My experience of zopiclone (down the rabbit hole)

^ Well done Dave. It's interesting that you say your GP doesn't have any better ideas. My GP seems rather clueless about it too. I'm almost afraid to ask this but here goes - what in your experience are your withdrawal symptoms from Zop?

FOUR DAYS Zopiclone free! Yes Steve I thought I had a cold coming on the second day without it but on reflection I suspect it was withdrawals, not bad just slightly uncomfortable. That has now stopped. My head feels so clear and I feel so good that it is making me determined to try and see it through. The Diazepam is down to 6mg but I think I will wait for 2-3 weeks to ensure the Zopiclone is totally out of my system until stopping that completely too.

Of course the big test will be what happens in event of a crisis but I'll have to cross that bridge when I get there.

Hi Everyone

Just wanted to post that last night was first zop free night !!My journey to get off this drug started Dec 1,2013. It took a little longer than my original plan of being done by the end of Jan. I would just alter the length of taking the reduced dosage but never increased it . Everytime the dosage was decreased , I experience some anxiety and difficulty to get to sleep. Then I would wake up after 3 hrs sleep and struggled to get back to sleep. But things would settled down after a few days and get better.

I know for certain that I feel more alert in the mornings and my memory has improved big time! And it feels so good not to get that 'look' from the pharmacist , making me feel terrible for having to take those sleeping pills! Now I can begin the third chapter of my life , knowing that I got rid of a potentially deadly habit .( Cancer causing, motor vehicles accidents etc. )

This forum has been fantastic and quite a few of you have already kicked this habit , some of you are in the process ...great to hear! Keep at it and keep posting .

colette--i have been thinking of you, glad to hear from you and the good news. you did it!

dave--good news, zop free! i like how you figured out a way of doing it that works for you, the diazepam crossover. i have been using Valium as a crossover drug, sort of. I was taking it anyway, together with the zop, but i used it to ease through any withdrawals. In the end, i'm off zop, forever, goodbye, and i didn't really lose any sleep because of the Ambien, and the amBian amount i increased to when needed after cutting down a piece of zop then settled back down to a lower dose after things adjusted.

Now, it's just me and the Ambien. i haven't officially started on it yet, but i am savoring the rewards of the absence of zop, which are improved energy and focus, despite the Ambien, and increased optimism, and being able to walk into the doctor's office ands pharmacy just getting the one medication rather than both, that feels so good. Anyway, i appreciate you relating how your process goes. There's so much to learn from how people adapt creatively.

btw, an hour ago was 2 1/2 days since i last had zop--according to a pharmacist who wrote on the web, because zop has an elimination half life of 6 hours, it takes 60 hours to eliminate it from plasma to a point where it doesn't have any significant impact on the body. That 2 1/2 days ended for me an hour ago tonight, bye bye

Thanks Jaw ! It feels so good and I felt really good today also ! Win Win !! Flushed the rest down the toilet!!

Yahoo !! You did it much faster than me !! What a break through you had ! You're on the right track my girl , congrats on being zop free!

The only way to come off of Zopiclone is by either (a) reducing the doseage gradually or (b) as has been suggested, to use a 'cross over' drug like Diazepam and reduce it's doseage gradually. I was once on Lorazipam and I can tell you the withdrawel symptoms are like coming 'cold turkey' off of heroin (so I've been told by medical professionals). I did try the cold turkey approach but I honestly thought I was going to die, the stomach cramps, muscle cramps, insomnia, shakes, cold and hot sweats, nausea and headaches were so bad. My doctor (who was not the person who prescribed the Lorazipam) was happy to help me return to normality by prescribing Diazepam and I was to decrease the dose over a period of about 4 - 6 weeks. I would always say that you should seek the advice of a medical professional before trying to stop an addictive drug, it can be dangerous to just stop especially if you are on a higher dose or have been taking it for a long time. If sleep is a real issue, which is why many start taking Zopliclone, try asking your doctor for an alternative like Circadin - which contrary to the info out there - isn't just prescribed to people over 60, but also to those with chronic sleep problems. The great thing is that it is NOT addictive and it is completely safe. It basically gets your body's Circadian rhythm back to normal. It's easier to Google it and try and understand it that way.

Hi lijwagg, thanks for the info about Circadin. i googled it briefly and see that it's a melatonin receptor agonist (don't know what that means). I don't think it's licensed in the US yet, but it reminds me of what i heard about Rozerem, which is also a melatonin receptor agonist. i haven't looked much into this because i'm not there yet, still using Ambien for sleep (but i cut my morning dose down by 1/4 this morning!! and feel committed to that, sleep or no sleep, and reducing more before long, and plan to reduce my bedtime dose of it tonight or soon). I just started seeing a psychologist to work on the head trips associated with insomnia and sleep meds, and he mentioned that he had heard that some people in that position have reported finding Roserem to be helpful.

