My experience of zopiclone (down the rabbit hole)

That is fantastic Christian. At three days any withdrawals should be gone now. I am pleased to be proven right that the psychotic episodes seem to have been caused by the Zopiclone itself and that they are stopping.

I've had one or two bad nights and it seems to coincide with if I have any appointments the next day. I wind myself up worrying if I am going to be ok for them. This could though be because I am retired and it's a long time since I had to get into any sort of day planning.

Dave - EIGHTY FOUR DAYS ZOPICLONE FREE!

 

Hallo Christian, glad my experience with phenergan has worked with you.  My only side effect was a dry mouth during the night but that stopped when I stopped the  phenergan, but that was a small price to pay.  I never experienced any withdrawals from zopiclone with the substitution.  Also I never worry now if I am going to fall asleep when I go to bed, you fall asleep eventually.   

 

Christian, Dave and Matrix--what cheerful hopeful messages to start my day with.   Christian it's awesome to hear about your recovery from chronic poisoning.  zop has a very short elimination half life, about 6 hours, so if the last dose you took was three days ago, whatever time that was, bedtime, then  6 hours later, only half of that dose was left in your bloodstream. Let's say it was 5mg.   6 hours after that, only 2.5mg are left.  6 hours after that, only 1.25mg are left, so it gets milder and milder.  6 hours later, about .62mg left, increasingly insignifcant in its effects.  It's eliminated in a matter of days, as Dave said.  

Dave--what you said about psychotic episodes--around the time i started zop, i had my first "derealization" experience, i dont know if thats what it's really called, i was googling, i was having them at first about once a month or less, and then they became more like once a week or so. i would wake up with them in the morning, they would only last about a half hour, but during them, i was in a really unreal abnormal state about which i had no objectivity, it was just my reality. i didn't understand things that i do every day like making breakfast, the measuring cup, the water, these things didn't make sense to me.  Then it would wear off and i could make breakfast and i could look back and know that i had gone through this episode. i did not associate it with the medication.  

I began to worry that i was having some kind of psychotic thing, i had been under aboutt he most extreme stress i've ever known at work around the time of the first couple of episodes, and then i retired, so life became reallly different, and i thought maybe these changes are making me psychotic. It was mild but so bizarre, the only thing i could compare it to was, back in the 1960s, i used to take LSD for fun, and it was similar to that except on LSD, i always knew i was on a drug and it was a "trip,"  and i knew there was an outside world, a normal world, that would return in a few hours. But this thing i was having last year, i didn't have a sense of a real world beyond the bizarreness. i didn't know it would go away. It was just the way things were. That's what scared me. 

Eventually, i stumbled onto something in wikipedia, that side effects of zolpidem could include "derealization."  That word seemed to fit what i was having, and that put me onto the medications. i had been taking zolpidem for almost 20 years and never had that before, and then i added the zopiclone, and that's when it started. After that, i was sure it had something to do with those medications.  

After i stopped the zop, last dose on Feb 26 this year, i have not had another one of those episodes, even though i was on more zolpidem than ever so.....

I do believe, and want to find out more about it that these meds have effected my blood glucose levels, which are very low most of the time, way below the bottom of the normal range--the bottom of norma is 65ml/L. Mine are often in the 30s. My doctor freaked out when he got that lab result. But when i said i felt normal, he said it must be a lab error. But it's not.  i have lots of copies of old lab tests from over the years and they were all very normal, in the 80s, until 2006, and then i started having low ones, whicih were never brought to my attention and i didn't think anything of it, but in retrospect, i started feeling more tired and other symptoms around that time.  I don't know if this is causally related to the sleep meds, but it would not surprise me, because the symptoms i have don't fit the usual picture that people with nondiabetic hypoglycemia have. Like for one thing, if their lab results are that low, they don't feel "normal."  But for me, normal had not been that great, groggy, off balance, i just thought it was the sleep meds.  Now, i still think it's related to the sleep meds but i think the low blood glucose is related too, and maybe caused by taking the sleep meds for so long.  

When i started taking the 10mg Valium, i stopped the zolpidem, i switched.  I slept better than i've slept in a long time, but i also felt badly hungover all day.  I now have a home glucose testing meter thing which i've been doing since i had that very low lab tests and some other symptoms related to being improved by eating something, and my results have been lower since starting the Valium. I want to get off the Valium ASAP, and i know that i'm not going to sleep, but i am going to get some Phenergan and see what that can do.  Valium scares me because of the really long elimination half life which can be as high as 100-200 hours, and it tends to be absorbed in to fat cells. It scares me more than the Z drugs do.  

