Had insomnia since a child?

Hi, I know exactly how u feel, I have really bad insomnia and the only thing that helps me to get a good nights sleep is Clomethiazole 192mg sleeping tablets, I know that they are used to treat alcoholics but I take two 192mg sleeping tablets three nights every week and I must say that I'm asleep within 20 minutes and I do get a good nights , it might be worth seeing ur gp to see if he will allow to have some, I get 30 tablets to last me a month.

First of all - yes, it's perfectly possible to have insomnia at a very young age. I've been a poor sleeper all my life, going right back to early childhood. I've never taken any prescription medication to help me sleep and my poor sleep hasn't harmed me. (I'm still perfectly healthy at age 72.) You'll see some scary stuff on forums about people saying they're going to die because they're not sleeping, and none of it's true. Sleepless nights can make you feel terrible, but they have surprisingly little effect on your health. By the way, as well as being an insomniac for most of my life, I'm also a former neuro nurse so I know about the problem from both sides.

I'd strongly advise against taking any prescription meds as you can develop tolerance to all of them. By this I mean you need an increasingly high dose to get the same effect. In extreme cases - particularly with the benzo type sleeping drugs - tolerance can build up to the extent that you start getting withdrawal symptoms while still taking the medication.

If you do decide to go the medication route, don't take it every night. Take it a couple of nights in a row to break the pattern of sleeplessness and relieve your sleep anxiety, then tough it out for the next week or so. That way, you won't develop tolerance to the medication and it will go on working when you need it to.

I used very small doses of the older type of antihistamine in the same way - a couple of nights on then about a week off. The one I preferred was promethazine, marketed in Europe under the brand name Phenergan. It has to be the older kind. Some of the more recent antihistamines have had most of the sedative effect designed out of them. However, the same precaution has to be taken, even with antihistamines. Don't take them every night or they'll soon stop working. Also, if you're going to try antihistamines, don't wait till bedtime to take the dose. It's best taken an hour or so before going to bed. This is because the sedative effect is quite mild and doesn't kick in immediately. If you take it when you go to bed it will take an hour or so to start working, by which time you'll be so anxious it won't work at all!

Finally, there's someone on these boards calling himself "bemmeh". A year or so ago he posted some of the most sensible advice about sleeping I've ever heard. I just wish he'd been around when I was young and suffering from the same sleep anxiety as you! He gave me permission to quote him as often as I liked, so here goes:

Partial quote from bemmeh:

...The moment I stopped struggling against insomnia it simply started going away, though not suddenly. It took quite a while. But the improvement was real from the start. Insomnia is not a thing in itself. The ability to sleep is so strong among us, humans or animals in general, that it is almost impossible to seriously alter it. Insomnia in us humans appears when we TRY (and therefore struggle) to sleep. You just need to stop doing all the things you are doing FOR sleeping and let your body and mind do whatever they want - if you sleep it's OK but if you don't, that's OK too (everybody has bad sleep for all kinds of reasons once in a while). When sleep time comes just go to bed, close your eyes, and rest. Don't TRY to sleep, as you are used to do. Just rest! If sleep comes that's OK, if it doesn't that's OK too, you haven't been very successful in getting the amount and quality of sleep you have desired anyway - that's why you call yourself an insomniac. So why keep on trying/desiring? Just let it go. Accept your reality and move on to the things in life you can control over. Sleep is not something we can control. You just need to trust your body and mind for it and stop trying to do anything whatsoever for it. Good luck!

End quote.

Hi, the sleeping tablets I take, I'm only allowed to take them three nights a week as and when I need to or I can take them thee night running but if I do it that way, I wouldn't be able to take anymore for the rest of the week so I take them on three different nights as and when I need them then that way when I do need to use them, they work, because the sleeping tablets that I take, I have to take them 20 minutes before going to bed because they are very quick acting

Dont worry about insomnia hurting you. It hurts, but does not kill. You may have some slight anxiety and that is why you have a problem sleeping.I had anxiety as a child and I was unable to sleep by myself. I used to ask my mother or my grandpa to pat my back so that I slept. I grew out of the sleep problems in my teen age. It came back in my thirties because of increased life difficulties. I would advise against sleeping pills because they do cause dependency and nasty withdrawal symptoms and lose their effectiveness . Some people do better with antidepressants or just a good sleep higiene.I widh you all the best and remember it is your body's natural instinct to sleep and the sleep will come.