My experience of zopiclone (down the rabbit hole)

hi bcd -- one can only speculate.  what you are describing might be what's called ataxia, which is an impairment of normal motor skills or motor contro.  i never heard of this before until i began tapering off of a 1 1/2 year habit of taking 7.5mg zopiclone. About 3 weeks after i had cut 1/4 pill from my nightly dose, i had an experience where i woke up in the morning and, walking to the bathroom, i fell. I vaguely thought it was related to my sleeping meds--i was also taking zolpidem (for 20 years) so, i got up but immediately fell again, and that got my attention. I found that i could get up and walk but that i had to be careful, i was unsteady, and it wasn't just balance, it was coordination. I found that i couldn't type when i tried. i could type one key at a time, but not the normal kind of typing where you can go fast. i just had to type one key and then the next key, etc, and i gave up. i decided to make breakfast, which starts by getting 3/4 cup water in a measuring cup. putting it in a pan and heating it on the stove and then pouring the heated water on some instant oatmeal flakes. i had great difficulty holding the cut under the faucet, i lacked the coordination. I persisted and did make the cereal and sat down and was eating it while reading something on my lap top. As i sat there eating, i felt the symptoms go away. and i knew that i could type. Eating made the ataxia go away.  So my problem has a hypoglycemic component.  It's just that until i began tapering off the zopiclone, i had never had anything like this before.  i never had ataxia, where my brain wasn't able to tell my body what to do.  And that is not a typical symptom of hypoglycemia. A month later, a few days after i took the last 1/4 pill, ending my zopiclone taper, i had the second one of these ataxia episodes. It was a lot worse than the first one. i couldn't walk.  i crawled to my kitchen and got a piece of bread and started eating it and i could feel my motor coordination return, quickly, and i could get up and walk.  When i first woke up and i wasn't able to walk, i called my dog and i wasn't able to pronounce his name clearly (it's only one syllable).  I don't know if this was related to going off the zopiclone, but i had to consider it, giving the timing and the way in which stopping a medication can potentially create some chaos in the brain. I understand that your symptoms are continuous unlike mine. Mine were on discrete days separated by a month.  But in response to your questions, i (nor anyone else probablyl) don't know enough about what coming off zopiclone can cause, what symptoms, but i do believe if what you are experiencing is caused by withdrawals, it should surely straighten out fairly soon, not much more than a week--judging by the elimination half life of zopiclone which is about 6 hours.  I hope your symptoms end soon. I'm glad you're in touch with your doctor about it. After the symptoms i had, i googled ataxia a lot and i found a discussion forum--apparently there are some CNS disorders that are mostly symptomized by ataxia, the diagnoses have specific names and they are not caused by taking sleeping medications. One thing i came to understand from reading some posts on this forum is that ataxia and the related diagnoses can take a long time to diagnose, years, and it's often misdiagnosed as other things.  If you google zopiclone and ataxia as search terms, you will see that it can be a side effect.

yeah Chris - it's messed up.  good luck getting clean and free.  very interesting story of how detox is professionally managed, and the complex web of conflict of interest.  If you could design a program of detox support, what would be some ideas?  

imo, and experience, which is with z drugs and benzos, people vary in what works best.  i'm curious, how long does cold turkey detox last, the worst of it, with opiates?  

I was on zopiclone for about a year and a half, while at the same time on zolpidem (for 20 years and still counting). i tapered off zopiclone over about an 8 week period, 1/4 pill at a time, for me, it wasn't too hard because i was still taking a lot of zolpidem, so i didn't lose sleep, which is the only reason i take them.

20 years before i had been on diazapam for 20 years for sleep and went off cold turkey, the worst of it wasn't very long, maybe three days, and not so bad, i was up to about 3X the prescribed dose, totally tolerant, i felt tense, irritable, twitching nerves, some hallucinations in brief flashes, out of the corners of my eyes, saw a bug crawling on my arm a couple of times, otherwise, felt ok, no nausea, more neurogenic, sweating, cold, but then it stopped fairly suddenly and wore off.  

Now, i want to go off the zolpidem and a year and a half ago, i googled it and found discussion forums with terrible horror stories about cold turkey, not on zolpidem per se but benzos which are somwhat related.  It wasn't so much the withdrawal symptoms that scared me but people were saying it set them back in their process of getting off the meds, that's what scared me. i didn't want to get set back, some said set back by a year or  more--it wasn't clear in what way they were set back, but just that the suffering was great.  really scared me.  