But, the good news for me is:   No more zopiclone!!! ever ever ever.  No more psychotic weirdness.  And zolpidem has been cut down from 27mg a night in a divided dose, to 5 to 10mg if the Valium doesn't put me to sleep which has happened some nights. And i'm down from 10mg Valium to 9  and am going to start with a CBT therapist on Friday that my addiction medicine doctor highly recommended, he said she's "the best," so Im going to get off of all these poisons and clean out my body and i bet i'm gong to feel as good as i did in the 90s after going off the Valium the other time and being on a very simple "cleansing" diet for some years, i felt so great then.  No time like the present!

Matrix--your report about substituting phenergan is very good news.  I am really happy for you, and appreciate you sharing these results. It's from others we have to learn because most medical doctors are not good sources of info, not really their fault, the research into this subject doesn't seem to be very extensive, and doctors have to learn from their clinical experience and case by case. I appreciate you sharing your experience of increasing recovery and healing!

I am also an old hippy too jaw444 and have often said that the perceived changes on all this prescribed stuff is much like the way that acid shifts perception. The problem is that acid was enjoyable this isn't.

 

acid was funny.  it was funny to be in that weird place, and to see the world from a perspective that made some of the normal stuff look ridiculous. And of course, i knew that perspective was caused by the acid, which i wished would never stop, it was a happy place, and we used to half seriously say that it should be put into the drinking water, then, every one could see how ridiculous some of the bad normal things were and stop doing them.  But what i got on the sleeping meds was not funny and there was no idea of anything causing it, it was just my "real" state of mind and no way out of it--but forturnately, it wore off.  It was the worst symptom of the meds. 

Have just read your post,and I can identify with so much that you say. Not ONE doctor I have seen tells me that Zopiclone is BAD,even though I describe symtoms that you speak of.Theyare quite dismissive of the fact that they cause so many side effects.From my experience,they are quick to prescribe the pills,but then do nothing to help me decrease the dose of 7.50.

As I don't want to switch from one drug to another for fear of side effects,I am not progressing with my wish to be free of Zopiclone AND get a good night's sleep.However,reading of your experiences is enlightening.Thank you.

Wendl.

