any words of encouragement on the insomnia

[[SS...]]

well - i sit here, alone, shaking, wondering how to keep going.  In my first 35 days cold turkey - i got 20 hours of sleep total - at times i went 6 days without sleeping - i have no idea how the human body can do it.  like everyone i tried a variety of what might be safe supplements - some clearly made it worse - others - perhaps helped - its hard to know.  then i went an 8 day stretch where i got 4 hours of sleep on 7 of the 8 nights and it felt truly miraculous - i started to have really positive thoughts that i could beat this. 

 

and now the last 3 nights - no sleep - and it feels worse than the first 35 days because my body and brain got that glimpse of sleep and i have no idea how to go back to the possibility sleep will not return again.  i feel like i have 10,000 pounds of energy trapped in my body that needs to come out - i am stuck with tachycardia that is unrelenting.  the last 2 days i did 30 minutes of yoga and 30 minutes on the treadmill at as fast a speed as my legs could go - and it felt good while i was doing it but now i wonder if it overstimulated me and that is why sleep has now disappeared.  i was so happy and positive in those 8 days and now i feel like i've lost all ground.

 

i know everyone around me thinks I'm just having a nervous break down.  i live alone which makes this hard.  going to have to start thinking about selling my house.  i feel like i am going to lose everything i worked for.  i was given valium as part of a major spine surgery recovery and i feel like it's cost me everything..... i would rather have lived with 2 broken discs in my neck than deal with this....  not sure if the cold turkey quit is making this much worse - it seems in all the forums regardless of taper or cold turkey the insomnia is an issue

[[Ni...]]

I've read your introductory story from two days ago and I am so sorry you are going through this. I can identify totally with your insomnia, agitation and bewilderment - as, I would say, can everybody who has been through this process.

 

Even over such a short period of four weeks initially, you were put on whopping doses of (long-half-life) Valium. 5mg for "a newbie" would most likely have been enough to allay any angst/ensure sleep. 30mg, I imagine, could knock a horse.

 

What is in your favour, I feel, is that even though the dose was very high, the period was very short - relatively speaking - and my gut feeling is strong enough for me to to suggest that I think this will stand to you in your healing.

 

Urgently seeking a quick way out at this point will not serve you well and may well serve against you. Many people make the mistake of thinking that being 'gung-ho', 'bristling with fight', and 'striving' of all sorts is a reasonable, active position to take because that is our (otherwise) typical way of achieving. There may come a time for that approach at some future point - but now is not it.

 

There is a great truism about the path to recovery from benzo use and that is along the lines: 'recovery will happen anyway, despite whatever you think or do, for time is the healer; the only way through it is through it'. In other words, healing is our body's expertise, operating on a very different intelligence and structure than any more familiar mind-led intelligence & logical structure: It will not align with your expectations: stand back and don't interfere. Your insomnia and all the rest of it will clear with time.

 

Willing Acceptance, counter-intuitively, is the way forward. My advice is to grab that lesson quickly and learn (body-based) ways of letting go, for whatever this duration will be. My final observation is that you are an excellent writer. Writing is both therapeutic and productive - an absorbing way of processing as well as a key method of conveying material that is hard-to-grasp conversationally; and a great way to use available time.

[[Si...]]

There are a few of us that have had brutal insomnia. Mine was pretty bad, but there are worse case than mine. I can tell you that you can and will sleep normally again. I would go several days at a time with no sleep. Now a lot of nights I can barely stay awake. I'm so sorry you're in this situation too. This should not be happening to people. I don't know how the medical community allows to.

[[SS...]]

thank you so much - both - for your responses.  i guess we all just need words of encouragement in the toughest of moments to keep going forward.  yesterday was my birthday and I had a piece of cake.  I knew sugar has been a trigged but I suspect the gluten was the bigger instigator as I have felt that wired and manic since the first week of WD.  I have been gluten free for weeks and I do think it helps. 

 

I am supposed to go on a week vacation starting thursday night with my family and this lapse back into insomnia is making me feel like I cannot go.  My heart says i should go and be surrounded by love but my brain says my body cannot handle it.  WD is so isolating.

 

I do pray my shorter duration of use will somehow benefit my healing.  In the 6.5 weeks I've had many days that seemed like windows.  I guess the waves hit that much harder because we get that glimpse of normalcy only to lose it. 

