Anyone else feel better late at night?

[[Ne...]]

I often feel like my symptoms are barely there as I’m heading to bed and then the nightmare returns in the morning and through the day.  Most prominent daytime symptoms are chest anxiety / heaviness, trembling and mental spaciness / dizziness / instability.  Has anyone found ways to combat these things during the day?  Alternative therapies, coping skills?

[[jo...]]

On 25/04/2024 at 06:50, [[N...] said:

I often feel like my symptoms are barely there as I’m heading to bed and then the nightmare returns in the morning and through the day.  Most prominent daytime symptoms are chest anxiety / heaviness, trembling and mental spaciness / dizziness / instability.  Has anyone found ways to combat these things during the day?  Alternative therapies, coping skills?

I get a few hours at night when mental symptoms calm down. I've read that it's due to your system taking that long to calm down due to the GABA receptors that usually do that job not working properly. Not a doctor though. Like you it starts again in the morning I think due to cortisol being high in the morning and creating anxiety. Some days are better than others for me and it settles quicker. Sometimes it can go all day and until late at night which is torture. I'm having a wave like that at the moment. Hopefully it will get better soon.

[[PE...]]

Yes!! It makes me don't want to go to bed. Mornings suck.. 

[[PE...]]

33 minutes ago, [[j...] said:

I get a few hours at night when mental symptoms calm down. I've read that it's due to your system taking that long to calm down due to the GABA receptors that usually do that job not working properly. Not a doctor though. Like you it starts again in the morning I think due to cortisol being high in the morning and creating anxiety. Some days are better than others for me and it settles quicker. Sometimes it can go all day and until late at night which is torture. I'm having a wave like that at the moment. Hopefully it will get better soon.

Yes alot theories about why it is like this but no one really knows for sure. If they knew, something could be done about it.

Sticky tropical kind of anxiety wakes me up every morning. It disappears after an hour but it wakes me up!!

Edited Monday at 18:06 by [PE...]

[[Ma...]]

@[Ne...] You’ve heard this probably a million times, but distraction is key.

First, get out of bed and try to make it-you’ve already accomplished something! Have breakfast to keep your sugar levels at bay and for your gut health (which is paramount). Hydrate-start 1st thing in the morning and keep hydrating throughout the day.

Exercise, if that means stretching, leg lifts, or more importantly, go outside for some fresh air, Vitamin D (crucial) and walk. Walk a little more the next day. Try to observe your surroundings and say to self, what a beautiful sky, tree flower etc. Let your brain know there is something else to think about other than your symptoms.

Shower, even if it’s a rinse. Self care.

Clean your home even if that’s rearranging pillows or sorting laundry.

Can you read a book, watch a comedy on TV?

Google a recipe and cook even a simple meal like roasted vegetables and brown rice.

Go for another walk and track how many steps you do each day.

Text or email a friend without lamenting about your situation. Or write an old school letter card.

Play scrabble online. Listen to a podcast of interest.

Box breathe or use other breathing exercises when you feel the chest anxiety coming on, listen to a guided meditation for 3 minutes or longer on Insight Timer. Name 5 colors you see, 4 sounds, 3 -I can’t remember, but someone can pick this up from here…

And rest. Your nervous system is working really hard to recover, so rest, just try not to stay stagnant for too long.

It’s easy for our bodies and brains to become de-conditioned during this process of healing, so try to jumpstart both from where you are, then build on it.

Healing is happening every minute of the day and can be so subtle you might not know it, so keep a journal-especially at night. You can brain dump everything before sleep which clears the brain/mind. And refer to it later to see how far you have come.

Practice sleep hygiene, even take a warm bath prior, but get off your phone as early as possible, have a dark cool room.

If you can handle supplements, many find Magnesium Glycinate helpful for sleep. Hydroxyzine for both anxiety and/or sleep if you can handle meds. Or even Remeron (not a doctor).

And get up the next morning and just Keep.Going!!!

Edited Monday at 18:24 by [Ma...]

[[jo...]]

2 minutes ago, [[P...] said:

Yes alot theories about why it is like this but no one really knows for sure. If they knew, something could be done about it.

Sticky tropical kind of anxiety wakes me up every morning. It disappears after an hour but it wakes me up!!

Mine lasts all day and evening sometimes. I don't get much done those days. I went through a spell where like you it would wake me up but ease off quickly. I' love that now!

[[PE...]]

Just now, [[j...] said:

Mine lasts all day and evening sometimes. I don't get much done those days. I went through a spell where like you it would wake me up but ease off quickly. I' love that now!

