You did it!!! You got through a night without it. Onward! It has a pretty short elimination time and all of it will be out of your body in a week or two, forever. Diazapam on the other hand will stay in your body a really long time, i guess that's why it's supposed to help people get off shorter acting sleeping pills, it's thought to go smoother and that makes sense..
You really said it when you said "Being sleepless and not on the drug feels better than sleeping badly with it." There you go. Try to make the awake time enjoyable. At least that's what i do. That is not the normal sleep hygiene recommendation, you're supposed to get up and go into another room and do whatever, something quiet, and i'm sure that works well for many people. In my case, if i can't get back to sleep, i usually will read a book in bed, something i want to read. i try not to read on the computer because of sleep hygiene recommendations, but sometimes i do. i want to be in bed because i want to be comfy. I believe i have a better chance of getting back to sleep if i 'm in bed and comfortable than if i'm in a chair in another room. That's just me. Anyway, sometimes it's hours til i get back to sleep, only once did i not sleep at all, but that was my choice, there was a reason for it (a health condition).
You said you got two hours sleep. I think that's great. Your body is used to depending on zopiclone, yet it was able to get to sleep without it and it gave you some rest. It's a matter of adapting to sleeping without it. That doesn't come so quickly, not for me when i've gone through that, but gradually over time it gets better, so it's a matter of having patience. i know it's hard.
Between the mid 70s and 1993, I was on diazapam for sleep for about 20 years, 10mg. Then, the last year, the amount went up a little and right at the end, the amount went up a lot because i became tolerant of it, it went up to 30mg, briefly. So i just stopped taking it because it wasn't doing anythign and in those days, early 90s, i didn't have internet and didn't know how to find more meds than my monthly prescription, so i just stopped, there didn't seem to be any choice.
Every night, i slept a little. i was surprised because i had expected to not sleep for days. and i accepted that. Then when i did sleep a little, i was so pleased and surprised. The first day wasn't bad. The second day, i actually felt good, very energetic--but as the night wore on, energetic changed to anxious and tense, it was a withdrawing from the diazapam. i think that was the night i slept the least but it was about 45 minutes, and again, i was just happy to sleep at all because i didn't think i was capable of it. The third day was tense and had various symptoms including sweating and other weird things, irritable, i didn't like it. i asked my pharmacist about how long it would take to get through the withdrawing and he said the average was about two weeks. I felt better after that because i was reassured that it would come to an eventual end. i was on a two week vacation from work and went off the diazapam on the first day. Either the third day or fourth, i was feeling anxious and twitchy and tired of feeling that way, and i was sweating, i was drinking a Chinese herb tea, chrysantemum tea. and then, the sweating stopped and i felt better, and after that, i just felt better and better, up and down but milder and milder and it was going away.
With sleep, I did not do that great on getting off of diazapam. at first i didn't mind not sleeping much. but when i went back to work after my vacation, i struggled with it, some days i only slept a little for three days in a row, and it was hard because of work . My doctor then prescribed Ambien (zolpidem). i was so glad to be off sleeping meds that i only took the ambien occasionally, probably two or three times a month, but then over the years i took it more and more, and am still taking it now.
I also was taking zopiclone beginning toward the end of 2012, together with Ambien. i was taking 7.5mg zop, plus the Ambien whicih was gradually going up because of tolerance. I retired from my job in January 2013. This year, in January and February, i tapered off the Zopiclone 1/4 pill at a time. I was still taking the Ambien for sleep so it was not at all hard to taper off the Zopiclone and in retrospect, i probably could've just stopped it cold turkey and the Ambien would've gotten me through. By that time, i was up to 27mg Ambien, in two doses because it was so short acting for me, i'd take it twice during the night, bedtime and then 5 hours later. i would wake up after 2 to 4 hours and then wait until it had been 5 hours so as not to completely destroy the ability of it to get me to sleep, and then take another dose.
Although i wasn't getting a lot of sleep during that time, it was enough. Most days i felt fine. So i think i adapted to less sleep by then.
I was ecstatic when i got off the zopiclone because when i started taking it, things got worse, i got new and troubling symptoms, like an altered state of consciousnes when i woke up in the morning, sometimes, not every day, more like once or twice every two weeks. i hated it. Fortunatley it wore off pretty quickly, only happening when i first woke up. i felt more groggy on the zopiclone.
After i got off the zopiclone i was going to taper off the Ambien but at that point in time, i felt i needed help because it would mean not sleeping and i was too hesitant, procrastinating. I went to an addiction medicine doctor and he just switched me off of 27mg Ambien onto 10mg of diazapam. I hated to do that, i thought i would never take diazapam again, and it had been 20 years. but he said it would be easier to taper off and that it usually only takes a couple of weeks.
It didn't work out that way for me. I didn't have any trouble switching from Ambien to Diazapam, the diazapam for me was a lot stronger than the Ambien, it put me to sleep easily at night and instead of waking up in a couple of hours and then taking a second dose later of the Ambien, i slept all night. I hadn't slept all night in years. The problem i encountered right away, though, was that all day i was badly hung over, more hung over than i'd ever been on zopiclone. It was so strong.