Wendl--my heart goes out to you, to feel stuck on daily poisoning, to see the effects of it, and to not see a safe way out of it.  I wish you could get a different doctor, one who does take the risks of the Z drugs more seriously. This is new knowledge for doctors that is just being spread by governments  based on relatively new research, but one problem is that some of these doctors, maybe because of government orders in the UK, national health controlling or making rules, some doctors will just stop the zopiclone without tapering it and will put the patient on another medication (on these forums a few days ago i read about someone being switched on to mirtazapine, i think that was Vivien, maybe on this thread.  but some of the doctors seem to be more flexible and more collaborative in working together with patients. That's what we need in order to tackle getting off the meds.  Persionally, i am very interested in the results Christian and Matrix have gotten with Phenergan. It's not adddictive. It's an antihistamine that is used to dry up allergy symptoms, and it can make many people drowsy, very drowsy, but it's relatively harmless, in the US and other places it's sold over the counter, no prescription. You might google it and see what the worst of the symptoms are.  Christian said it initially made him very groggy the next day, so that might be expected.  Rather than stopping the zopiclone "cold turkey," you might experiment with cutting a quarter of it and taking a low dose of the phenergan, and if that was helpful, just do that for two or three days and then do another quarter and use phenergan as  needed.  But i totally sympathize with your situation, that you live alone and these drugs, their effects are unknown.  I relate to this. I live alone,i'm 65. I have this low blood sugar thing which i wasn't aware of until i started tapering off the zop. I cut one quarter pill, and after being down 1/4 for about 3 weeks, i got a frightening symptom--my coordination was impaired, i fell when i was walking after getting out of bed int he morning, i thought it was related to the sleeping medications, got up, but fell again. Realized something was really wrong, i couldn't walk normally. AFter that, i carefully walked with my arms out, to let my dog out, and i sat down with my computer but i couldn't type. i didn't have the coordination.  I tried to make some instant oatmeal, just heat water and pour it on the flakes, but i couldn't hold the measuring cup under the faucet, i didn't have the coordination, never had anything like this before, i wondered if it was an emergency. That's the problem with being alone. i was scared.  i finally made the oatmeal, just pouring water on flakes in a bowl, and i was eating it, and i felt my symptoms going away, and i knew i could type again, and i regained my normal motor control, and reganing it clearly had to do with eating just that little bit of oatmeal.  Normally i get up in the morning and take my dog for a half hour walk, it's not like i normally feel that way, even htough i haven't eaten since the night before. Since it just happened that once i didn't tghink about it much, hoping that was the end of it.  Then, i continued to cut quarters of the zop pills, i didn't have to worry about sleep because i had plenty of the zolpidem.  At the end of February, i got the routine lab test showing i had "critical" low blood glucose, my doctor and the lab thought if it was true, i wouldn't be walking around, it was so low, they wrote 'critical' on it.  And then the next night was my last dose of zop, and then 4 days later i had the second episode of that lack of coordination. The first one had been late January, so they were a month apart, the first one was three weeks into my zop taper, my second one was a few days after ending my zop taper.  The second episode was so bad, i couldn't walk at all, i had no coordination. But because of the first episode, i knew i  needed to eat, and i drug myself on the floor to the kitchen and got a piece of bread from a low shelf and ate it, and during eating the first bite, i could feel my symptoms going away, and i knew i could get up and walk, and i was amazed by this, and thought about the other time when i ate the oatmeal, and about the "critical" low blood sugar result.  So i started googling hypoglycemia, but couildn't find anyone who had anything like what happened to me.  Eventually, it occurred to me that it might be related to the zopiclone withddrawal, who knows, but it's possible.  I thought of you, and about being alone--if i were to have another episode, would it be even worse?  would i be able to move at all?  No one there with me, i didnt' have the coordination to operate my iphone.  That was around March 2 and i have had nothing like that since then, all the more reason to wonder if it was related to the zopiclone withdrawal.  Anyway, so i think of you often and wonder how you're doing and sympathize with your position of not being able to escape.  At first, after i got off the zop, took my last dose, i was exhilarated, i was so happy, i did it!  it was done. and i started tapering off the zolpidem, i was ready, i was confident. But then i had that second episode, and i considered that it could be related to going off the zop, and so i became more cautious. Maybe if i didnt' live alone...Anyway, i decided to work with a medical doctor on tapering off the medication and that's what i'm doing now, an addiction medicine specialist. But i know that he doesn't know how to predict the effects as far as my blood glucose, etc. He is just using a method that has worked with others.  I think that the experiences of Christian and Matrix are very encouraging, to have done this without using another benzo type drug, yet having good results as far as sleep goes. But i don't know about the effects of withdrawal itself as a problem for the body, the GABA /glutamate system, it's complex, it affects so much of our functioning. I think the likelihood is that you can get off zopiclone safely, but no one knows and i don't blame you for being very cautiious about it because you're  alone and that is different from if you live with soneoone who could help if things go weird. 

Thank you SO much for that reply.I cannot begin to tell you how much better it makes me feel with regard to all the side effects,knowing that others have the same experiences.My late  husband was diabetic and I am very aware of low blood sugar levels and all the problems associated with it,especially lack of coordination. I went to an ENT specialist today because I get episodes of vertigo.I told him about Zopiclone but he was not particularly bothered about the fact that I have been taking it for so long,in fact he did not even ask me what dose I am taking.My faith in the medical profession is dwindling.

i really must try the antihistamine and it is encouraging to know that it could be an answer to this ongoing nightmare, which is

really inhibiting my everyday life and enjoyment.I have tried tapering my dose,but am awake again after a couple of hours.

Many thanks for the encouraging message.

Wendl.

