I've tried halcion, ambien, seroquel, Soma, benadryl for my insomnia. I am now on clonazepam 1 mg for anxiety/panic. I still have trouble sleeping. I don't take anything besides the clonazepam at bedtime. What would be a good med to add as a sleep aid?

Halcion .25mg was the best I've tried so far but since the benzos all share cross tolerance I don't think that taking this med would do anything for my sleeplessness because I am taking clonazepam daily. This med is literally like one second you are awake and the next second you are OUT.

Ambien 10mg worked for a couple nights then pooped out so I decided to double the dose. Was not on clonazepam at the time I was taking this med. But had an incident of amnesia while on it so I am not interested in taking it again unless I handcuff myself to the bed at night. Not even sure if this class of meds would be effective while taking a benzo.

Seroquel was not as effective as triazolam but it was pretty darn close. I just think that taking this med for sleep is pretty extreme, given the side effects that go with this class of meds.

Soma works well to induce drowsiness but for sleep I doubt any doctor will rx it.

I have taken Benadryl for literally years....the doseage I take in order to sleep is 250 mg.'s - anymore than 300 mg.'s and I just get this very annoying restlessness. Which is pretty frustrating when all you really want is to get some sleep.

Anyone who has some different sleep med ideas - please post!

If a drug 'poops out' like that, it's better to miss a night or two to give it a chance to restore its effects. Doubling up is asking for trouble. You're right to want to avoid another benzodiazepine.

If you tried zopiclone or eszopiclone at night, I would consider switching the clonazepam to daytime use, and you may find that you won't always need it. Zopiclone tends to provide a calming effect for some of the following day, and it tends to give a full 8 hours of sleep as well. Plus you wouldn't be taking 2 sedative/hypnotics at once.

Remember, the less you use, the more they work.

I wish the same was true about pain meds. I'd be down to taking tiny chips of asprin and getting total pain relief.

I know nobody is going to feel bad for a person rx'd both Fentanyl and Dilaudid (me) but you have no idea how much I suffer on this regime. Fentanyl does next to nothing for me. The only thing it does is fall under my insurance, one of the few pain meds my policy covers.

The dilaudid I take does even less, I mean the bio-availability is crummy. Didn't sleep all night and I'm still hurting, so much so I had to cancel a doctor appointment.

Anyway, Seroquel is safe IF you are under doctor care and your dose is low. Higher doses can send your triglycerides through the roof. But the sleep the medication provides is really second to none (excluding being put to sleep for say an operation) and I've taken it for years. At one point I was taking 600mg as my dosage. Now I take only 100mg.

At 100mg seroquel acts like a sleeping pill, at 600mg seroquel acts like you're on speed. Really wild trip it can put you on, but that's what my doctor wanted me on. For two months, so long that I started to cut the pills in half because it was making me neurotic.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. The less you use, the better they work when you do take them. In other words, if you feel tolerance to a drug developing, it is better to decrease its use in order for tolerance to go back down.

Of course, with someone who is terminally ill, tolerance is not an issue.

Taking lower doses and expecting them to be more potent than high doses, cereris parabus, would be silly.

Oxy80, why don't they just give you loads of hydrocodone? Or whatever med does work for you? In your situation, it wouldn't matter that hydrocodone is not really for chronic pain, because you could simply take it 4-hourly.

Funny you should say that, they did give me a script for 120 hydrocodone. But I rather take oxycontin and oxycodone, those two are what work best for me. Oxycontin (80mg) and Roxicodone (30mg)

I'm stuck with these fentanyl patches (100mcg) and dilaudid (8mg). the dilaudid is a big huge let down. I can't get any pain relief from that dilaudid.

The patches don't stay on even with a patch on top of that. One time in the shower and it's all over. They get wet and don't want to work anymore. I also can't take them 1 every 3 days. I rather 1 every 5 days. It keeps tolerance at bay and let's your system work more effectively.

Dilaudid is absolutely useless, isn't it? I'm glad I'm not the only person that's not in love with taking it or in love with the thought of someday taking it. Try to place Glad Press and Seal around your patch, but not directly on it, before you step into the shower. My patches were less than useless, too, because they'd fall off if a butterfly flapped it's wings in China. I know this isn't recommended and could be misinterpreted, as abuse, but try placing a source of dry heat over the patch once it begins to loosen. Not only does the heat temporarily increase your dose it, more importantly, heats up the adhesive and sort of "welds" the patch, in place.

As for the hydromorphone, I know of nothing that make that junk effective for anything aside from constipation!

nephro - with benzos it is absoutley true that the less you use the more they work. Tolerance sucks and happens FAST. When I started taking the clonazepam (and had zero tolerance) .5 mg made me a bit too sleepy.

Oxy80 - How long have you been on the seroquel? 600 mg, did you ever have any TD symptoms? I think this is a great sleep aid but I am leery of its side effects.

If I have side effects from seroquel I'm not aware of them. I'm also not sure what you mean by TD symptoms.

I took the 600mg dose of seroquel for about 3 months. It was far too large of a dose, it gave me restless leg syndrome big time. Instead of getting sleepy I had a lot of energy.

Refilled an rx for ambien which I took 10mg last night at 10:30pm and slept 3 hours, despite the fact that I slept only 4 hours the night before. Ambien just doesn't work well for me and it costs about $42 for 30 day supply. It is now 4am and here I am writing this post. The longest I've ever gone w/o sleep is 46 hours-that is my record. It is lonely to be the only one awake while everyone else is sleeping....Seroquel works really well for putting me to sleep but some of the possible side effects (like TD) scare the s*** out of me. I pasted from wikipedia.org

"There is a risk of development of tardive dyskinesia, an incurable neurological disorder, with any prolonged use of quetiapine and some other neuroleptic drugs. Tardive dyskinesia is a variety of dyskinesia (involuntary, repetitive movements) manifesting as a side effect of long-term or high-dose use of dopamine antagonists, usually antipsychotics. Dyskinesia refers to an involuntary movement. Tardive dyskinesia is characterized by repetitive, involuntary, purposeless movements. Tardive dyskinesia may persist after withdrawal of the drug for months, years, or even permanently. Tardive dyskinesia most commonly occurs in patients with psychiatric conditions who are treated with antipsychotic medications for many years."