hi julie - how are you finding cutting down the zop? Are you having difficulty sleeping when you cut it? or does the diazapam get you to sleep? I was already off zopiclone before i went on the diazapam to help me get off the zolpidem. i was at 27mg zolpidem--17 at bedtime, 10 when i would wake a few hours later. I was started on 10mg diazapam and just stopped the zolpidem and went on the diazapam, on diazapam i didn't wake in the night so i only took it at bedtime. The doctor said to wait a week being on the 10mg diazapam before starting to taper off of it. i was so miserable with the day time hangover from the diazapam that i got, that i was eager to taper off it. He had me go down 1mg after a week, to 9mg. I wanted to go faster so he said after 4 days to go down to 8mg. i went down to 8mg. i had some trouble getting to sleep so i took a little zolpidem, no where near like what i was taking before, that got me to sleep and then the diazapam kept me asleep all night. but i still had a milder hangover from it.
Now, i have developed a tolerance to the diazapam so that i would need more to have the effect i used to get from less. I have talked to the doctor about that. I don't want to take more, i am not willing to take more, and he doesn't want me to. I am using the zolpidem to get to sleep. He is not in agreement with that. He wanted me to take Trazodone or gabapentin, which are a couple of medications that can be used "off label" for sleep, they are not sleeping pills. i did not want to try them, i don't like the potential side effects ,not that most people will get them, but he just wanted me to try gabapentin. i told him i will try, but am not fully sincere in telling him that. i would feel safer going back on the zolpidem and then probably going cold turkey off it, hopefully not going to as high a dose as i was on before, but even that dose wasn't too out into the stratasphere. I think your doctor might not give you zolpidem because in their minds it might be like just going back on zopiclone. But you might have a chance if you tell them you would like to use it for occasional sleep needs because it's very short acting and would not build up in your body. Honestly i dont' know if that would work, it might work best with a naive doctor. But make no mistake, zolpidem encourages dependency the same way that zopicloone does. if you don't want to be dependent on it, you would want to be very committed to only using it occasionally, at most once or twice a week, ideally less. That's how i iplan to use it once i get off it, not to get a good night's sleep every night but to catch up on sleep if i don't get a good night's sleep for a few nights in a row, somethign to fall back on if night after night i'm not sleeping much. But for me, because i'm so used to it, zolpidem only keeps me asleep for a couple of hours. I took it for years and slept 6 or more hours, on 10mg, but then i got that tolerance where i lost my ability to sleep without it. I would only be asleep until the zolpidem started wearing off and then i'd wake up whereas i used to just use it to get me to fall asleep, and on my own i would stay asleep after it started wearing off. I don't know if that will ever change back. i don't know what the solution for insomnia is. I'll be curious to know what your doctor says if you ask them. That's how i got on it in the first place, 20 years ago. i had been taking diazapam, prescribed by my doctor. On my own, i went off it, when i got a tolerance and it didn't work, and i was getting by without anything, but it wasn't always easy, full time job, etc, and i mentioned that to my doctor, that i was happy to be off the diazapam but that i wasn't always sleeping that well, and he got out his prescription pad and wrote a prescription for zolpidem, said it was new and it wasn't as strong as diazapam and that it was short acting. So he saw it as a legitimate substitute. i don't know if the thinkinig has changed since then. Some people get some serious side effects from it, a few people, not many, but with blacking out and doing things during the night and not remembering later, like eating, cooking, even going out and driving to the store. The only time i had one of those that i know of was when i was taking zopiclonoe and zolpidem together and i had other weird symptoms that i didn't have before starting th zolpiclone which stopped after i stopped the zopiclone, so i don't attribute those to the zolpidem. But some doctors do worry about those side effects.