I am going to try to find other ways, non medication ways. Like you say, the melatonin related meds are not addictive, or so they say, and from what i understand, they are short acting, they can get you to sleep, but they aren't designed to keep you asleep, but it can be helpful sometimes just to get to sleep. I read about side effects. There can be some, i don't know what percent of people get them. This gives me good motivation to try alternatives, mainly neurofeedback is highest on my list, still researching. i just feel so optimistic, stopping the zopiclone made such a difference, hard to put into words, but being on two meds was like a roadblock, psychologically.

When i went off of diazepam cold turkey, i had been taking it for 20 years, and was recently up from 10-15mg to 25-30mg, this is a lot less than what i found was defined medically as "addiction." But when i went off it, it was 1993 and all i knew about going cold turkey off of drugs was what i saw in the movies about heroin, and Jack Lemmon going off alcohol in The Days of Wine and Roses. Horrible, but time limited, a matter of days. So, i was somewhat psychologically prepared for that or for whatever, thinking "I will just go through it and be done."I knew i wasn't going to sleep, i didn't expect to sleep at all, i had no confidence or belief in my ability to sleep without it. But i did sleep the first night, maybe a couple of hours, which surprised me and really made me feel free of it, never turning back. Sleep was less the next night i think, less than an hour, yet i had thought i wouldn't sleep at all, so i was still pleased with this, though getting tired, and then, the other withdrawal symptoms were pretty intense, they didn't really get underway until the third day or late into the second day, and they included twitching muscles or nerves, especially in my upper arms, and other twitching or sudden jerks, and i was seeing things out of the corners of my eyes that weren't there, and i saw bugs crawling on me at times, i knew they weren't real, i just thought, wow, interesting. I was getting anxious, irritable and wondering how long this part was going to last. I asked my pharmacist and he said the average was 2 weeks. This made me feel better because until i got this info, i was afraid it would never end, or go on indefinitely, there was something reassuring about having a professional talk about it clinically, without the emotion i was feeling, and just respond matter of factly, it made me feel like i was part of some data base and there were reality-limits to what was going to happen. The 4th day was the same as the third, maybe more, both those days there was sweating and feeling cold. and late in the 4th day, the sweat broke while drinking chrysanthemum tea (Chinese) and after that, it all began going away, it never got that bad again, i could tell it was over, it was ending. Difficulty sleeping continued for a long time, there would be some good days, and then there would be a string of bad days, in a repeating cycle, and that's how i ended up on the Ambien, my doctor prescribed it when i reported on not enough sleep, but i only started using it very very gradually because i was so happy to be off Diazapam and didn't want to put other things in my system, i wanted to detox thoroughly and be clean and healthy, no more toxic meds. i wanted my memory back.

The symptoms you report going off the Lorazapam cold turkey sound a lot worse than what i had with the Diazapam, unbearable. i don't know what dose you were up to. i never had the stomach cramps or shakes, and didn't never lost my appetite. i was taking care of my 9 year old daughter as a single parent, and i was pleased with how i was able to manage that, i bought her A LOT of TV dinners and bought my food ready made from the cafe and the health food store market downstairs from my apartment. Fortunately, i was on a two week vacation from full time job so it worked out pretty well.

While going off Zopiclone and Zolpidem and similar is so hard when you're habituated, i can testify to that because i've procrastinated doing it for a year and when i first started tapering off zopiclone, i was SO scared and having really negative expectations, i couldn't even face it much less do it, i do believe generally they are not as strong or as complicated to go off as the benzos like Loraz and Diaz are. At least that's how it's seemed to me, and from what i've read, they seem to be somewhat less addictive on the anxiety side. They're addictive on the sleep side, but don't really treat anxiety the way benzos do, so i think you're mainly dealing with the sleep dependency in going off them, but not so much the physical addiction of the anxiety parts of the brain (gaba receptors?), so most of the anxiety some of us get when going off the Z drugs is more thought-related than physical. maybe.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your experiences with negotiating these paths, it's so helpful.

Hi Jaw444, interesting post. I have tried melatonin as a sleep aid in the past and it freaked me right out. Tripping in my sleep! Melatonin is also banned in the UK but easily sourced on ebay if anyone wants to try that though.

Hi Dave

Can you go more into detail about the melatonin ? How did it affect you negatively? What does tripping in your sleep mean? And do you know why melatonin is banned in the UK? I'm from Canada and we can get it over the counter. I'm presently taking 1, 10 mg dual action timed release capsule at bedtime. I think this will be something that I'll have to phase out in the next few months. I guess every pill we take has some side effects. Some are just better researched than others. This is what scares me with melatonin because it has not been widely researched. It does say to consult a health care practitioner on the bottle so that probably tells us something right there. But if all the GP's out there are willing to prescribe all the other medications even when they know they are harmful to us, I doubt they will say anything negative about taking melatonin for as long as we want to . Thanks in advance for your help!