 

I sure was shocked when I found out what a huge dose 30mg valium was and I can say that month following spine surgery was the best sleep I had ever had in my life.... now I know why and now I see what that cost me.  I wish I had researched the medications before surgery and not taken it.  But I must live with my decision and pray this will be behind me in the coming months. 

 

I pray for everyone on this site that they find healing.  Thanks for the suggestion on writing.  I guess I feel like my mind is all over the place and fragmented - hard to organize thoughts.  I was / am a highly published scientist..... but my writing then was much different than now. 

 

Thanks again for the encouragement.  Acceptance is so key.  Fighting or trying to control this is difficult and counterproductive....

[[Ni...]]

"...I do pray my shorter duration of use will somehow benefit my healing.  In the 6.5 weeks I've had many days that seemed like windows..."

 

I would rate that as significant in your overall scheme of things. 

 

Stay slow!

[[SS...]]

yes - I now have a full appreciation of how significant those good days were.  In the beginning i was still working out a lot but then it became too difficult and i stopped.  over the weekend, with having the "wired" feeling back, I decided to try it again.  I think it was too much.  My body is so sensitive right now to just about anything.  My whole host of healthy vitamins like Vitamin C and B-12 worsen the tachycardia.  I feel like i need to be doing "something" so I am not sitting here doing "nothing" which is being perceived as lazy or not trying to get better. 

 

Unless someone has been through this - they don't understand and that is the hardest part next to going through it.  I had 2 friends become opioid addicts and i always felt tremendous empathy for them.  I was always there for them.  But I never thought it could happen to me. 

 

When you don't sleep - days feel like eternity.  Right now my industry colleagues think I am taking a break to recover from the 2 cardiac ablations.  They all think I am having this luxurious, restorative, relaxing summer break..... yet I am fighting the biggest battle of my life.... and certainly don't look refreshed...... this process ages you overnight...... but from the success stories I've read - it seems like people regain everything and more once it's over.  I know I will grow as a person - so that has to be the positive in all this darkness....

 

[[Ni...]]

"...I feel like i need to be doing "something" so I am not sitting here doing "nothing" which is being perceived as lazy or not trying to get better..." 

 

Yes, that is the 'striving' urge to "take a swing at it" mentioned earlier. I know the feeling well. It's probably more a boy's thing than a girl's thing too It goes against the grain to walk the other way - until you gain a better overview/insight and "give yourself the permission" to stand down - as you would if you had a very bad flu or the like...

 

I meant 'significant' more in terms of possible upcoming trends; a kind of harbinger, if you like. People who are as short a time off as you are generally take much longer to get any window-like experiences AND there is also the idea that if you have had any glimpse of feeling better - at all - then healing is already advancing steadily. Of course, we can't pronounce that as 'gospel', but if it were me, I'd certainly be taking comfort from it.

 

Wholly agree with all the rest of your post. Supplements of various kinds, but especially B-complex, are known to rev symptoms, particularly in early WD. I wouldn't worry too much about second-guessing what your friends might think either, if I were in your shoes. If push comes to shove or you need more time later on, you can always indicate that you had a "bad reaction to some of the medication you were given" - and ain't that the truth

[[SS...]]

thanks for the suggestion night watch - in my current sleep deprived brain - that would not have occurred to me  - to say i was having a bad reaction to a medication....... one with a very long half life........

 

its always been my personality to take things head on.  i battled my way through lymes disease a few years ago.  did both traditional and alternative treatments - came out of that swinging - then needed the spine surgery - they took pieces of my hip bone to reconstruct the 2 broken discs in my neck that had to be removed - i have a plate and 6 screws in C5-7 - and 2 weeks after that surgery i was doing 2 miles a day on the treadmill and kicking ass.  when the cardiac stuff started - never made the connection....... i actually went to chicago and had a stem cell transplant thinking it was recurring lymes...... they did put some of the stem cells into my brain - won't describe the procedure to get it up there - it was done by an ENT surgeon -  so maybe its helping my neurotransmitters - as many parkinsons patients have the procedure done to try to reset the dopamine transmitters.....  i don't know.  i just know i've had the upper hand on everything in life so this is very frustrating.  and that is also what makes the amount of judgment going on difficult.  i've never laid down and accepted defeat and yet my family feels i am just having a break down versus that something is terribly wrong.  they are trying to be supportive but they can't understand how one minute i am high and the next low.  the swings can happen within hours...... someone doesnt become bipolar out of no where at 42...... but i guess this is a lesson in letting go of what others think and taking care of myself. 