It was like that for me but got better. I just try to get up really quickly and now im fine after a long shower and 3 cups of coffee. 

But i would really need to be able to sleep more than 4-5 hours. I usually sleep for 10. 

[[jo...]]

2 minutes ago, [[P...] said:

It was like that for me but got better. I just try to get up really quickly and now im fine after a long shower and 3 cups of coffee. 

But i would really need to be able to sleep more than 4-5 hours. I usually sleep for 10. 

Yeah my sleep is poor to at the moment. It was not to bad at one point. But has gotten worse not better. The non linier nature of things I guess.

[[PE...]]

11 minutes ago, [[j...] said:

Yeah my sleep is poor to at the moment. It was not to bad at one point. But has gotten worse not better. The non linier nature of things I guess.

Besides the sleeping healing been very straight for me. Not very fast but straight. Hope it continues this way. 

[[...]]

Yes I feel etter usually after 3 pm ND evening, some times like normal, I am in a setback now.

[[PE...]]

[[Do...]]

5 hours ago, [[P...] said:

Yes!! It makes me don't want to go to bed. Mornings suck.. 

Same here, i start to feel better along the evening and before i have my late night dose i feel best time, and after the dose i remain fine, thats the only time i feel like watching some tv show or enjoy the moment before i sleep.

My symptoms wake me up too, in my case, muscle pain and numb arms and legs.

[[dj...]]

I think there are a few reasons people are more relaxed at night.  
 

1) cortisol levels are lower

2) you are done for the day and don’t have to stress about things getting done with this awful condition

3) per our circadian rhythms people will start producing melatonin closer to bedtime and melatonin has downstream effects on GABA that relax us.  

[[Sw...]]

Yeah, I get this every night as well. Seems to be some homeostasis of the body had to even when I was at full dose before I started tapering your body. Just trying to get back to normal something like that.

[[jo...]]

People always complain about not sleeping but I'm the opposite sometimes. I dont want to go to sleep because I know what waking up brings with it

[[Le...]]

i thought this only happened to me. 

[[Kr...]]

7 hours ago, [[P...] said:

Besides the sleeping healing been very straight for me. Not very fast but straight. Hope it continues this way. 

Oh, it will. You just keep getting better faster than almost anyone else I read on here. 
 

I heard you’re planning major train trips and that you are very social. 

You are always super happy and full of energy!

And you can drink 8 cups of strong coffee a day!

what if any meds are you taking to help sleep?

I thought last month you said you were still taking 200-400 mgs of seroquel?

 

[[PE...]]

37 minutes ago, [[K...] said:

Oh, it will. You just keep getting better faster than almost anyone else I read on here. 
 

I heard you’re planning major train trips and that you are very social. 

You are always super happy and full of energy!

And you can drink 8 cups of strong coffee a day!

what if any meds are you taking to help sleep?

I thought last month you said you were still taking 200-400 mgs of seroquel?

I hope you're right :))

I went down to a small bit i chopping off from one 300mg pill. Around 30-50mg. As I read so much critics to quentapine!

Yeah I try to be positive. It becomes a mental mantra

 

 

[[Ca...]]

Count me in. When it starts to get dark, I start to feel lke I may not die today and maybe I'll get better some day. I dread going to bed because I know what waits on the other side. My muscle pain in my legs has started waking me up in the night. I take 200 mgs of trazedone at bed which is good for getting you to sleep but its the seraquel that keeps you asleep or at least thats how it worked when I cold turkey'd in 2016. I get up to eat bruch/breakfast and clean up the kitchen and read my mail around 11 and then go back to bed for an hour or so and then get up again and have a snack and then go back to bed and then I cant sleep so I finally get up and shower and then walk a little over a mile. I was walking three miles a day until i apparently sustained a right hip labral tear. I won't go back on seroquel. I stay up until 2 am because that's when I feel the best. If I have a doctor's appt then i have to be up during the day and that's so hard. I have horrific fatigue all day long. I am grateful that most evenings by nine I have a mild reprieve but still cannot watch TV or read a book or magazine. I try to stay in the moment the best I can.

[[lo...]]

@[Ne...]

