My experience of zopiclone (down the rabbit hole)

Hi i was on zopiclone for 12 years, i never experienced side effects, ive been off tthem now for just over a year if i can help i will x

Alexx

firstly your English is very good

i haven't had any bad side effects from zopiclone 

my only effect is abuse but that's coz I'm an alcoholic and have addiction problems 

the actual side effects for me have not been bad

im only trying to get off them because I'm trying my best to get off all addictive drugs 

sleep is king

if I sleep I can cope with life 

as soon as sleep deprivation kicks in I'm a mess

and I'll pick up a drink to self medicate 

I'd much rather take zop than not function

do not panic 

just like everything in life.    It's finding the right balance 

I've found the prob with zop over the years us the tolerance 

your body starts getting so use to it it stops working

try assisted meditation on iPad before sleeping 

helps me 

although don't get me wrong 

I have some rotton days but I think that's the booze 

good luck

dont stress

and get some sleep

xx 

Try phenegan.     It's an anti hystimine that can also assist with insomnia 

 

i would say that everyone is idfferent and drugs affect individuals differently.  That can certainly be seen on this forum for example. i'm pretty sure there is a selective bias on forums like this where it's mainly people having problems that come looking for others who share the experience and may have helpful suggestions and other info to learn from.  Also just the chance to express what one is going through to others who know what it's like, each in their own way, draws people having problems to forums like this.  People also come here because they hear bad things about a medication they're taking which they themselves aren't experiencing and they want to learn more, they are curious, they are cautious, they want to learn.  

It's not always that there is a type of person who easily becomes addicted, some do more quickly than others, and some can become addicted but are able to go off the meds more easily than others, even with some adjustment period. We are all different. 

Something i was wondering from what you said--you said you have been on zopiclone for 5 months, 5mg a night, and you are sleeping very well. What is unclear to me is whether you are able to sleep just as well without it, or whether you ever try to sleep without it.  If you can take it or leave it, or if you take it now and then when you have the occasional night of having difficulty falling asleep, you're not addicted and you're not dependent. If you are only able to sleep if you take the medicaiton, or if you are only able to get enough sleep by taking the medication, then you are dependent on it, by definition. There is both physical and psychological dependence. Addiction is defined pretty much as developing dependence (not able to get along without it) and tolerance, such that the amount that was effective for a time becomes ineffective but taking more is effective. Tolerance may gradually increase for some and rapidly increase for others.  

I started taking zolpidem for sleep 20 years ago, i took it occasionally, probably less than 5 times a month, for maybe a couple of years, maybe more. I didn't sleep well much of the time, but i would make do with less sleep rather than take the medication, but over time, i came to take the medication every night.  I stayed at a dose of 10mg (normal prescribed dose) for many years, i did not develop tolerance of it.  However, life circumstances changed in ways that made it much harder to get enough sleep, i mean sleep interruptions or just not enough time to fit sleep in each day, related to work, and because of that, not because of tolerance, i increased the dose. By the time i retired from work a year or two later, i was at a higher dose and had recently added in zopiclone, i was taking zopiclone and zolpidem at bedtime, and then taking a little more zolpidem about 4 or 5 hours later when i would wake too early, and i would get another hour or so of sleep, which was enough so that i didnt get too sleepy when driving home at night, that was the reason for taking more sleep meds, if i got 5 hours or less, then when i would drive home in heavy slow traffic at night, i would get so drowsy my eyes would close, and after trying different things to try to keep awake, i finally gave up and took more zolpidem to get another hour of sleep, and that solved the problem.  

