Zopiclone advice needed.

[Jadeen]

Hi everyone. I have been on zopiclone for two years.

I want to get off it. Once I accomplish that, I am wondering if my sleep cycle had a chance to reset since I started it. If I will be able to sleep as I use to prior to sleep problems.

Has anyone been in my situation and have advice for me. Thanks and the best to your health,

Jay

[Jadeen]

Hi. I was only on a drug for high cholesterol for ten years which I am still on.

Unfortunately December I did have to go on Paxil as corona virus caused loneliness and depression. I have been off Paxil for a week now.

I have been on Dexmethasone mouthwash for a year and half. Due to Geographical tongue. That’s a topic on its own!

I wonder if it will be too much for my brain if I withdraw zopocline. I go to clinics. So no doctor truly knows me. It is too hard to find a family doctor. B.C. Has a shortage of family doctors.

Thanks for replying 😊

[Mathewsmith]

It’s should be ok but take it very slowly And don’t worry if you cannot sleep as well for a bit. The trick is to see the long term goal.

[Jadeen in reply to Mathewsmith]

Thank you. I will take your advice. 😊

[kaliska0]

Part of the reason z-drugs were created and are preferred is they are much easier to stop than benzos so not an issue for most. Probably 99% of the time when you stop a med you return to however you would have been without it. After a period of withdrawal and everything getting worse, which is what makes people go back on a med without having properly tested what things are like without it.

It may take a few weeks for some to fully recover from stopping a medication and your symptoms may not be entirely identical to before if years have gone by. You are not the same as years earlier. Your lifestyle may have even changed and the ideal use of psychiatric meds is to allow you to change your situation so you can stop taking them and not have symptoms return.

Emotional causes such as stress, anxiety, and depression can be situational so the insomnia from them can come and go. At minimum you've gotten older which can both increase and decrease physical causes of insomnia such as hormone changes.

So symptoms could be better, it could be worse, but it won't be because the med changed anything physically.

[Jadeen in reply to kaliska0]

Thank you. I feel more positive about coming off some medications since I came onto this site. I guess there is a huge difference in the way a doctor understands a patient in comparison to someone who has walked in your shoes.

I started using Paxil once covid started. Not being able to see my senior friends twice a week for group pool exercise, not seeing grandkids and not going to church made me deeply depressed. It is been a tough road. And I am sure many people living alone suffered like I did.

Doctors appointments were done only by phone.

There is only so much I was willing to share over a phone.

I thank God one day we can put this dark period behind us. Take care. 🌻

[PlanetaryKim]

Hi Jadeen. I realize your post is 3 months old now, but just wondered how you are doing and whether you were able to come off zopiclone? I am in process of tapering down my zopiclone right now, after 3.5 years of usage.

[flyflop in reply to PlanetaryKim]

hi planetarykim hope you are well. How are you doing with coming off zopiclone? ive been on it since 2018 really need help and advice to come off it as getting serious side effects that are causing physical and mental problems. can you advise or help me in anyway? thank you x

[PlanetaryKim in reply to flyflop]

hi flyflop. I have managed to get off zopiclone. But have just substituted some non-prescription sleep aids, so I am not sure I have really improved anything.

I was on zopiclone continuously every night since april 2018. To get off, I gradually tapered down from 7.5 mg to 3.75 mg over a 2-month period. I was able to adjust to 3.75 mg so that my body got almost as much sleep as it did on 7.5 mg. And that was good because I felt my morning alertness improved, but still was not as crisp as I thought it could be without any zopiclone.

I tried to go down to 2.5 mg. but that wasn't working. I could only get 2-4 hours sleep on 2.5 mg and could never adjust to get more sleep on that low dose.

Long story short: I had my final zopiclone on Dec 4, 2021. However I can't sleep without some sleep aid, it turns out. I have tried many times to do without.

So I am now using 1-2 mg melaton nightly plus 1/2 Gravol (dimenhydrinate). Neither of these requires a prescription,. so I have solved that part of the problem (because I was having difficulty finding a doctor who would refill my zopiclone).

I think I am a little better off in terms of morning alertness. I was concerned that longterm zopiclone use could potentially contribute to dementia because it is anti-cholinergic. But so is Gravol, so I really don't want to use that every night. But the melatonin alone usually is not quite enough.

I read an insomnia book that said to taper off z-drugs, start by taking your lower dose just once or twice a week, and not on consecutive nights. Then increase the numbers of nights a week slowly until you are doing a full week at your lower dose. And then start that process all over to go lower still. In other words, tapering from 7.5 mg to 3.75 mg would take a month or 2. The book said keep going until you are off altogether...

Good luck to you!

[flyflop in reply to PlanetaryKim]

Thank you so much very helpful, will follow your advice and let you know how i do x

[PlanetaryKim in reply to flyflop]

Please do let me know how it goes. I really haven't found the answer I am happy with yet. I did get off zopiclone, and I think that my days are more alert and energetic because of that. But I have replaced it with 2 others sleep aids (melatonin and dimenhydrinate) which may cause problems of their own. I don't know.

[PlanetaryKim in reply to flyflop]

UPDATE March 2, 2022: I have had to halt my melatonin use because it was contributing to atrial fibrillation in me, which I had managed to control for a full year by another means. So I did not want that to come back. Melatonin can be proarrhythmic in some people, including me and the 2 patients in this case report:

ARTICLE: "Sleep Medications Containing Melatonin can Potentially Induce Ventricular Arrhythmias in Structurally Normal Hearts: A 2-Patient Report"

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/a...

I don't want to scare anyone off of using melatonin as a sleep aid. Plenty of people seem to use it with no problem. But if you are noticing irregular heartbeat since starting it, consider this possibility.