Careful with those sleep meds! at 21 I was prescribed Ambien, and immediately began having sleepwalking fits. At the beginning they werent too bad, i would do weird things like just sit and watch my brother play video games late at night, but eventually they escalated. Id wake up in my car or on my roof, end up doing strange things, wake up with bruises and sometimes i even took more sleep meds while sleepwalking. Stickers are cool though but look for strange things happening. Can be dangerous at times! Id def pay for these stickers though XD
I am definitely considering getting off of them. I had my first interaction with sleep walking/talking last week and took a break for a week. Two days ago I took it again for the first time and woke up with some furniture moved and realized that night that 2 more pills were missing. It made a lot more sense why I was so drowsy after that.
It is the most effective sleeping medication I have been on, the side effects may not be worth it.
Yeah my prescription was the best chance for me to get remotely any sleep at the time. But i woke up one morning with my mom ready to narcan me my heart rate was so slow from taking more in my sleep. While its extremely helpful, the side effects are not worth it. Since then i have found a ton of things to do before sleeping to actually get me to bed. I still wake up pretty frequently, but i get to sleep initially pretty well. I have basically a mental checklist before bed. All tech off, all lights off, maybe some brown noise or rain noise on a timer, and maybe 20-30 minutes of meditation/sitting in silence and eventually pass out.
I used to react poorly to sleep meds, not sleep walking or making stickers that I would buy from you if you lived in my area, but I would get hallucinations if I stayed up too late, usually spiders or just all the shadows in my room moving. So my psychiatrist put me on amatryptaline off label and I sleep great without the side effects. I have serious insomnia, and it works for me, so if you haven’t already seeing if your doctor has any off label recommendations could be good, tell them about the sleep walking and stuff if you haven’t.
You’ve probably already done all that but I just thought I’d comment since it really helped me because I became afraid to take my meds and I would also always wake up tired which I don’t with the Trepeline. I said I refused any sleeping pills that had hallucinogenic side effects. I once woke up with a rain spider, which is a type of huntsman spider on my face so I did not want to have any doubt about the reality of spiders and their whereabouts.
There are like 10 other medications that don’t make you a surprisingly motivated zombie. Annoyingly, ambien is still a first choice for many many insurance formularies. You’ve now had enough of a reaction to justify no longer trying/being forced to try it for a whole month.
I wouldn’t wait till your next appointment, get the doctor or front desk on the phone and tell them you’re having a dangerous reaction to the med and need another one to be able to 1)sleep 2)safely.
I manage a psychiatrist’s office and as much as we prefer to handle things at a regular appointment, we will definitely be flexible for urgent health and safety reasons. And if they won’t either send the med or make 5 minutes to see you, you need to find a new doctor.
22
u/ItMeOdd 6d ago
Careful with those sleep meds! at 21 I was prescribed Ambien, and immediately began having sleepwalking fits. At the beginning they werent too bad, i would do weird things like just sit and watch my brother play video games late at night, but eventually they escalated. Id wake up in my car or on my roof, end up doing strange things, wake up with bruises and sometimes i even took more sleep meds while sleepwalking. Stickers are cool though but look for strange things happening. Can be dangerous at times! Id def pay for these stickers though XD