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So have you taken an ambien every night for the last 8 weeks? Or did you actually stay up all night and all the next day any time during that period?
Also talk to your dr about your possible OCD. That going untreated could be having a tremendous effect on your sleep.
Yeah I feel you on the trazadone. More than 25mg would make me luggy the whole next day, not to mention eye twitches, increased bathroom trips and constipation. I am going off it myself. Actually last night was my first night using nothing in 7 days. I woke up several times like when I don't take pills but for me the CBT things I have been doing helped me go immediately back to sleep after each awakening. I do feel more tired today but better than before. If nothing is working I say go to your doctor and tell him how hard you worked at CBT and it didn't work and you want to investigate other possible physiological causes for it. Also I would go and get a sleep study, If you are sleeping that little, they should be able to at least give you some insight as to what is happening in your brain. Go to a different sleep dr who will listen to you and give you a sleep study. Going for days on end without sleeping is really dangerous.
I hope very much you can get some help. I can't even imagine how hard this must be.
I have been taking trazodone for almost a week and if I take more than half a pill 25 mg, I am groggy through to the next day. Not sure how it might affect you. So are you on antidepressants? have you looked into things that might cause purely physiological insomnia? Are you a woman? Could possibly be hormonal or menopausal if you are. I will try to do some research on it. I am currently taking wellbutrin and have for 10 years and think it might be contributing to my insomnia and so am going to talk to my dr about going off.
I am so very sorry you are going through this. I feel for you. If you need someone to talk to, let me know.
Jen
I have taken it for 10 years and it did cause sleep problems for me when I took it after noon. I would not recommend taking it for insomnia AT ALL!
I am also thinking to go off it because I have a suspicion that my recent sleeping probs could be due in some part to having taken it so long. I am going to talk with my dr about it. It would be worth investigating if it might help. Also I never had night terrors until I started taking Wellbutrin. Not saying they are reason but I can't help but wonder if it isn't a contributing factor.
Also here is a webpage that could be of some help or illumination.
Sorry to go on about it but I read a review of her book and the reviewer writes:
Though she hyperbolically declares that she would have “sold her soul for sleep,” she refuses to give up wine or leave parties early so that she can have a regular sleep schedule. Confusingly, she concludes, “I love sleep too much to voluntarily restrict it for the rest of my life.”
The American scholar, Book Reviews, 2008, Sleepless Nights, Sarah Fay
This was my earlier point very pointedly admitted to by the writer. She refuses to give up wine or leave parties early (and by inference, to go to bed and rise at the same time everyday) but she would “sell her soul for sleep”? Ummm, what? You say you would do anything to get sleep, well anything that doesn't interfere with the lifestyle you enjoy. Also saying essentially that she loves sleep so much that she won't even try sleep restriction. Btw the sleep restriction is generally part of the first part of CBT, but I am almost certain that once you get your sleep efficiency much higher you can begin to sleep more and more.
Again sorry to go on and I am not trying to judge her, but it does seem apparent to me that her articles and books are not only not helping insomniacs desperate for help, but they are probably in a larger portion hurting them. She convinces them that CBT is completely bogus and drugs are the only way. In some measure what she is proposing is similar to someone proposing that eating less or no cholesteral and less fat isn't the way to go for people with high cholesteral. The thing to do is simply to take the doctors pills to lower, because well eating less or less fatty foods is just too much of an imposition or you dissmiss outright the possibility that this could help. Now don't get me wrong, I know folks to do both, some that do one or the other. I have no problem with the person who decides they really can't be vegetarian and would rather take pills. I get that. But if you are that person, you really ought not write books about this to disuade others from trying lifestyle changes because in your limited experience and non-medical expertise lifestyle changes don't work.
I realize I keep going on about this but this also hits a nerve with me as I am really saddened and upset with our medical industrial complex. Don't get me wrong, modern medicine can do wonders for us all and I have benefited in my life from antibiotics, surgery, hell, I have even been on antidepressants for ten years now (which btw I am looking into weaing off and to try not being on something or trying something different because I have suspicions that my use of this drug long term may be a contributing factor to my insomnia). But generally modern medicine is of the belief that if you have a problem, let's find a pill to fix it. Instead of looking for things we can do outside pharmacology to help the patient. But then if they did that, no one would make any money. The pharmacueticals would have to scale down their companies big time and the dr wouldn't continue to have a patient to treat. I am not trying to say that doctors, pharmaceuticals, and modern medicine are total crap. What I am saying is that there are alternative ways to deal with problems. Look at the source of the problem instead of simply treating the symptoms.
Sorry again to post on about this. I just feel so strongly. Again my purpose is in no way to judge or critize anyone for how he/she chooses to live his/her life. Just don't come crying to me when you refuse to really try every means possible to help.
