advice/help/tips getting to sleep being up days,9.5 months

[[it...]]

I've been up almost two days afrer 3 hours sleep because of noises and being woken up by things. These are rough months and not good to be sleep deprived vibrating shaking with long waves. Just wanted some advice on how you guys do it if it happens to you..freaking out a bit. And my muscles are worse and heart beats faster when no sleep..I'm over 9.5 months off. And I'm seeing improvements besides this hiccup.

[[Ro...]]

Honestly I mostly just took it.  Longest I've gone with zero sleep is about 6 days but this happened on multiple occasions.  The last time was about 5-6 months out.  Just try to relax and do something menial to pass the time and eventually you will sleep.  Watch some tv show, read, etc.  I can tell you though that things WILL get better with time so all you can really do is accept that things are the way they are now and just wait it out.  I'm about 20 months out and I'm almost completely healed.  Still wake up a bit early and have the odd bad night here and there but even my "bad" nights now pale in comparison to what I was dealing with right after jumping which was sleeping a half hour, every other night for weeks.

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Hey thanks for responding roast. Its good to hear someone who's been through it aswell and your progress. That's awesome man hope to be at 20 one day lol. When you eventually slept when it happend, were you doing something? Did you keep trying to lay down and drift now and again? Or pass out from sheer exhaustion? I've always been scared of this no sleep thing in WD..don't know if that's normal. But thanks for helping me,big time. Ibsomnia is aweful..especially in WD.

[[al...]]

My insomnia hit a fever pitch after I jumped from zopiclone. Someone forwarded this article to me and it really helped. I realized that while benzo w/d could account for part of my sleep disturbances, my own issues with sleep and having relied on a pill to do the work for me for so long, were equally responsible for my insomnia.

I took the advice in this article, practiced, failed, practiced some more...repeat a lot and finally came out an excellent sleeper. When benzo w/d insomnia does hit, i take it in stride now and it only lasts a few days and not weeks as it used to, because I would freak out and panic over a bad  / no sleep night. No I just relax all night, accept the no sleep and don't panic about it. After 20 years of bouts of insomnia....it feels good to say i am no longer and insomniac! 

 

Hope it helps...  http://www.benzobuddies.org/forum/index.php?topic=78924.0 Bama.xo

[[ma...]]

Hey Alabama do you live in Alabama now. I live in Bham.

 

Just curious

[[al...]]

nope, my name comes from a movie not a place....The movie is True Romance and the main character's name is Alabama Werle

[[La...]]

itsmylife:

 

I'm also at 9.5 months off the poison and still dealing with insomnia issues. Its really weird, months 4-5 I was sleeping like a baby. Then months 6-8 the insomnia came back ferociously. Now in month 9, it is starting to ease up. I've had a lot of professional help with the insomnia and practice the techniques religiously. They help to some extent, but the real big driver of whether or not I sleep is the wd/healing. I am no longer afraid of not sleeping. My insomnia these past few months have been early waking at ridiculous early hours. When I woke early in months 6-8 I could not fall back asleep. Now at 9.5 months, when I wake early and see it is still dark, I fall right back asleep immediately. And I am not doing ANYTHING differently. I can only chalk it up to wd.

 

So far, I am on a good streak. I have had 7 consecutive nights of 6.5-7 hrs sleep (broken, with several brief wakeups each night). I am really hoping this pattern doesnt go south. Who would have thought at 9 months out this stuff would still be exacting such a toll?

 

The ride will end when it will end. Whenever that is...

 

Good luck.

 

laser

[[Ro...]]

Hey thanks for responding roast. Its good to hear someone who's been through it as well l and your progress. That's awesome man hope to be at 20 one day lol. When you eventually slept when it happend, were you doing something? Did you keep trying to lay down and drift now and again? Or pass out from sheer exhaustion? I've always been scared of this no sleep thing in WD..don't know if that's normal. But thanks for helping me,big time. Ibsomnia is aweful..especially in WD.

 

Didn't really do anything different. I did use trazodone and saw some minor differences when on and off it but it was slight. I've had zero sleep nights on and off traz so once my sleep started getting even a little better I'd tapered off the traz slowly. I thought it was pointless to continue on a med that wasn't really helping me anyways.

 

What I found in general was that sleep for me was almost completely random. One night I would lay down, fall asleep and sleep 7 hours straight and the next I'd lay awake practically the whole night tossing and turning for 8-9 hours and not sleep a wink. Nothing changed between night one and night two. There have been nights when I didn't do anything the whole day but tryst relax and I slept like crap. Days I tried to get out and do stuff or even exercise and I slept like crap, even days I had some alcohol, days I ate healthy, days I ate like crap, etc. The same goes for days before a great night of sleep. The conclusion I came to is that this sleep issue was completely out of my control and I just accepted it. You can drive yourself crazy trying to find a solution but there simply isn't one. The only solution is time. There is no shortcuts or magic tricks/pills. Slow and steady wins the race. All you can really do is do things to occupy yourselfin order to allow time to pass as quickly as possible and to make the journey the least painful as possible. For me this meant cutting myself out from the outside world as much as possible and suffering in peace but I'm not a very social person so for you this might mean something completely different.

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Hey LaserJet I've been having similar experiences with sleep.. Sound alike. One thing I've learned is if I can't right off the bat or even a couple or few hours from laying down I wait till I hit a brief window or lessening of symptom like a gap and where my brains not reved with thought and I can drift off. I slept last night doing this and was actually calm when I hit it and got good6 7 hours sleep. Then napped a little here a bit ago...if I get less than 6 its usually a slightly crappy day but Itbdoesnt freak me out as bad just don't like being miserable. And ROAST..all good advice..some times you just have to take it or learn new tricks..and I've taught this old dog(bz WD) a few new ones lol. Hope you guys are doing well. Thanks to all who replied.