 

Christian!!  that is great news!  i'm so happy to hear you have been able to stop poisoning yourself with that stuff and are feeling better.  I agree, it will take the body time to readapt to doing things on its own.  This will vary from person to person, how long that will be.  When i went off almost 20 years of Valium in 1993, i was expecting to sleep normally fairly soon, a few weeks maybe, but it took more like a couple of years!  But i already had insomnia before i ever started taking it. Anyway, my sleep wasn't bad all the time, it would be pretty good for a week or so, and then it would be worse for a few days. The good periods were longer than the bad ones but gradually it got better and better, and in the second year, i was pretty normal, no complaints, i wasn't tired or suffering from lack of sleep.  i know of many people who have had a much shorter time to adjust and sleep normally again.  I just read soemthing in wikipedia about zopiclone, i wasn't looking for this but was looking for something else, but i found this and it really troubles me, it makes me think, why didn't they do these studies before exposing so many people to these drugs--they are apparently pretty carcinogenic:

"....A recent analysis of both U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) data and clinical trial data shows that nonbenzodiazepine Z-drugs at prescribed doses cause an increased risk of developing cancer in humans. There have been 15 epidemiological studies, which have shown that hypnotic drugs cause increased mortality, mainly due to increased cancer deaths. The cancers included those of the brain, lung, bowel, breast, and bladder. One possible explanation for the increased cancer deaths is that the Z-drugs have an adverse effect on the immune system. The fact that clinical trial subjects taking other Z-drugs (zolpidem, zaleplon and eszopiclone) had an increased rate of infections seems to support this theory. Benzodiazepine hypnotic agents are also associated with an increased risk of cancer in humans, namely ovarian cancer. Development of malignancy has been associated with zolpidem usage, but the incidence of neoplasm in zolpidem users is as yet unknown.[49]

Indiplon, another nonbenzodiazepine drug has also shown an increased rate of cancers in clinical trials. The review author concluded by saying: "The likelihood of cancer causation is sufficiently strong now that physicians and patients should be warned that hypnotics possibly place patients at higher risk for cancer".[49]...."

i think this should give you all the more reason to celebrate and to thank yourself every day that you have removed this chemical from your system.  Thanks for sharing the good news!

Hi jaw, reading that study makes me feel even happier that im not on it anymore. I have been taking it for 2.5 years and I think that is a long time but some of you have been taken it for up to 20 years. I am so glad that I am free from Zopiclone now. I was at the gym yesterday and did some cardio and I remember when I was on Zop I couldn't do more than 10mins before I got serious unsteadiness/vertigo/dizziness etc and also intense panic attacks so I would just leave and go home. Yesterday I could do 30mins without a single feeling of dizzyness, anxiety or panic. It seems like Zopiclone in fact was the reason behind it and was keeping me ill since day 1. Now, like I said before, I am not fully recovered yet but I am on my way and it feels great to not be crippled like that anymore. I can go out and do stuff without thinking about what is gonna happen with my body, like panic attacks, feelings of losing control over my body, dizziness, intense shortness of breath and pressure over my chest etc. I haven'ty had much of that lately. The only thing I still have is pressure over my head and sometimes still a little hard to breath. But no panic attacks or dizziness at all. Nothing ever gets intense anymore and I love it! So I hope you are doing well with the withdrawal from Zolpidem. And I look forward to reading your posts here when you are off it. =) Take care!

Hi I have had enough as well so have gone cold turkey over two days on 

my :Zimovane, Lomotrigine,Clonazepam,Cipralex,Zolpidem Rampril,Ezitembe stopped them dead in their tracks ..spoken to the pharmicist who says there is no organic reason why not to , but just advise you GP ...so I did ...so two days down and ??? to go , and I feel better already .....

Hallo Dave.  The only side effect I had with Phenergan was a dry mouth, but the phenergan sorted out my sleep, I stopped taking it after a month, although as it is not addictive it can be taken periodically.  It has made me feel naturally sleepy, not the dreadful wide awake feeling I had with Zopiclone.  It was actually an old remedy for sleeping given by GPs.  I last took zopiclone on the 26 March and took 25 mg of phenergan the next night as a substitution, although 2 tablets can be taken for an adult.  I also took it later in the day as opposed to evening after the first week and found I was ready to go to bed when the  time came and that still applies without anything at all which is something I have not been able to do for many years.  It may not work for you but I hope this helps. 

 

Hey Dave! Yes it's a great feeling to come off it! Regarding after effects - Yes I get a little dry in my mouth and I also have a hard time getting up in the morning. Like a hangover. I am so tired in the morning and sometimes I have over slept and been sleeping for 12h, but if I just get myself to get up the right time, after a couple of hours im fine. That's all, nothing else. My panic attacks and dizziness have dissapeared now. I have no idea about long term effects of Phenergan but that's what I got. I hope that helps. Good luck! :-)