Insomnia

[mombasa74]

After covid I developed insomnia.

I started taking 3.75mg zopiclone and it works wonders. I have about 6 hour sleep and I feel great whole day.

However, I tried not to reduce dependence by taking one on alternate days. Hell. It doesn’t work. I have zero hours of sleep. The worst part is that I can not sleep even 10 minutes during the day even though I am exhausted. The only way I can go on by taking zopiclone every night. I don’t care about of the future consequences.

Can anyone tell me about his/her experience of taking zopiclone for many years please. Thanks.

[kaliska0]

The problem is when you skip a dose of these meds or try to stop them they have a withdrawal period. The body has gotten used to or dependent on the med and it takes time to adjust back to not having it. In this case with a z-drug (also benzos) it is gaba levels and receptors that are impacted. As you take a med that greatly increases the effect gaba has the receptors get less sensitive or the body sends out less signals to produce it because it's being force flooded with gaba by the sleep aid. When you skip a pill the body lacks it's normal signals or sensitivity as well as the signal by the sleep aid so you have a lack of gaba. One of the strongest relaxing substances in the body.

The ideal way is to lower the dose slowly. If you have tablets you can cut them since z-drugs are not slow release. Do not cut slow or controlled release pills unless your doctor says it will work the same. If you have capsules it is much trickier to divide them and often best to ask your doctor for a lower dosage to use for a few days to a week if one is available.

The often less ideal, sometimes dangerous way is to go "cold turkey". However, this is not risky and rarely a big deal if you've only taken a mild sleep aid for a short period of time. You simply stop taking it. You're sleep will be crap for a few days, probably worse than before you took the med, and you may experience some minor emotional symptoms like anxiety. Then if the original cause of your sleep problems truly is gone your sleep will go back to normal. You just have to suffer for a few days. If you still experience sleep issues after a week off a med you still have some lingering problems that need treated. It can be possible to take something like zopiclone for years but odds are high it will cease to work in a matter of months at best. For some they only get weeks or even just days of effective use and yet still suffer when they stop taking it.

There are better ways to first attempt dealing with mild sleep disturbances before you get stuck on prescription sleep aids or for long term treatment to let you stop taking meds before they are no longer effective. If you wait then you will likely have even worse withdrawal the longer you take it with potentially entire nights of no sleep and you may already be sleep deprived from the declining med effects. The level and length of misery you experience when stopping the med tends to only go up the longer you take a prescription sleep aid.

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You may want to establish some of these beneficial sleep behaviors prior to reducing or stopping your med so they have time to be effective. If withdrawal is mild then it may even be enough to counter the reduced sleep you've experienced when skipping pills and avoid the period of negative symptoms.

A 3rd, less often used method is to replace the med with something milder. This is most often used for high doses, long term use, or very strong medications. For a gaba based sleep aid you might use valerian root, which increases production of gaba, or a supplement labelled specifically for gaba. The problem with this method is you can often become just as dependent on the substitute as the original so unless it's much easier or faster to stop a related substances than what you are currently on there is no benefit. I have done it with some meds that I'd taken for years and did not have a lower dose capsule to use as a taper but in the case of gaba it is difficult to find an effective replacement that still prevents insomnia and will not have the same or worse withdrawal symptoms. I had more issues stopping valerian root than prescription sleep aids after years of using either one but I have since found a valerian liquid extract that would have let me lower it as slowly as I needed to so it might have actually worked to avoid withdrawal symptoms.

Attempting to make use of alternatives to sedating medications for sleep improvements and then if still needed lowering the dosage per evening more slowly instead of stopping the pills suddenly is the best combination to try first. For benzos and z-drugs though I usually just suffer through it. I'm used to not sleeping sometimes at all for a night or 2 if I take nothing and for no reason anyone can find. Withdrawal symptoms from something like zopiclone are mostly equal to normal unmedicated life for me.