Hi, I'll say piece here. I had this long before BZ withdrawal. I did a lot of research and what I understand it's often related to the level of cortisol and disruption of the natural effects of the cycle of increasing and decreasing cortisol - related to circadiam rythm.
I'am former 3 x PTSD survivor, violent, separated family (separation anxiety on top) and "alco-disfuncional-familly" (lucky life :D), and since that (especially after PTSD) (despite my neuroticism) I really feel peaceful at evening or even extremely calm when I'm going to sleep (just before falling asleep).
At first I thought it's related strictly to PTSD (at day time I was in constant danger and at night I was resting because nobody could hurt me), but than I read about cortisol stuff. Your post made me more curious about relation between cortisol and negative sides of BZ withdrawal. 
Anyway, f.e this study: Going the Distance: The Diurnal Range of Cortisol and its Association with Cognitive and Physiological Functioning - PMC (nih.gov):

"Cortisol, a hormone released by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, is essential to the survival of an organism. Healthy HPA axis functioning is dynamic, responding to periods of sleep and wakefulness and adjusting to acute changes in the environment (Dmitrieva, et al., 2013). Circulating levels of cortisol are lowest when people are conserving energy and sleeping, then rise upon awakening and peak approximately 30 minutes later, an increase believed to prime the body for the demands of the day ahead (Fries et al., 2009). Cortisol then declines across the day to allow for surges when stressors are encountered, ultimately reaching a nadir in the evening or during the night (Dumbell et al., 2016).
Researchers frequently use slopes to capture change in cortisol levels across the day, often with one slope to capture the cortisol awakening response (CAR), defined as the post-awakening surge that occurs in the 30–40 minutes after awakening, and one or two slopes to capture changes from morning to evening over the waking day, referred to as the diurnal cortisol slope (DCS; for review, see Adam et al., 2017). Cortisol dynamic range (CDR), the distance between the estimated peak and the estimated nadir over the waking day has also been used, though not as frequently (e.g., Bandy et al., 1998; Karlamangla et al., 2013; Karlamangla et al., 2018)."

Look also at circadiam rythm: 

"The classic phase markers for measuring the timing of a mammal's circadian rhythm are:

• melatonin secretion by the pineal gland,^[89]
• core body temperature minimum,^[89] and
• plasma level of cortisol.^[90]""
  
  Diurnal Cortisol Slopes and Mental and Physical Health Outcomes:A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis - PMC (nih.gov)
  
  PSTD vs. cortisol:
  
  The Pathways between Cortisol-Related Regulation Genes and PTSD Psychotherapy - PMC (nih.gov)
•  
•  

That's my piece  

Greetings for all of You and have a beautiful day! 

Longin 

 

[[Lu...]]

I have almost your exact set of symptoms, haven’t found a way yet to make them better but i too find relief sometimes in the evenings. Don’t have any advice just wanted to offer my support and say I feel the same way and we have to just keep fighting my friend  how long have you been off?

[[Ma...]]

Can you exercise? I’ve recently been able to walk long distances (with naps in between) and garden for stretches. 
 

I can truly feel the Vit D and the endorphins kick in at night and they feel great.

I still wake up every 40 minutes but last night it was every 2 hours and I am sleeping deeply as a result.

It’s not easy. At all. But I dig deep and just do.

The cortisol peaks, as mentioned above, is also correct and they peak again in the morning. That’s why I get up and get out for a walk before they hit severely.

If you can tolerate supplements you can Google which help to lower cortisol levels.

Remember: this is a symptom and will eventually go away.

 

Edited Wednesday at 15:07 by [Ma...]

[[lo...]]

@[Ma...] 

I've got really interested in relation between lowing cortisol (which is not easy) and benzo withdrawal symptoms (which are by itself similar to PTSD in psychological aspects). I know many natural methods of doing so f.e: Healthy diet, Physical activity, Reducing caffeine intake, Listening to music, Quality sleep, Adaptogens (always careful about those during withdrawal or even after or post acute), Community and relationships. Nevertheless it's interesting about potential supplements / diet, that could help f.e: focusing on single-ingredient foods, avoiding highly processed items, and incorporating foods rich in magnesium and omega-3 fatty acids.
It's interesting what more You can do, I don't know if enough people focusing on cortisol role in all of that and of course it's subjective and as always depending on individual predispositions and structure of CNS - withdrawal is so individual matter... 

Have a beautiful day  
 
Greeting 

Longin 

[[jo...]]

Yeah Cortisol surges are the biggest problem for a lot of people myself included. Much worse in the morning and much better at night. It doesn't take a genius to work out how much this has to do with the severity of symptoms. I can pretty much tell what kind of day I'm going to have based on the severity of the morning surge that wakes me up. 

[[Kr...]]

Wow! Super! OMG! 😳