Every night when I get into bed, my first thought is, "Okay, so what is it going to be tonight?" I wonder this because of the bad relationship I have with sleep.
Once the light is out and my head is on the pillow, snippets of conversation loop over and over again, ideas fight to come up to the front, images flutter in and out, sound bites blare, worries, stresses and recollections raise my ire and get my adrenalin pumping. They throw me backwards in time, reliving situations I don't want to relive or throw me forward in a state of planning and plotting. It is a lot to contend with.
I am prescribed 8mg Prazosin at bed time to help with this PTSD symptom but am allowed to take an additional 4mg if needed. I always need it so I just take the full 12mg at bedtime no matter what.
If I can stay put and just sort of suffer through it, tossing and turning all the while, When just doing it this way it usually takes about a full two or three hours to finally fall asleep.
When I finally do fall asleep, because my adrenalin is up from the process of that speading head, my dreams are insane. I yell a lot in my sleep, talk a lot in my sleep, grab for things that aren't there. I guess I am in full fight or flight mode.
Most nights, like tonight, I just give up and get out of bed, sit in the living room and smoke for hours on end until I am exhausted enough that my body will demand sleep over my head's insistence to keep me awake with noise. Sometimes, though, even total physical exhaustion won't work and I just never get back into bed, maybe crashing later the next day late in the afternoon.
I have become so sick of this lately that I have escalated the intake of my other meds to almost triple the prescribed dosage (I have not shared this with my pdoc). So just to get some rest I have started taking 3000mg Valproic Acid instead of 1000mg at bed time and 12mg Thiothixine instead of the normal 4mg.
I'm posting all this because I am wondering what medication, if any, others have taken that just give them some regular, uninterrupted, baseline sleep that they can rely on. Taking triple my anti-psychotic and mood stabilizer can't be good for my liver and is really bad on my wallet.
I'm just so stubborn. I think I should be able to manage this myself, but I am at a total loss.
What works for you all? How should I start a conversation with my pdoc about needing something more to help me sleep without looking like I am drug seeking (I am newly in recovery for drug/alcohol dependence and he know it therefore he has already stated he would not write a script for benzos).
Hoping to hear from some folks. Sorry for the long post, but I had to get all that out.
Take care :-)
T
Today I am ready to grow.
Joined: 11-03-2012