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Hi Martin,
I think my recovery nights are when I break down and take a benzo to get a little more sleep. I currently take Remeron and lunesta, both given to me by doctors for the insomnia. Unfortunately neither of them work well anymore. If I don’t take them, I get zero sleep, but with them I’m only getting 3-4 hours a night. The occasional benzo will give me another 2, if I’m lucky, but I don’t do that often at all and only when I’m very, very desperate.
I also have shifting patterns in the insomnia. I was having a lot of trouble falling asleep initially, but once I fell asleep I could usually stay asleep until 5 am. Lately, I’m falling asleep (with some trouble but I still get there) but waking early, at 4 am. This last 4 days I’ve woken at 3 am and cannot fall back asleep. It’s horrible!
So, my question for you is, how do I set my wake time when I wake at 3-4 am? Do I set it for when I WANT to wake up, or when I always wake up? I think another concern I have is that the sleep restriction will not work for me because of underlying depression that is not being treated with meds. I’ve tried a number of antidepressants but none of them helped and exacerbated the insomnia. I am going to therapy but not sure there is much left to try for the depression, so can the sleep get better despite of the depression and anxiety? I’ve read conflicting information on this. Some say you can treat the insomnia and the anxiety and depression will improve. I’ve also read the insomnia won’t respond to restriction therapy because of the underlying anxiety and depression. What are your thoughts on this, and how to set a wake time when I wake so early in the morning? If I set my ideal times, and kept it at 5.5 hours, it would be waking at 6 am and then going to bed at 12:30 am, however, that’s likely to result in sleeping from about 1-3 am for me, which is much less than the 5.5 hours allotted. Any thoughts?
By the way, I hate being on the sleep meds and am tapering down off of them slowly but feel I need to get this sleep thing under control a bit more to finish the taper.
