How long to try out a new drug

[wantokporo]

I have a lot of trouble tolerating drugs and I blame myself for not trying things longer to see if the side effects lessen. I read these things about how successful someone was after four months with terrible side effects. So the new drug I want to stop is clonodine. This is the second time I have tried it. This time, on the third pill (taking it 2x a day), it -- like so many other drugs -- is causing alertness. Last night I slept maybe 3 hours. Tonight after I took the pill it woke me up, and my PLMD is as terrible ever.

So can alertness turn around? Opioids, gabapentin (after years), pregabalin, horizont, several anti-convulsants, all cause this nervous alertness. So how long should I stick out this go round of Clonodine? I'm going crazy.

[Jelbea]

Hi wantokporo - I have read your post and note that you seem to be sensitive to many medications. I suffer from this also and I think it leads one to be very anxious when trying something new. Could it be that your anxiety is part of the problem. Some time ago I suffered extreme anxiety brought on by many health problems and one of the things anxiety causes is the inability to get good sleep. Of course the RLS and other things can also keep us awake but some of your alerting may be due to worrying. There is no immediate answer to this but I now try to do meditation daily (I was always sceptical of this) and it is working well in decreasing my anxiety and worry about all sorts of things.

Good luck in moving forward

[wantokporo in reply to Jelbea]

From years of insomnia, I also learned to meditate while lying awake for hours. I am going to another all day meditation retreat this weekend. As you say, it doesn't stop the leg movements. I am quite willing to believe anxiety contributes to this mess. How could it not? I have been tested and found to have liver enzyme deviations that could cause these drug reactions, as well as Crohn's disease, both likely contribute to my unusual body response. I am very interested in the mind/body interaction with these matters. I recently looked into research about the placebo effect on RLS or PLMD. Interestingly, I found that the few studies indicate that RLS sufferers have a greater placebo response; PLMD sufferers hardly any (I have PLMD mainly).