In the UK Melatonin (Circadin) is available on prescription for extreme cases of insomnia. You cannot buy it over the counter. In the USA you CAN buy Melatonin as a supplement at most drug stores. Trust me - the minimal side effects do not affect everyone, they are not addictive, they just work. I have had no side effects at all. The great thing about them is you do not need to take them all the time, only when things 'go off kilter'. Yes, you still become tired, it's not an anti-anxielitic so other treatment can still be administered - BUT - a lot of anxiety is caused and excasserbated by sleeplessness, so the cyclic condition continues. It has to be worth a try? I was a psychological and mentally unstable wreck after being on - and coming off of - Lorazepam. The whole thing gave me a nervous breakdown, ironically the very thing it was prescribed to prevent! Circadin/Melatonin gives a far more safe and natural option, long haul pilots use it to stop getting jet lag and to adjust their constantly shifting Circadian rhythm. Ask your Doctor, you've got nothing to lose.

Melatonin was only discovered in 1958 so its use is really still in its infancy.

I found Melatonin to cause the dreams to be so realistic that it was like being in a cartoon and I rather embarrassingly woke up shouting kicking and punching several times when using it with the hallucinations continuing for some time after I woke up.

I understand that what might be part of this commonly reported problem could be the dosage. The standard 3mg dose seems to be an arbitrary figure that has always existed with no trials to determine it. Research has suggested that a tenth of this figure would do the same job.

Melatonin is produced by the pineal gland in darkness and destroyed by light and is commonly used to adjust for jet lag. The stuff you can buy is synthetic as the only other source is from the brains of cattle with all the associated risks.

Dave - SIX DAYS ZOPICLONE FREE!

I'm much happier now. I saw a different doctor at my surgery today who was much more supportive and understanding. She has restored my repeat prescription for Zop and referred me back to a councillor who maybe able to help with my anxiety about not sleeping issues. She assured me she would not take away my drugs if I need them and I have agreed to try to reduce my dosage, as and when I feel able.

That is good Steve. In all of my 25 years of taking Zopiclone I have found just two doctors who took the addiction seriously. I would go as far as to say that creating junkies is what doctors are paid to do by the drug companies so they haven't really got much interest in getting people off such drugs.

I appreciate that one means won't fit all but I am having fantastic success using the Diazepam crossover method. I tried this in the past substituting half the Zopiclone amount with equal Diazepam but never had much luck. This time I loaded myself up with 10mg of Diazepam on the first night and haven't had any Zopiclone since. I never ever thought I would see the day when I came off it.

After nine nights Zopiclone free I have now tapered the Diazepam down to 4mg and am confident that this will be down to 2mg by next week.

In the meanwhile I am sleeping like I haven't slept in years. Head goes on pillow and gone withing 30 minutes. Waking up 8:30 with a clear head too.

Dave - NINE DAYS ZOPICLONE FREE

Dave--great news! I'm looking forward to any updates about how the diazepam taper goes. For me, it was easy to go off zopiclone using the Ambien. I could've done it long ago and i could've done it all at once like you did, but wasn't in the right headspace to do that so i tapered, but pretty fast, i cut to 3/4 tablet on 1/5, i cut to 1/2 tablet on 2/6, i cut to 1/4 tablet on 2/13, and i cut to zero zopiclone on 2/27. i had no experience of withdrawal symptoms from zopiclone, but i was taking the Ambien so that would be why.

My only need from these meds is sleep, i don't have anxiety, not of a kind i would think of taking medication for. I could probably use diazepam for a crossover to go off the Ambien, i have started out at about 27mg per night, in two doses. But i have easily cut my morning dose from 10mg to 7mg so i will play this out and see how far it will go, i'm sleeping well enough that i'm not tired during the day, i wake up refreshed, even though it seems i don't sleep "enough" hours (i can't keep a count anymore, too amnestic) and i usually wake at least once in the night and am sometimes up for quite a while because i won't take the second dose until it's been 5 hours since the bedtime dose, to avoid tolerance (it works, for me).

I can't complain about sleep. So as long as sleep is still OK as i cut down the Ambien, i will see how far i can go. It makes sense to do a crossover to diazepam because of the longer half life. While in a sense, i have used Ambien as a crossover drug, because it has even a shorter half life than Zopiclone, the analogy only goes as far as using one drug to prevent withdrawal symptoms from the other one. it's always an option to consider Diazapam, it makes sense to change to a different drug and then taper off of it because you are not used to that drug, your body is new to it, and if you've only been taking it a few weeks, it should be easier to withdraw from it than a medication you've been taking for years.