Melatonin for sleep

[TabbyCat82]

@Anya324

 

Thank you got your experience. I’m confused by all of this. I feel like I’m flailing out at sea and very scared. My dr prescribed trazodone for sleep and I might just go ahead and take that. 

[Anya324]

Just now, TabbyCat82 said:

@Anya324

 

Thank you got your experience. I’m confused by all of this. I feel like I’m flailing out at sea and very scared. My dr prescribed trazodone for sleep and I might just go ahead and take that. 

trazodone is not safe at all! Stick with the melatonin over trazodone!!! There are other natural sleep remedies. Something that worked well enough for me when I was in the throes of withdrawal was Yoga Nidra. My daughter now take something from Hyland for calming/sleep. It has a lot of natural/herbal type ingredients. Can be risky for someone in wd to take bc you won’t know what you’re reacting to. 
 

you can take more melatonin and see if that helps. We are all different and our bodies need and tolerate different doses of so meds in a variety of ways. Just stick with natural things and stead clear of the pharmaceuticals. They’re killers. 

[littlebird]

1 hour ago, Anya324 said:

1 hour ago, TabbyCat82 said:

My dr prescribed trazodone for sleep and I might just go ahead and take that. 

trazodone is not safe at all!

@TabbyCat82 trazodone messed me up worse than any one of these drugs: I lost my damn mind trying to get some sleep and had the worst/scariest side effects from this one in particular. It brought on my first and only hallucination within 2 days of taking it, never had psychosis before, and after stopping trazodone it never happened again.

 

Also currently fighting real hard against another anti-psychotic that replaced it (prescribed off-label for sleep like trazodone was) and I wish I'd just found other ways to get to sleep at night instead of adding in these heavy meds that (it turns out) were making depression worse and exacerbating other physical health issues. 

 

Don't get me wrong, not sleeping is awful and makes everything worse, I just saw the name of that med being prescribed for sleep and alarm bells went off. I hope you find some relief soon! 

[TabbyCat82]

@littlebird thank you for your account of the Trazadone, I’ll back away from it. It’s been sitting at the pharmacy for a week waiting for pickup because I thought it sounded like a bad idea. I just went to acupuncture and feel some relief. She was sure she could help with the insomnia. Fingers crossed. 

[littlebird]

5 minutes ago, TabbyCat82 said:

I just went to acupuncture and feel some relief. She was sure she could help with the insomnia. Fingers crossed. 

I got a lot of relief from acupuncture! I also really got a lot of benefit whenever they gave me an herbal formula. Might be worth asking if they do ear seeds: it's a tiny sticker with a mustard seed (if memory serves) that is placed over an acupuncture point in the ear and you can press it. I used to get them for anxiety and it helped a lot. Glad you listened to your body not feeling the trazodone and tried some acupuncture. Hope it helps and you're sleeping well very soon!

[Anya324]

On 7/6/2023 at 1:58 PM, littlebird said:

@TabbyCat82 trazodone messed me up worse than any one of these drugs: I lost my damn mind trying to get some sleep and had the worst/scariest side effects from this one in particular. It brought on my first and only hallucination within 2 days of taking it, never had psychosis before, and after stopping trazodone it never happened again.

 

Also currently fighting real hard against another anti-psychotic that replaced it (prescribed off-label for sleep like trazodone was) and I wish I'd just found other ways to get to sleep at night instead of adding in these heavy meds that (it turns out) were making depression worse and exacerbating other physical health issues. 

my doc gave me trazodone because I wasn’t sleeping (hadn’t for years) well. It was while I was on a whole host of psychotropic meds. Adding this one to the mix was my undoing. I had serotonin syndrome from it. One tiny dose. That’s all it took. Trazodone is DANGEROUS. 

[PrayingForRestoration]

Many months ago, I started taking melatonin at 10mg per a pharmacist's recommendation. Once the 10mg bottle of melatonin was empty, I began 5mg. I take melatonin nightly. I am grateful that I fall asleep fairly quickly, but I am looking for solutions to extend my sleep. Any suggestions to extend sleep? Also, do I need to look for other sleep aid recommendations and warnings on this site - i.e. cbd oil, tryptophan, others?

[Catalyzt]

Reviving this thread with another cautionary tale here.

 

Was briefly cut off from painkillers (no taper) just due to general antiopiate hysteria.  (Serious chronic pain here, headache is the worst, I take less than 10 mg Norco approx. 5 days per week down from 7 days per week, never had issues with wanting more in 20 odd years.)

 

The good news:  After 96 hours w/ no medication, I discovered that there is zero withdrawal from Norco in this dosage, or at least none that I could identify... might have been something super subtle lurking underneath chronic pain.  No rebound, either-- pain had the usual strength and frequency it does on days when I do not dose and 'guess wrong.'  (When I guess right, and avoid triggers like sunlight, hard exercise, and work only 4 hours in a day, I can sometimes totally avoid a headache and don't need medication.)

 

Anyway, I talked to my... er, representative and my doctor, and we got things sorted, filled the prescription, back to the same dose I've been taking since 2017.  No physical ill effects, I didn't feel more anxious, but I couldn't sleep b/c of the shame of disappointing my GP for some unknowable reason and general health care system dysfunction, existential stress, etc.  (I'm a health care provider, too.)  To avoid increasing anxiety meds-- which I don't need for this anyway, existential stress isn't treatable with meds-- I thought I would try melatonin.  Had 12 mg tablets, so took 3 mg, thinking that would be a low dose.

 

Big mistake!  Made me incredibly depressed in the morning, felt physical, like when I used to drink and take metronidazole!  Took me several days to figure out, too-- I thought maybe I was actually developing a major depressive disorder, though I knew that was crazy.

 

Stopped the melatonin.  I'm still a little shaken up, still have some trouble sleeping, but that organic feeling of depression, like my brain wasn't booting properly, is gone.  So to all who might tread in my footsteps:  Start low if you try this at all!  i should have checked here first!  And if depression increases after starting melatonin, particularly in the morning, consider that very suspicious. 

[Dee12h]

On 8/19/2023 at 5:21 PM, PrayingForRestoration said:

Many months ago, I started taking melatonin at 10mg per a pharmacist's recommendation. Once the 10mg bottle of melatonin was empty, I began 5mg. I take melatonin nightly. I am grateful that I fall asleep fairly quickly, but I am looking for solutions to extend my sleep. Any suggestions to extend sleep? Also, do I need to look for other sleep aid recommendations and warnings on this site - i.e. cbd oil, tryptophan, others?

Make sure you’re taking the extended release melatonin- ER, SR, etc.