My experience of zopiclone (down the rabbit hole)

Hi anita, At times if tempted to take sedation I remember the possible side effects like you mention and this sure does make me do without. Pleased all went well for you eventually.

Thank you for your message. Just wanted to post my story in the hope it may help others realise how addictive and dangerous this drug can be. Hope all goes well for you. Anita

Hello Anita.

Now I know that these symptoms are real.I wish that the GP's would read these posts so that they can have a better understanding of the side effects,which they tend to minimise.I am still trying to stop taking Zopiclone

But having read what you have to say,I know why I am feeling so ill,because I have also had so many tests awhich show that nothing is wrong.But there is,it is called addiction,and I would not wish these feelings on anyone.

I hardly go out because I feel so bad most of the time.I MUST stop taking them and get my life back together,which it seems is possible.Wendl.

hello

ive been on Zopiclone at 7.5 for the past 7 years or so. i have always been a terrible sleeper. my mind just wont shut down. i have been diagnosed with hppd recently which i have had for a long time. initially i was put on Zopiclone and effexor while having a really bad onset of anxiety, insomnia and derealization. Zopiclone worked like a charm at first and mellowed the fire. now its to the point where my quality of life is in the gutter. flash forward to now and i am in desperate need to get off this drug. i feel so lethargic and medicated all the time. the only time i feel somewhat normal is when i take my pill at night. it also is blocking any progress i could be making with other medications i need to reduce my hppd symptoms.

i will attempt to come off this med. is there anything that can help the withdrawl?

also does anyone else feel Zopiclone gives them "swamp mouth"? like really hot breath and just a gross feeling?

Hello.

Yes,I feel terrible most of the time,with so many different symptoms.Every day I am surprised that I wake up.

I have no quality of life.I take one 7.5 each night,sometimes I try 3.75 but it never lasts long enough so I end

up taking the other half in the middle of the night.If I dont take anything at all I get dreadful hallucinations

and palpitations.Get VERY thirsty.Have been taking these for MUCH too long.

Too scared to take anything else as everything has side effects.

OMG I CANNOT BELIEVE WHAT IM READING!!!!!!!! Please listen, I'm 34 years old, I've suffered insomina all my life, I've always avoided prescription drugs, but I just need to sleep to bek able to do my job I can't sleep, I've tried to manage it with melatonin, hope, valerian, you name the herbals I did it all. Sleeping is so difficult for me I don't know why, my life is happy, but damn when that private dr offered me the zops and said "these are the least offensive drugs, your sleep patterns will be right after a week", I thought HELL YEAH. I've been on them for 2 months, I've had tonsilltus, bronchitus, colds flu, whatever, been to the doc loads, got antibiotics, NOT WORKING!!!!!!! I'm fcked!!!! I'm usually so fit and healthy run marathons etc, after reading these posts, my god, what am I gonna do? I couldn't sleep before, how will I ever sleep again ? Xxxxxx

Everyone is different. Some people have a harder time getting off these kinds of meds than others. Some people don't have any trouble. Reading posts can be really scary, it is for me. i want t o get off a really long habit and i'm taking a higher than prescribed dose, and i was pretty confident about it until i read some forum posts (at a different forum) and then i chickened out of my plan to just stop, go through some days of harder than usual sleep and tiredness, and then go back to normal, and like you, i have never slept easily, that's why i started the meds, and i increased the dose just to keep getting the effect, and like you, it was so that i could work.

I don't know what you're on or how much. My experience with stopping benzos and z drugs is this: in the 1970s, i started taking Valium for sleep, which my doctor prescribed. I didn't take it every night and i took a pretty low dose, 5mg. I did that for many years. Altogether i was on Valium for sleep for 20 years. Toward the end, the last couple of years, i was taking it more frequently, every night i guess, hard to remember now, and at the very end,in 1993, in the last month or two, i developed high tolerance and whereas i had been taking 5 to 10mg, plus another 5mg if i woke in the morning, at the very end, i was taking 25-30mg in divide doses, trying to get a whole night's sleep. It wasn't working anymore so, i decided i would just stop.

i had two weeks vacation so it was the right time to do it. I stopped. i was going to run out anyway, so there was no choice. I felt some tension the first couple of days, did not sleep much those two nights, probably less than an hour the first night, and then the third and fourth days were more intense and i had quite a few symptoms, mainly neurological--but not unbearable. By the fourth day, i was getting really tired of it, i was wanting it to stop. Late on the fourth day, i started sweating. Throughout this process i'd been taking Chiinese herbs that i got from a Chinese doctor. That fourth day, i was talking to my friend on the phone that afternoon, sweating a lot, and drinking Chrysanthemum tea. I remember (i kept a journal so it's pretty much documented) that when i got off the phone, i had stopped sweating and i felt better. And after that, over the next few days, all the symptoms stopped except sleep was still not as much as i would ideally like, but i was on vacation from work and i was very happy that i had stopped the Valium and when i would get 5 hours sleep in a night without any Valium, that felt like a wonderful achievement. All in all, the withdrawal, the difficult part, was only the third and fourth days. The first two days were not the greatest, but not so bad. The two worst days were tolerable, though increasingly unpleasant and i didn't see an end to it (which is the worst par). But then it ended kind of abruptly.

a few months after that, i proudly told my doctor i had stopped the Valium. i mentioned that i wasn't sleeping as well as with the meds, and he said that he would prescribe a "new medication" that was not addictive like Valium and wasn't as strong. He gave me a prescription for Ambien (zolpidem). I was very cautious about taking any meds at that point, i wanted to get healthy and clean my body out of everything, but i did fill that prescription, and i took some Ambien now and then, maybe twice a month at first. Gradually, i used it more often but not every day, not dependent on it.