And people on these forums, a lot of them are into the diazapam crossover approach, basically switching benzos or z drugs for an equivalent dose of diazapam. After reading the horror stories of cold turkey, even though it had worked well for me with diazapam 20 years before, no internet then, those stories scared me into paralysis and i couldn't bring myself to quit that way, but also i couldn't bring myself to taper, to me, tapering is the worst of both worlds, you are still taking the drug and you are not getting the benefit of the drug, in other words, i would'nt be sleeing and i would still be taking the drug, i wouldn't have the plus side of telling myself, "At least i'm off it now, hurray!" as i did when i went off diazapam and it got a little rough, but i knew i was not turning back and was happy about that, just expecting i would get through it.  

i never thought i would take it again, but then i went to an addiction medicine specialist MD a few months ago, and he advised the diazapam crossover, because zolpidem is so short acting, it's hard to go off of, while diazapam is VERY long acting so the withdrawal is smoother, and yes, i knew that was the logic of this approach.  

So then, after you switch, you wait about a week and then you taper off the diazapam. i asked him about how long it usually takes to taper off the diazapam and he said two weeks.  I couldn't believe it, that was so short--i could be off sleep meds in two weeks!?  20 years of zolpidem over and off diazapam!  Even if it took me 4 weeks, that would still be good. So i decided to do it.  

It hasn't worked out the way it's supposed to. I took the equivalent dose, switching 27mg of zolpidem for 10mg diazapam for one week, and the diazapam worked really well for sleep, the zolpidem is so short acting, 2-3 hour half life, that i was having to take it twice per night. The diazapam kept me asleep all night, that was great, but then also it kept me hung over all day, i felt just tired all day and groggy. The whole point of sleeping medication is NOT to feel tired during the day.

So i was eager to get started tapering off. I went down 1mg after a week, per doctor's prescription. It was a little harder to sleep for a couple of nights and then i adjusted.  Then after 4 days (with agreement of the doctor) i cut down to 8mg. Hang over much better.  Same pattern, i adjusted, sleeping OK, but not always as long. Also, i forgot to mention, when i had trouble sleeping when i made the cuts, i just took some zolpidem to get to sleep, much less than i used to take and I didn't need to keep taking it, i wasn't re-addicted, i just got through change period to the lower dose of diazapam. But when i went to 7mg, i didn't sleep at all the first night (no zolpidem the first night) and i slept a little the next two nights, and started using zolpidem to get me to sleep. the diazapam would keep me asleep after the zolpdem got me to sleep. But i went back up to 8mg.  

I also developed a tolerance for the diazapam. I've been on 8mg for since early June and i only sleep about 3 hours on it and then i can't get back to sleep, so i take 10mg zolpidem, and that gets me a good night's sleep between the two. Zolpidem only lasts a short time. But this isn't working the way it's supposed to.

Maybe because i used to be on diazapam, that explains getting so much tolerance so soon now, but i regret going on it .I am learning from these experiences.  Of all the meds, i think for me, zolpidem is the best the get off of, and the best to take in the future occasionally, because it's so short acting, it's totally out of your circulation in one day.  How bad can that be?  

i don't expect to sleep because i have the sleeping problem independent of the meds, it's sleep that i have addictive relationship to, not so much the zolpidem.  Diazapam on the other hand is very long acting, the half life can be up to 100 hours, and then there is an active metabolite which doubles that, so that it's got a 200 hour elimination half life--it can take up to 200 hours for half a dose to be eliminated. Do the math on that. It builds up in your body, in your tissue, you accumulate it, as long as you continue taking doses, and it takes a long time to really get it out of your system.

So, if i had it to do over, i would've just tapered off the zopiclone using the zolpidem to get me through those changes, and then cold turkey off the zolpidem, accept not sleeping for some days if necessary, eliminate it from my system, and then adapt to finding ways to sleep without it. Taking it on occasiion.  I don't think it's that addictive. I don't think it's stronger than benzos.  Benzos act on 5 different neuroreceptors, or GABA receptors, which include sedative, anti-anxiety, anti-convulsant, muscle relaxer, and one other i can't remember.  Z drugs, or at least zolpidem, only acts on on--sedative.  It works strongly as a sedative and it is easy for a person with insomnia to get dependent on it for sleep, but i don't think it's that much of a physical dependence.

