zopiclone/ambien/temazepam taper by diazepam substitution

[[Ch...]]

I went to the doctor's today and she agreed to put me on the Ashton schedule, starting today with 40 mg of diazepam every day for a week, then 39 mg a day next week, and so on, according to Ashton's schedule. The last few weeks were terrible, I had cut my benzo use to about half and experienced all kinds of withdrawal symptoms, like increased anxiety, insomnia, I was also very emotional and I couldn't concentrate on normal things, my work for instance. So that was obviously not the way for me to go. In the meantime I was reading The Benzo Book, which refers to the Ashton manual, and that appealed to me. I think I need small steps, and in the meantime, I want to learn how to deal with the anxiety and insomnia that may return as before I took any benzos. Meditation, breathing exercises, therapy, anything that I can think of. I don't want to be back in the state that I used to be before benzos, but the state that I am in now is even worse. Benzos are obviously not the long-term solution!

 

I get the impression on this forum that zopiclone is not prescribed much in America or other English-speaking countries. It is comparable to ambien, I think.

 

Is there anybody here who is also in the beginning of the tapering process on the basis of the Ashton schedule? Or has anyone experience with the medication that I was taking, ending in diazepam substitution?

 

Is it true that during tapering, problems, sadness and grief from the past pop up again because you didn't deal with them properly at the time, you just took a pill to calm you down, or at least that's what I did when I was grieving or upset or very nervous. I am afraid of what I am going to have to face.

 

Anybody any suggestions? Thanks for the warm welcome to this forum. I really appreciate that.

 

[Guest [de...]]

Yes it is Ambien and it is prescribed like candy in the US. Benadryl is a safer sleep inducer.

 

It sounds as if you have been christened with full withdrawal syndrome when you cut 50%. Alot of us have learned the hard way too. It sounds like you have a good taper plan and a supportive doctor. I think you are one the right track to rid your body of these poisons and get your brain back.

[Guest [de...]]

I don't know why emotions increase during w/d. I think it is pharmacologic rather than a delayed response to repressed emotions. I got slammed with w/d about 3 weeks ago and I had crying spells which vanished with returning to my original K dose. the crossover to Valium can be a bit rocky for a few weeks, but it does work.

 

As far as your pre-existing anxiety, consider seeing a therapist to teach you some mathods for dealing with it. Although I am rather anti-brain drugs these days, I will say that SSRI's are effective for anxiety/panic disorder and they generally don't have the same discontinuation profile as benzos. they do make you gain weight however. I took Lexapro for 2 years about 10 years ago and found it very effective.

 

One word of caution though. SSRI's will exacerbate benzo w/d in most people so I would not add it into the mix, even if you doctor recommmends it. One thing at a time. I had a horrible experience trying to medicate benzo w/d with lexapro. This is a well documented problem which I learned of after the fact.

 

Good luck

[[Ch...]]

Deerslayer, thank you for your advice and support. You have some points that I didn't think of. The fact that the switch from zopiclone to valium may take some getting used to, for example, so that I might feel less emotional and tense in a few weeks. I hope you are right there.

Also I need to think about the anti-depressants that you mentioned, and how they made you feel worse during withdrawal. My doctor is prescribing me 75 mg of amitryptiline per night because it is a bit sedating and I do think that it helps me fall asleep. But amitryptiline is not an SSRI but a tri-cyclic anti-depressant; maybe that makes a difference?

I am not sure yet how I want to tackle the anxiety and insomnia that will return when I use little or no benzos anymore. I was indeed considering to look for a therapist who can help me deal with this. I also want to start meditating again. I used to do this for a while after I had done an intensive course, but somehow it got more and more difficult for me to find the discipline to do the exercises, even though they helped me relax. I am also considering bio-feedback to become more aware of my stress reactions and then learn how to cope with them and get calm again. In any case I don't want to go back to the state that I was in before I started taking benzos. It always took me hours to fall asleep, or I wouldn't sleep at all, and I could panic about the most stupid things. I need to get over that, otherwise I will miss my benzos so much in the end that I will try to persuade my doctor to prescribe them to me again, or else order them from a dealer. This is really NOT what I want!!! I want to be benzo-free next year, after having finished the Ashton schedule!

[Guest [de...]]

Getting good sleep is a tremendous anxiolytic. Nothing wrong with taking a TC, under your drs supervision. Adding some none pharmacologic anxiolysis is great also, but it requires tremendous discipline. I've never tried meditation, but I find that simple exercise, a briskwalk/ jog or weight lifting reduces my tension level. Tension reduction can be very individualistic. Nothing reduces my anxiety level like a good day of fishing or killing a deer. Its just a matter of finding what works, and doing it as often as you can.

[[Ch...]]

Hi Deerslayer, thanks for your response. I don't understand all the abbreviations used on this forum though. What is a TC, for example?