But in the last few years, things got a lot harder at work and i increased the Ambien, and for the past few years, i take it every night, and for a few months now, i'm up to taking one 10 mg pill at bed time, AND one half of a 12.5mg Ambien CR, AND a 3mg Lunesta. It works great, it knocks me out, but it's getting so it doesn't reliably keep me asleep, leaving me really tired too often. That is a good thing because it moves me along toward quitting the meds. It's a matter of deciding it will be better to go through some withdrawal ordeal than to be on the meds. I want to mention that, according to my journal which i was re-reading, as recently as 2010, three times that year, i stopped taking the Ambien for 4, 5, 6, 7 days, i fell asleep without it for several nights, even though i had been taking it every night for a long time. I never had any withdrawal symptoms. This did pleasantly surprise me at the time.

I'm saying this to give you an example of someone, me, and i'm not the only one, who, after taking Ambien-zolpidem 10mg and more every night for long periods, months, i stopped taking, not even on purpose, i just fell asleep without it unexpectedly, without any withdrawal symptoms. I expect i will have some withrdrawals now, but i don't know until i try. What i went through with the Valium was hard, but it was pretty short, shorter than i thought it would be when i set out to do it, and it was rewarding, because i got FREE. As unpleasant and trying as it was, it was doable. I was caring for my 9 year old daughter at the time, and she wasn't aware of anything abnormal going on. i did errands, some chores, cooked meals. i functioned.

Zolpidem and Zopiclone (Lunesta) both have very short half life, so they are metabolized quickly. Valium has a really long half life (many days compared to Z drugs which are only hours). Technically if you only take a Z med at night, then you have been withdrawing fromr it for 12 to 18 hours after your body has eliminated it. So you may get some idea of what going off it will do by how you feel throughout the day when you have withdrawn from the medication every day. Some people have an awful time going off Z drugs. But not everyone. When i went off Valium, it was a couple of years before i got internet, early 1990s, and so i couldn't research it and read about other people's experiences. If i had, i might not have been able to do it.

Again, reading posts of stories of people who have had bad experiences is very scary. But i just want to say my experience has not been like that. I am needing to talk my own self into doing this. but reading the posts of traumatized people discourages me. My heart goes out to them, and to all of us.

One other thing---i have recently become interested in neurofeedback for insomnia, and also cranial electro-stimulation (CES). I ordered a CES device called the Alpha-Stim and it arrived today. These are both non-pharmaceutical approaches to insomnia which have been researched and have been approved in the US by the drug approval agency to be prescribed for insomnia. They both train the brain to get into a state that's conducive to sleep. They work for some people though not all. From what i understand, the neurofeedback trains you to be able to get into an alpha brain wave state, and maybe deeper, and the results can be permanent, though one might need to continue to practice it to keep up the skill. CES is a device that you hook to your ear lobes or your head and it applies a mild electrical current to your head which, it is believed, brings about an alpha wave state. it doesn't train you to do this, the device does it, and so, being able to sleep is somewhat dependent on using the device, though the claim is that some people use it now and then as needed, or infrequently. These are used by the US military for veterans with PTSD insomnia, and they also treat anxiety and depression. I'm nervous about using the CES but it's a bit more affordable than the neurofeedback which i would have no reservations about doing. So, i got this CES device and am going to try it. i've read some posts by people who say it had a bad effect on them, and other people say it's helped them a lot. So, i am going to give it a try. I can return it if it doesn't work or has a bad effect. i have only just stumbled onto these two things in the past month, after all my (40) years of taking meds for insomnia and being stumped by the obstacle of not wanting to give up my control of being able to sleep by giving up the medication, so i have some guarded hope that these things might make a difference. But in going off meds, for me, it has had to be OK if i don't sleep--the happiness of being off the meds just has to be worth it.

Hi siannastuff, any change in sleeping, just wondering how you are managing.

I'm so glad I have read the comments on this discussion.I have only registered on this site today .I was prescribed this sleeping tablet 7-5 a few months ago as I was losing sleep worrying about my husbands recent diagnosis of vascular dementia/heart failure after he suffered a stroke.I wasn't happy taking it so reduced the dose myself to half a tablet.Fortunately I don't have as many sleepless nights now and stopped taking them after a few weeks.Thank goodness! I wish you all success in coping with the problems you are getting with attempting to discontinue this medication. There for the grace of God go I .

Hi,

I have removed the last few posts as they were going off topic and had been reported by users.

Alan

Emis Moderator

Good! I was wondering whether to report it too, as it didn't seem quite right.