Diazapam on the other hand, acting on all those neuroreceptors, had a complex withdrawal syndrome.  Not having tried going cold turkey off of zolpidem, i can't compare experiences--it may be right that diazapam is easier on the body to go off of--in some ways. When i went off diazapam, a 20 year habit, there was never one night when i didn't sleep at all.  Less than an hour one night but i always slept a little. Maybe with zolpidem i will have nights of no sleep.  But i think if i could just get the determination to do it, i could get through it and adjust, easier than with the diazapam.  

There are a lot of people who do "micro-tapering" off of diazapam, which means they taper no more than 10% every two or more weeks,with no limit to how long a person can wait between tapers because they are the best judge of what is working for them, i think this is the Ashton method, it can take up to a year or more, and is supposed to really minimize side effects of withdrawal. To micro taper, you have to get the drug in a liquid form and measure it out.  10mg diazapam---1mg is 10%.  When you're at 7mg, 10% is .7mg, and some people micro taper with a smaller percentage, depending on how it's working for them.  

Maybe there's something to be said for that. i just think that i don't want a drug in my system that has such a long half life and takes so long to be completely clean of.  Like i said, everyone is different and what works best for some may be diferent from what works best for others. I'm just thinking that i was dependent on a medication that affected the neuroreceptor that has to do with sleep, sedation, and now i'm on one that affects 5 different neuroreceptors including sedateion, and that doesn't strike me as in my best interest, now i'm 'addicted' in more ways than if i was just taking zolpidem.  

Maybe i'm all wrong about this, but being on diazapam means i'm on a medication that has me adapted to sedative, anti-anxiety, anti-convulsent, muscle relaxer and one other, and has up to a 200 hour half life (it can be less depending on various circumstances). The idea of a medication that is out of your system in a day just appeals to me more, just the concept of it.  It seems less unhealthy to me.   

Getting off Zop is not easy but it can be done. You need to plan a long tapering programme and sub something for the highs you get from taking them since you clearly are not taking them for sleep. What else produces the endorphins? Exercise and lots of it and vigorous, outside if possible, every time you want to reach for a pill, could work.  The tapering could be 7.5 mg for a couple of weeks, then half that, then half again, then 1/4 every few days and so on over a period of a few months. Then when you are at 1/4 of a 7.5mg pill per week, you can stabilise iat that or quit altogeher. Some therapy could help too as could meditation or some group therapy. Don't start saying "Yes, but" just do it. 

That is wonderful news Christian!!  It makes me happy to hear.   Does the phenargan give you a hang over the next day?   

I got off zopiclone on February 27, 2014. I used zolpidem to help myself taper off it, so i was still using a similar prescription sleep medication. I had been taking zolpidem for long before i started zopiclone.  I took zopiclone for about a year and a half, together with the zolpidem.  I never had any side effects from zolpidem.  When i started taking the zopiclone too, i got some really weird side effects where i would wake in the morning feeling like i was not myself, or like i was lost in my world, it was my normal world, bedroom, house, etc, but it felt really strange to me, and i could not think of how to do things like make breakfast, or use my scale to weigh myself, the numbers didn't make sense to me. It would wear off within a half hour and then i would be normal again.   It happened about 2 to 4 times per month, not every day but i hated it. it seemed dangerous. I wasn't sure the zopiclone was causing it. i didn't know what it was. But i did begin to suspect the zopiclone because it started shortly after i started taking zopiclone, within maybe 2 or 3 weeks.  Then, this year, in January, i started tapering off the zopiclone, 1/4 pill at a time, it took me two months. i had those weird episodes during that time, and i had one a few days after my last dose, in late February, but i have never had another one since then, and i am now certain the zopiclone caused it. I feel very happy to be off zopiclone even though i'm still on zolpidem.  That's why i'm interested in phenargan. I want to 

i accidentally sent my post to you before it was finished, so i am going to try to finish it in this  Part 2 section--i am interested in phenergan. My daughter has used Benadryl and Unisom (brand names of some other antihistamines) and she uses those for sleep since she got off of zolpidem. It's not addictive.  I am taking a somewhat high dose, about 3 times the prescribed dose, because of tolerance, i'm so used to it that i need more to get the effect. But for all that, i have never had weird side effects from it.  Even though it's n the same family with zopiclone, i think zopiclone may be a worse drug between the two. i would never go back on it again. I have plenty left over from when i was taking it, but i have felt a lot better since getting off it.  