 

thanks for your responses and understanding - it really means a lot

[Guest [Le...]]

Hi SSR1975,

 

Your observation that 'it's always been my personality to take things head on' is going to be a key and winning concept in battling this and beating it. Benzos were the first thing in my entire feisty life that ever brought me down so low. I think it's the combination of drug-induced amotivation and insomnia that can knock even the strongest of us right off our feet, and indeed make us appear to be bipolar.

 

After getting 0-2 hours of sleep a night for so long, I'm happy to report that something close to normal sleep has finally returned, as I approach fourteen months off Ativan. Like you, I'd begin to sleep 4-6 hours or so, and actually be grateful for it - only to go back to 2 hours.

 

The path is not linear, but sleep will find its way back to you eventually, and somehow the horrific insomnia will turn out to be survivable after all.

 

Here's hoping you get some great sleep (and beautiful dreams) sooner rather than later!

Leslie 

[[SS...]]

Thanks LeslieAsh - your response means so much.  i think after fighting health issues for 6 years - i am so worn down yet i know this is going to be the toughest battle yet - so - i have to dig deep and hopefully being in this forum will help me find that strength.  it feels so cruel to have gained those 4 hours of sleep per night only to go back to zero 3 nights in a row...... but your response gives me hope it will come back. 

 

thanks for sharing and giving me some hope today.

[[Ni...]]

My, SSR1975, but you have been through the mill with all of those other issues...

 

Directly on the insomnia front, I had vicious, agitated insomnia for three to four months at the outset of this when I hit tolerance withdrawal. The only 'sleep' I had during that period, typically, was a random collapse into a half-hour of nightmares only to wake up more agitated than ever. So I fully 'get it'.

 

The good news is that it does come right over time and, while not out of the woods yet, I now average 6-7 hours every night and can feel that it is improving in quality & depth (non-linearly) all the time.

 

There were a few things I did which may or may not be useful to you, but anyway:

 

1. I stopped - genuinely stopped - agitating over whether or not I got any sleep. Instead, I went fully the other way and wholly adopted an "I don't care" approach. Over a week or two, that was enough to remove a whole heap of alarm and, paradoxically, (for that is the way it works) I began to nod off more. Ultimately, short sleeps linked up and became longer ones...etc.

 

2.  I took up a suggestion to eat a small, easily-digestible, protein-led snack before bed-time. The idea was to manage blood-glucose levels overnight and to fend off any cortisol rushes from lack of food intake

 

3.  Same time to bed and same time to get up every day, sleep or not; developed a repetitive pre-bed routine; read many a boring book (boring is good!); used a hot-water bottle as a heat-pad for achey bits and the bedroom became a no-thinking sanctuary...All thinks - no matter how compelling - were left outside the door.

 

I derived great benefit from most all of this. (I couldn't go with the "sleep hygiene" playbook which, TBH, drove me mad).

 

All the best.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[[SS...]]

thanks night watch - very helpful tips.  any recommendations on some protein snacks.  i do think blood sugar and cortisol shifts are a part of the early morning waking / panic attack - if i even manage to get to sleep.

 

i will definitely start making a greater effort to stress less about it and accept it.  i guess once i started getting the 4 hours - i had hoped it meant i would keep that and build on it..... never imagined losing it again.... particularly since it didnt seem like i changed anything - although i did reintroduce exercise and maybe i should not have..... the joys of analyzing each day and what i did or didnt do differently.  i need to stop that and remind myself about the non linear nature of this.  being the analytical scientist makes it hard.

 

if i didnt need to drive - i think i'd be able to worry much less about it - but i've tapped out my family - they had to pitch in a ton when i was in a hard cervical neck collar for 8 weeks after spine surgery and then again during the recovery period from both cardiac ablations - so - its hard to ask for more help.  i guess on the nights i do get sleep - i will need to be sure to get out and do my errands to take some pressure off.

 

[[Ni...]]

Something on a cracker - peanut butter;cottage cheese; paté; small amounts of sliced meat - with a glass of milk, if you can go it.

 

Some people also use avocado or banana for the magnesium & B6 content.

 

And yes, my research led me to spot that when blood-sugar plunges, then the brain will kick-in with adrenalin and cortisol to pull stored glucose from muscle/tissue/liver reserves; there is a double whammy - because a plunge in blood sugar creates a panicky response all on its own, and the release of adrenaline/cortisol drives it on. All best avoided