleep at night. I would love to be able to doze off, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t. I guess I’m a neurotic, like Woody Allen.
The only time I can drift away relatively easily is the night, and that worked just fine most of my life, but for the past 2.5 years I can’t stay asleep long enough anymore.
What I need is a magic pill that puts me back to sleep once I wake up (Valium has some 50/50 efficiency in this), or simply a pill that can keep me asleep the whole night without waking up.
Or maybe I just need a new brain, I don’t know.
Hi,
yeah, there is always that possibility that we simply gave sleep too much power over our lives again.
However, saying “I don’t care how much I slept, I will live like everything is OK and eventually it will be” is a lot harder now then it was 10 years ago, since now it’s a lot tougher to actually go through the day like this. At least for me.
But you’re right, we owe it to ourselves to give it another go. And another, and another. 😉
Wishing you all the best as well.
Hi, Martin,
Yeah, I’ve heard that waking up during the night isn’t uncommon, and that we actually wake up during the night more than we think, but fall back asleep without knowing.
I wake up around 4,since I go to bed around 22 or 23. Like I mentioned somewhere before, and like another user also mentioned, I get around 6 hours of sleep a night (sometimes less, which I hate) which doesn’t seem so bad in itself, but it is not enough for me. And the main problem is that it is a sleep debt that can’t be made up for, since I can’t nap, and can’t sleep in even when I have the time. It’s like my brain is set to wake up after about 6 hrs and that’s that.
I don’t know what is stopping me, sadly. I just don’t fall back asleep, unless Valium succeeds and I get an additional hour or so. If I had to bet I would say I’m too focused on sleep in the mornings, perhaps. But it could also be organic, I have MS and a small cyst on my pineal gland, so…
In the past, I was nervous about sleep and it led to problems with onset of sleep. This problem escalated during my college years, I guess due to obligations,stress and college life.
Eventually, I learned not to worry and my problems went away, I would fall asleep 9 nights out of 10 (but,again,never in the daytime) and there were never any early awakenings.
It is the awakenings that I can’t find a solution for. It’s as if I use up all my melatonin and there is nothing left that could put me to sleep again.
Sorry for the long rant, just wanted to add a little history with my insomnia. In short, falling asleep initially (knock on wood) is almost never a problem anymore, but staying asleep is a problem each and every day, no exceptions.
Well put, Deb.
In addition to that, I also don’t like to hear that insomnia is “just a symptom of something else” and that if you “treat the underlying condition (whatever that mysterious condition might be), your insomnia will go away.”
Some people, and sadly only SOME medical proffesionals now know that insomnia can be a disease in its own right, but most of them still believe that an insomniac is actually depressed, anxious or some third thing.
Let’s hope the future brings more understanding as it did to those other conditions.
Oh yes, and I cant make love to my beautiful wife, which adds to my misery. I wish she never married me, she doesn’t need this. I should just crawl away somewhere like a sick animal and freaking wait to die alone, not disturbing anyone else’s lfe.
I am not usually this drastic in my communication, sorry, but this whole week even my Valium doesn’t help put me back under, and I am at my wits end. If I had the energy, I would cry, but insomnia takes even that away from you.
Hi, Martin,
Sorry for no response, I didn’t check my question after a while of inactivity.
“People with untreated chronic insomnia are rarely excessively sleepiness — instead, they tend to have a problem with fatigue.”
This. You’ve hit the nail on the head. I am never sleepy, but always fatigued. I suppose you’re right, you should be sleepy in order to take a nap.
But,by being unable to nap, I’ve been applying sleep restriction my whole life by default. And it worked fine until it stopped, and I started waking up too early no matter when – weekends, holidays…
What should I do when SR doesn’t work, AND I can’t make up for lost sleep? I guess medication is then the only way to go, even though I already use 2.5 mg of Valium and 5 mg of melatonin, and I’ve tried a couple of sleeping pills which didn’t work.
Slrry for the rant, Martin, you’re doing a great job with this forum.
Many have viewed insomnia,at least some kinds of it, as an OCD type of thing. But I guess it can be called a phobia , too. Boils down to the same , you have a few bad nights, you start thinking/focusing/fearing what the next night will bring, and the circle is complete. And learning to let go of that fear goes a long way to helping you recover, especially if you are young.
Later in life other factors come into play that physically affect sleep, the drop in melatonin levels, illneses, less activity, etc.
Thank you for the answer, delv,
Yeah, I’m sure that a short nap does far more for alertness than 10 cups coffee would do. As someone once said – the only cure for insomnia is to get more sleep.
I think napping is meant to be a part of everyone’s day. After all, it’s a well known fact that humans never slept in consolidated blocks before, but rather in many shorter periods throughout the day.
I’ve heard of the 20-min rule, yes. And also that sleeping longer than that can make you feel groggy instead of rested. Still, what I wouldn’t give for an hour of sleep in the afternoon. 🙁
I’ve also heard of sleep state misperception, but I doubt that I am liable to that. Even if I am, it would be in the night. At day, I just get nervous/anxious and certainly don’t sleep a wink. I’ve even tried with Valium once, after a nil sleep night, and I still couldn’t relax enough to drift off. I think it’s due to the fact that I an the kind of guy who needs peace for sleep, and there are always things happening around you during daytime.
If I understood corectly, CBT-I actually diminished the quality of your naps, the ones you do take?
I like your advice on just resting and closing my eyes for half an hour. It’s something I’ve been meaning to start doing , but I never do. Instead I rough it out until night comes and always hope that that will be the night things change back to normal, that I wake up after the birds, not before them. I am an eternal optimist!
Oh and hang in the with your CBT journey. Its tough our brains are our enemies.