I took zopiclone 7.5mg for a year and a half. I started at a lower dose, taking it instead of the zolpidem, but gradually over a couple of months, i got some tolerance of the zopiclone and increased to 7.5. I never took more than that, and as you may have heard from others, i got some troubling side effects from it--i would wake up in the morning in a bizarre irrational state of mind, i posted some weird things on facebook, and one morning a plumber came to do some work, as previously arranged but i told him i didn't need a plumber.  To this day, i have no memory of that happening, but i got a call from the plumber's boss checking to see if they had the right address, telling me his plumber had come but was told no plumber was needed. i just assumed the guy went to the wrong house because i didn't and still don't remember that at all, very embarrassing. i had mornings like that about once a week. When i got off the zopiclone, even though i was still on zolpidem, those symtpoms stopped.  i never got anything like that on zolpidem.

i needed to get enough sleep in order to continue my job and not fall asleep at the wheel, so i continued like that for almost two years, then i weaned off the zopiclone, but am still on the zolpidem (and diazapam 4mg which a doctor put me on to help me get off the zolpidem, i won't go into the whole story but initially it worked and i was off zolpidem for the first time in 20 years, but i was on diazapam 10mg as prescribed and was trying to wean off of that and it stopped working all together when i got down to 8mg so i added the zolpidem back in.  I kept weaning off the diazapam and am now at 4mg. It's tricky to get off benzos, there's whole forums about that. 

Anyway, that brings me to the one other thing i wanted to tell you that i've learned about how dependency happens with the Z drugs (two of which are zopiclone and zolpidem).  The Z drugs have very short elimination half lives. Half life is a pharmaceutical (i think) measurement of how long it takes the body to eliminate the medication from the bloodstream.  Diazapam has a very long half life, it can be something like 200 hours or more, meaning that's how long it takes for the body to eliminate HALF of ONE DOSE from the blood stream, so if you take it every night, you can see that it builds up in the bloodstream, you aren't eliminating it as fast as you're putting it in.  Zolpidem has the shortest half life of all those kinds of medications, only 2-3 hours, half of one dose is gone that quickly, so if you stopped taking it all together, it would all be out of your bloodstream in less than two days, and most of it is out of your blood stream before yo take the next dose if you take it nightly. Zopiclone has a 6 hour half life, so it takes about 3 days for it to all get out of your bloodstream, i mean, if you stopped taking it all together, that's how long it would take to all be eliminated, much shorter than diazapam, which could be a month or two.  

I like this about Z drugs, i would rather be on something that's eliminated faster so that once i'm ready to give it up, it won't be long and drawn out, but the other side of that coin and the reason diazapam is used to help people get off these short acting medications is that the longer acting ones are believed to be smoother to get off of, their effects gradually go away, while the short acting ones are less smooth to go off of.  I don't agree that it's true for everyone, and it seems less true for me, but i don't know for sure, a lot of people say that diazapam was the only way they could get off shorter acting benzos. i am not sure if Z drugs are the same as benzos in this way.  

But what i really want to say about the short elimination half life of Z drugs like zopiclone is that it means that they are more intended to help you get to sleep, not to keep you asleep.  And that has been my experience, not in the begining because i was able to sleep better back then and i could get enough sleep after taking it at night, but after some years of it, and with the environmental circumstances that were interfering with sleep, i developed some tolerance so that it didn't keep me asleep as long, or, i wasn't able to stay asleep on my own--when the medication would start wearing off after 4 or 5 hours, i would wake and not be able to go back to sleep.  Just something to take into account. As long as you just have trouble falling asleep but not staying asleep, Z drugs work well, but they may contribute to or cause people to lose the abiltiy to stay asleep without them when taken long enough. 

The last thing i want to mention about what i think is the most negative thing (for me) about Z drugs and other meds like this is that research has been showing evidence that continued use of them is associated with higher rates of cancer and other serious diseases. For that reason and because it impairs my memory, i want to get off of it completely, even though i may not sleep that great. Sleep can improve using various techniques.

Even after all the years i've been taking zolpidem, the amount i've been taking for the past three years or so has not gone up, so it's not like i'm getting a tolerance to it very easilly, but some people do. Some people get it very quickly and the amount needed to have the effect goes up pretty fast. That's the other end of the spectrum, and people fall everywhere in between the extremes.  On this forum, i've read many examples of people who find they need to take zopiclone throughout the day or they get anxiety, taking it up to 3 or 4 times a day. After all the years i've been taking stuff like this, i never have felt a need for it during the day, only for sleep. So, everyone is different, and individuals can change over time in how they react to the medication.  Good luck with your sleep.

Hi my name is sarah . You need to get the clinic to take a urine test to check for zopiclone or other drugs .

Did you come off them ?