Sorry couldn't edit my post but the second to last sentence in the post should read: Also I find it illogcial that someone might use the logic that CBT doesn't work cause you have chosen not to do most of the work yourself
I would say far be it from me to know what is best for everyone but I didn't particularly like the article. It seemed quite fatalistic and really only gave sleeping pills as a viable option. I think she also snubbed CBT and I don't think she gave it an accurate portrayal. She said there were only a small amount of studies on it and the populations studied were “small numbers of carefully screened, self-selected and highly motivated subjects”. First off, I have done some research and there have many studies, over many years, with many people. Now as for the “self-selected and highly motivated subjects”, my rebuttal is I am sure most subjects were self-selected and highly motivated and that is because they were really desperate and really open to the idea that this might work and gave it a chance. Unfortunately what I have read about her book, she believes completely that insomnia is never psychological and only physiological. As this is the case CBT will never be able to help her because she already thinks it can't work because it is dealing with behavior and psychology of sleeping. Also I find it illogcial that someone might use the logic that CBT doesn't work cause you have choose to do most of the work yourself. That is blaming the therapy for not working not because it doesn't work but because you are not willing to do the work.
Here is an exerpt from a review of the book on Amazon that I found revealing:
“Gayle Greene certainly deserves our sympathy as she struggles with this debilitating illness. However, it is apparent that she begins with certain preconceptions. For example, she fervently believes in a physical or biological origin of insomnia, which may or may not be the case, but it colors the way she approaches her subject. As the saying goes, when you own a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. Most researchers agree that insomnia almost always has a psychological AND a physical component. If you emphasize one and ignore the other, you are making a potentially serious error. A much better book is Dr. Barry Krakow's “Sound Sleep, Sound Mind” which delves into the subject from a much more informed and knowledgeable perspective, and might actually help people with the disease.”
I am not saying that CBT is the only way and that taking pills is completely bad (I have been taking pills on and off for about a month, but I am already fed up with taking them because I know they will only be effective for a short time and then I will have to take something else and then something else and so ad infinitum). I have become really desperate to find a cure that can give me the power to change my life. I am also motivated to being open to and really work at trying CBT at least for a month. I know from past experience that when I have be only just strict with my bedtime and arising for a couple weeks, it noticably helped.
I do firmly believe that yes there could be cases of purely physiological cases of it but the only way to know if it is, is to really give CBT a try, do everything as prescribed and finish the course. If after that your insomnia is in no way improved, then I say go get a sleep study, have your doc do blood tests and so on. Don't just decide before you ever tried it that it won't work. If you do that, it most certainly won't.
Sorry about it sounding like a rant, but I really want people to explore all their options and be open to alternate possibilities, so it increases their chances of getting help. As they say, a mind is like a parachute, it only functions when open.
Also I say all this not to critize anyone for anything they do related to their own insomnia. I am not here to judge but just try to give an alternate way to go. Don't just read this article and take it as gospel. Go out and explore everything.
Thanks!
Jen
I am so sorry you are suffering. I am very familiar with the agonies of insomnia.
I have just started working on CBT for insomnia. I used to get up watch tv and have a cig. But in CBT they say not to do anything remotely stimulating like smoke, tv, lights, work and so on. Since I have started CBT, if I wake up I go to the other room and read with a book light. Or listen to my Deep Sleep app for the iPhone in the dark. It is only 2.99 and it is really wonderful. Andrew Johnson is the guy who does it and he has the most relaxing voice and I quite like it because listening to him helps me not think so much. Also I get out of bed because in CBT terms the goal is to improve your sleep efficiency which is the time you sleep divided by the time you spend in bed. They say that you should do nothing in your bed except sleep and sex. The idea is that by doing other things in bed, we give our body the cue that the bed isn't just for sleeping, which contributes to our insomnia. I have been working on this for the last three days and it seems to be helping a bit. Also you have to go to bed and wake up at same time everyday including weekends so that you are giving your body consistent cues as when it should be tired.
As for how it effects me during the day, well that depends on how bad the insomnia was, if I am hormonal (girls you know what I mean) and how long the bad insomnia nights have been. The last few weeks it was so bad that i was virtually crying everyday at least once if not more. I was so tired I couldn't cook dinner or a take a shower more than every 5 days or leave my house for anything other than groceries or really necessary errands. I have been getting irritated at people and things very easily. It can be really bad. One thing that helps for me, is to read articles on and listen to audio on Buddhist principles. Buddhism has many practices and concepts that make going through something awful not so bad.
I hope this is what you were looking for in terms of feedback.
Jen