So i started tapering off of it after a week. Going down to 9mg made a difference, it helped, i was less hung over. But i didnt' sleep as well at first, and when i wasn't able to sleep, i was confused by the idea of taking this medication and not sleeping. Back in 1993, i just went cold turkey off the diazapam and i ddin't sleep much but i was OFF the medication, so it was a happy trade off.
But now, i was taking the medication AND not sleeping, the worst of both worlds. So i took a little Ambien and that got me to sleep and then i was OK, still sleeping the whole night,, still some hangover. After a couple of days, i didnt' need Ambien anymore, i could sleep on the 9mg. Then, i cut down to 8mg and i had trouble sleeping for a couple of days so i used the Ambien to get to sleep, and then i slept pretty good onthe 8mg, and it got better as the days went on. And almost no hangover.
But i never felt as good on the diazapam as i had felt when i was just on the Ambien, even with very little sleep. i just felt better, and that is maybe because the Ambien clears out of your system really fast, in less than a day it's all gone, the body eliminates it fast. Not so with diazapam. Not only does the body not eliminate it quickly, it will take at least days if not weeks if not longer (it varies by circumstances)--it accumulates in your body over time because you can't eliminate it as fast as you re putting it in. So i think that's why i felt better during the day when i was on the Ambien even though not sleeping so much.
Then, in the midst of this, on 8mg, i started getting a tolerance. Now, i sometiems don't sleep any longer on the 8mg diazapam than i slept on the Ambien (17mg at bedtime), i can't get back to sleep, so, 5 hours later, i take a dose of Ambien. So now, i'm back on two meds again, and not sleeping any better, though some days i sleep better on the diazapam than others.
Then, in the middle of this going on, i found out i have a pretty serious health problem and because of that, my addiction medicine doctor and I agreed not to keep tapering the diazapam and to just keep it at 8mg. I did try 7mg for three days and that was the only time i didn't sleep at all, the first night when i didn't take any Ambien. but again, i stayed awake on purpose, because i was scared to go to sleep, because of the health problem i was just discovering.
Anyway, i stayed on 7mg diazapam for three days, did take Ambien, and then ended up going back up to 8mg, and that's where i've been for two or three weeks, and now, i take Ambien every night. I don't really need to. Some nights i sleep for about 4 or 5 hours on the diazapam and i could just skip the Ambien and have less sleep, but now i'm freaked out by my health problem. i am working on this (psychologically).
The health probelm i have probably had for a long time but have just learned about is extremely low blood sugar whcih has caused some symptoms that i thought were caused by the sleeping meds, grogginess mostly, low energy. Not the common hypoglycemia symptoms that people get. The kind i have, apparently i'm so used to it that i don't get those common symptoms.
But on 4 occasions, weeks apart, i got some very severe symptoms, including ataxia where i couldn't walk until i crawled to the kitchen and ate something, and another time, complete unsciousness where i woke upon the floor in the morning and no idea how i got there. These things always happen in the morning, when i wake up I got a lab test showing critically low blood sugar but i had no symptoms other than grogginess and my doctor thought it was a lab error because you're not suposed to be up walking around when it's that low, i think.
So, now i've seen a couple of endocrinologists and a gastroenterologist and am in the process of finding out what's causing it but the strong likelihood is that it's a small tumor on my pancreas that is secreting insulin for no reason, and the insulin lowers the blood sugar. i am supposed to keep eating all the time now the doctor said, including during the night.
Fortunately 90% of that kind of tumor is benign and when it's removed, it cures the hypoglycemia, so that's what i'm working toward, but it's derailed my getting off the sleep meds project.
I can only say i wish i could go back and get off the diazapam and just be on the Ambien, and i might be able to make that switch, using the Ambien to sleep. My doctor doesn't believe in doing that but i just have a bad feeling about diazapam. It won't be that bad, in the end i'll get off all of them and eventually will eliminate that long lasting diazapam from my body, but if i had it to do over knowing what i do now, i would just go cold turkey off the Ambien, not go on the Diazapam and just get through it with various ways of coping.
The Diazapam method works well for a lot of people, and cold turkey goes very badly for a lot of people. i'm just talking about me. I did not have a bad time with cold turkey off diazapam in 1993, a couple of days were bad and then it wore off and was fine in less than a week, except for sleep but that was gradually improving, i was sleeping without any meds most of the time, and much of the time was getting enough sleep, broken into pieces. Now i'm retired and all the more reason to have confidence. i imagine i will still take Ambien again occasionally but i don't plan on taking anything every night anymore, once i can get back to dealing with this.
From you what i hear is that you are sick and tired of how you feel, and that is a good place to be in in order to get off. You've got a doctor supporting you and working with you and respecting you, collaborating with you, and i expect you are going to get through this. I will look forward to hearing from you on how it's going