I feel less anxiety than during the first two weeks, by the way. I think the switch from zopiclone to valium had some effect on me indeed, and my body/brain seems to have adjusted itself to the change now.

But I do have a lot of trouble falling asleep, and then staying asleep. I am on 37 mg diazepam now and I just stay wide awake when I go to bed. I don't know what to do when the amount of diazepam will go down and down every week and falling asleep will only become more and more difficult. Even when I am very tired, I cannot sleep. I talked to my doctor about it but she said she couldn't do anything about it; I just have to deal with it and try every possible way to make myself fall asleep. So far, the diazepam only seems to help me keep the withdrawal symptoms away, because I don't have twitches and cramps and depression and the other dreadful stuff that I had when I had to stop all medication because I turned out to be pregnant one day, unexpectedly, about 10 years ago. I quit everything cold turkey then because I didn't want to take any risks with the baby. I was in hell for months. What made it even worse was the fact that my husband didn't want the child and was angry with me most of the pregnancy, instead of being supportive. I must say that I didn't realize then that the way that I felt, physically and mentally, was for a large part very heavy withdrawal from lots of zopiclone, temazepam, other sleeping pills, Prozac, painkillers with codeine, etc. I don't know how I survived the pregnancy, but fortunately my baby-boy came out healthy and I would even go through the same hell again for him, because he is such a wonderful kid, but it was a pregnancy that I wouldn't even wish to my worst enemy. The hormones of course made it even more difficult. My other pregnancy was planned so I had prepared myself by tapering down all my medication before my daughter was conceived. She has also turned out healthy and well. I guess I was lucky. While nursing my babies I stayed off all medication as well, but as soon as I stopped nursing I wanted to be able to sleep again and went back to using benzo's, in both cases. A pity that I didn't realize then that I was creating an addiction again and again and that it would take me years to get to the point where I am now: that I want to live without this dependency, that I want to have my memory back, and that I really want to be benzo-free. I had already gotten off them during the pregnancy and nursing, so why was I so stupid to start taking them again? Well, I guess because my sleeping problem drove me crazy. I need to find ways to make sure that it's not going to drive me crazy again. As I wrote before, I'm trying meditation again, yoga exercises, but also I am trying not to worry too much when I cannot sleep, and just enjoy a movie or a good book, or do some writing or some other calming activity. Because I will probably have to accept the fact that I will keep having this sleeping problem for the rest of my life. It was proven by my neurologist that my brain hardly produces melatonine, so we tried melatonine suppletion, but that didn't work for me, probably because I was already in my thirties when we just started this. So no matter how tired I am, I don't naturally get sleepy, like normal people. My son has the same problem, but for him the melatonine suppletion does work. Within an hour after taking 2,5 of melatonine he starts yawning, rubbing his eyes, etc., and then I can take him to bed and he will fall asleep. Before I had him tested, he would often stay awake until 23.00 or 24.00 hrs or later. At the age of five, six. I had the same problem when I was a kid, I had it all my life, actually, but I should have gotten the melatonine suppletion from an early age; it has much more affect then. A pity that my parents never took me to a doctor, who would have sent me to a neurologist, hopefully, but I guess the problem probably didn't seem bad enough for them, because I was taught to stay in bed and behave like a good girl and make no fuss, so they had no idea how bad I felt every night. I don't blame them. Parents were different then, they didn't take their kids to therapists and all sorts of doctors unless the situation was unbearable for the parents themselves. Nowadays parents are much more alert on all kinds of problems that their children could be suffering from, and seek advice for that. So no melatonine for me, unfortunately, and not a lot of sleep either.

Does any of you take naps in the daytime? I used to do that, because I could sleep better in the daytime than at night, but now I drink so much coffee in the morning to get myself started that I cannot sleep in the afternoon anymore. Also I want to be part of normal life in the daytime, even if I do not get the sleep that I need in the night. Sometimes my husband takes care of the children in the morning though, so I can sleep to 10 AM for example, which really helps. But even so I rarely get enough sleep; I always wake up very tired and I never think that I can drag myself through the day with my work and kids and everything. Only after about two hours and lots of coffee I feel up to it, more or less.

I don't drink coffee after 2 PM, because I want the caffeine out of my blood by the time I go to bed.

How do other people on this forum cope with a constant lack of sleep when tapering down or having stopped taking benzos altogether?

Even if you don't have a solution, I would like to hear from you, how you feel about it, etc.

Thanks for reading my rather long message.

[[tu...]]

Hi Chompy:

Wondering how your taper is going. I think I am at my wits end and am going to switch from ambien over to valium as per the Ashton thing. What was your initial switchover like? I'm only on 10mg of ambien, but I think it has stopped working and I'm going through hell withdrawals every day. He's looking at switching me, did it initially help you sleep. I"ve only been getting 5-6 a night which is low for me. The exhaustion makes everything worse, the spiral. I could use some encouragement and a pal. \

Hope to hear.

Thanks

Turtle222