Your experiences of sleeping tablets?

[supermouse]

I took a sleeping pill last night because I've been have trouble getting to sleep, with racing thoughts that go nowhere. When I have slept, I've had a broken night, waking up and having to go to sleep again. I've had vague ideas I have dreamt but don't recall what those dreams are. I've been getting to sleep at around one in the morning and waking at half past five or six in the morning, which isn't as much sleep as I need, but when I was Awake, that was it for the day.

I wake up tired and in pain and have to just slog through somehow, but I've had a stress-related 'buzz' I don't like, because it reminds me of the 'wired' feeling from having hypomania and I do not want to experience hypomania ever again. It's stayed at the level of 'con buzz', but continuing poor sleep will not help.

So I took a sleeping pill as prescribed, and my gods, that was disappointing. I took the pill at around half ten. I think I eventually got off to sleep some time after midnight, after a lot of lying in the dark, giving up, reading something, looking at the clock and lying down to sleep again. I woke up in the night and went back to sleep, had a vague dream and woke up at six thirty.

Since the absolutely no sleep of Monday night, I've been getting gradually better anyway, so I'm just going to do without. I just thought they'd do something I'd actually notice.

Is this usual? What's your experience?

Comments

[agoodwinsmith]

I have no experience with sleeping pills, but my Mom (and Lorne did too) uses melatonin, and it works well for her (them). Mom says she had to fine tune the dosage/timing, or she would wake up groggy in the morning. She doesn't use it every night, but if the brain is a going to be a runaway train, she does.

[dmwcarol]

I took them for a while and had similar experiences, they worked sometimes but not always.

I eventually got better at falling asleep by following sleep hygiene advice - set a bedtime and stick to it, have a routine - mine is bath, medication, reading, meditation, sleep with no food/caffeine/electronics for a couple of hours before bedtime. It's not much help as a short term fix but it does help me with the fibro and I really notice the difference when I can't do it now.

[supermouse]

Yup, the sleep hygeine matters - although I use f.lux rather than eschewing electronic devices altogether, with the downside that I used to feel sleepy at 6pm in the winter (f.lux have changed those settings now). I have an alarm that goes off at 10pm to tell me it's time to get ready to sleep.

Long term I've done really well at getting up in mornings and sleeping at night while never going out for years, this pandemic really showed that. My sleep has been really good too, with occasional late nights but not that many.

I was kind of hoping for a short term Zzzthonk, but oh well!

Thanks for the info. It's good to know they just sometimes don't work. If I start to feel desperate I'll try again, and maybe it'll be better luck next time!

[dmwcarol]

I believe there are different sleeping pills available that work in different ways, it might be that your doctor can change the script if you tell them it's not helping

[supermouse]

Good idea, yes.