TRAZODONE! Antidepressant for sleeping.

[OREOLU]

Hi, did anyone with pd ever tried this for sleep? If so, do not hesitate to share your experience with me. Thanks. Lol.

[Nitro53]

Yes, I’ve used it for two years. 100mg at bedtime. It has worked great for me. I sleep like the dead.🙂

[OREOLU in reply to Nitro53]

Hi Nitro53

It looks like, one has to keep changing antidepressants every time they stop working.

[Nitro53 in reply to OREOLU]

Yes, they either stop working so you have to increase the dosage or the side effects become intolerable

[bone60]

Trazodone caused me to have dizziness and night sweats

[Erniediaz1018]

I was prescribed but never used because when I went to fill prescription with my local pharmacist whom I’ve trusted for over a decade he warned against side effects

[MBAnderson]

I tried it once, but it gave me such a dry mouth, it interfered with my sleep.

[Doohat]

I did. I quit after a few days. It made my mouth extremely dry and it didn't help with insomnia. Just made me groggy, but still sleepless. I also tried mirtazapine (1/2 tablet at bedtime), which has somewhat the same effect as trazodone. What helps me the best is antihistamine (25mg diphenhydramine). The stuff will knock me out most of the night. Dry mouth doesn't seem to be a major issue. The only problem I've noticed is that it tends to dull my thought processing the following day.

[MarionP]

Unless you happen to like Trazodone very much, it's not a particularly good sleep aid. Of course there is always going to be the odd person who does like it, and for them that is just fine. You would be better off to use diphenhydramine which is the generic for benadryl, 25 to 50 mg will do you just fine. However another very often overlooked important hormone which you no longer produce enough of in the first place as we age is melatonin 5 to 10 mg. Another good alternative is a very small dose of clonazepam, say about 1/4 mg.

Now as for whatever somebody was saying anti depressant "poop-out" in general, that's true about prozac, and it is often can be true about tricyclics (tricyclics are also strongly anticholinergic, meaning dry mouth, constipation too), and by the way tricyclics are what gives you the dry mouth, that's called anticholinergia, and SSRIs ("serotonin reuptake inhibitors") can do the anticholinergic dry mouth as well as to a much lesser extent Prozac but not to the extent of the anticholinergics, and antihistamines such as Benadryl are also anticholinergic...

...but the anticholinergic dry mouth is not true about the latest and probably most effective of the antidepressants, which will also not give you dry mouth if you are using it for depression, but which is no good for sleep help because it's basically a nearly opposite mechanism entirely, is duloxetine, which I happen to know a psychiatric nurse at Mayo says she has had patients on duloxetine for as many as 10 years without any of the poop out effect so well known to Prozac and some of the SSRIs. (A more technical explanation is that duloxetine, unlike Prozac and some of the ssris, do not over time have much effect on the placement and number of your serotonin receptors.)

There is no harm at all if you use the Benadryl and jump from 25 to 50 to even 75 mg, but I recommend buying the tablets or pills, which you can break up easily and thus be able to reasonably well target with your dose to whatever is the best dose for you. You start with 25 mg of Benadryl/diphenhydramine, and then break a pill in half and add that and that's 37.5 mg, and if you need more then you can always just have two tablets 50 mg. All over the counter no prescription needed. Works very nicely for some. I have to use clonazepam, because part of my sleep deprivation has to do with the action of duloxetine, which I do have to take and I find that only the combination of clonazepam at night, again only about a quarter milligram which is infinitesimally small, it allows me to get my REM plus the absolutely necessary non-REM sleep, and wake up refreshed, which no other combination has ever done for me. So for those of us who happen to be on a SNRI type antidepressant, sleep, the kind that has you waking up feeling rested and ready and good, is best supported by a little bit of clonazepam, and yes, that is safe and appropriate on a chronic long-term basis.

[JBOVERT]

HI YES I have used trazadone for sleeping for several years. i was looking for something that's not addictive so my MD prescribed trazadone and it worked pretty well for quite a while. THE main reason i stopped taking it was because i figured that less drugs you use the better and so i weaned myself off of it. it is an appendage restricter and that is why it was used as a main drug in alot of mental institutions.

[kaypeeoh]

Depression from work stress sent me to a doc who prescribed Trazodone. This was the earliest SSRI. It seemed to work but it was like taking a lot of antihistamines. I was dopy all day. No pun intended.

[kaypeeoh in reply to kaypeeoh]

I just remembered. I'm a veterinarian. I had a yellow lab who was very aggressive. Dangerous for kids to be around him. Unusual because I've seem aggressive dogs of every breed except yellow labs. Black labs yes, brown labs yes but never in yellow labs. I tried Trazodone rather than putting him down. It didn't help much so the client took him to the vet school in Colorado for a doggie MRI. They diagnosed a brain tumor.

[kaypeeoh in reply to kaypeeoh]

Sorry, didn't realize the original post was 4 months ago.

[b5p10]

Trazadone has enabled me to sleep soundly for 4 -5 hours each night but I do have more restless legs. However I am not sure this problem is actually caused by the drug as I have had the problem on and off for some while.