Thanks again for the good news  

Hi jaw, yes I get a hang over the next day and I feel very tired in the morning but it's a lot better than having constant anxiety, panic attacks, breathing problems and dizzyness. So i'd rather just be tired. I know about you history with Zopiclone and Zolpidem and yes coming off Zopiclone was a good move! But you also need to come off Zolpidem. I took them as well before and I got a lot of side effects from them too. None of them are good to use. I hope that you can taper off of them soon.

Best regards,

Christian

Christian--when i got off the zopiclone, i felt so positive and inspired, i immediately started tapering the zolpidem, confident, and not minding if i got less sleep, i was really inspired and supercharged by getting off the zopiclone, it made me feel so happy to be free of it--and so capable.  

About 5 days after my last zopiclone dose and a couple of days into the first taper of zolpidem, i had a very scary episode where i fell out of bed in the morning and couldn't get up, it was a worse version of something i had had in late January. During that time, i attributed every symptom i had to side effects of the sleep meds. These two episodes clearly showed something was wrong with my brain, i had no coordination. I just assumed the sleep meds were doing it, maybe the cutting down of the zopiclone caused it?  

Both times, when i ate just a tiny bit of food, plain unsweetened oatmeal the first time, and just a bite of plain rye bread the second time, a month later, the symptoms (which were simply a severe loss of coordination, fine and large motor) immediately went away.

Before the second episode, i had the first blood test i'd had since 2010 and my doctor was really alarmed because my glucose came back so low, i should not have been up walking around, but i felt normal, which was not a good feelling, but more or less functioning. So, putting that together with the two episodes that were cleared up by eating something, even if not sweet, i concluded i had some kind of hypoglycemia. Probably caused by the sleep meds, i thought.

I started workign on that, googling, increasing my meals, asking my doc for a referral to an endocrinologist. During that time, i was worried that maybe reducing the sleep meds was causing some kind of withdrawal symptom in my brain, since i'd never had anything like that before.  So, i held off on cutting down the zolpidem, but i was still determined to get off it because i theorized that it was likely the cause of whatever was wrong with me, i see it as a poison who's effects are not adequately understood.

So, i went to an addiction medicine specialist doctor, hoping he might help me safely get off the zolpidem.  His approach was to switch me over to diazapam. I did what he said and was no longer on zolpidem, over night. so happy about that, but then found the diazapam was worse and am now using the zolpidem to help me wean off the diazapam. :P  

But in the midst of this process, i had two more episodes that were way worse than the first two, probably because i had been cutting back on my increased meals, due to weight gain. i woke up laying on the floor, no memory of how i got there, unable to get up for a while, two days in a row.  At that point, i took more seriously the low blood sugar and started eating frequently, religiously, weight gain and all.

I had seen an endocrinologist weeks before who thought my symptoms didn't make sense and told me to see a liver doctor, he didn't think it was an endocrine thing. So i saw a gastroenterologist and he said "I think it's odd that no one has checked your insulin to rule out insulinoma."  So he ordered a blood test for that and it came back with low glucose and high insulin, which is diagnostic for insulinoma.

Insulinoma is a very rare tumor on the pancreas that secretes insulin into the blood which lowers glucose. If, like me, you have perfectly normal glucose, the insulinoma makes your glucose extremely low and you can have seizures and coma at worst.  It's usually the worst in the morning because you've been sleeping and not eating. You have t eat all the time to keep the blood sugar up.  

So, i had some other tests which confirmed it and that's what i have, insulinoma.  90% of them are benign and i am not worried about it being malignant, i know now from old blood tests i have in a folder that the low glucose actually started in 2006, doctors never mentioned it and i didn't notice it.

The tumor didnt' show up on a CT scan so i just had an endoscopic ultrasound which did show the tumor and where it is, it's very small, 1cm, and the only treatment is surgery to remove it.  Removing it cures the hypoglycemia and then you are fine.

So that's what i'm working on now.  Abdominal surgery is kind of traumatic, so i am not planning to go off the zolpidem until after i recovery from that. But meanwhile, i've been tapering off the diazapam, i started at 10mg and i'm at 6mg now, and tonight i'm going to 5mg and am hoping to be off it before the surgery. i don't think it's helping me sleep much, I developed a tolerance to it pretty fast.  i think the zolpidem is mainly getting me to sleep.  

When i have the surgery, i want them to give me lorazapam for sleep, just to get through the initial phase of recovering from the surgery, maybe a month or less. At this point i feel like an experienced sleep med taper-offer, and am not worried about tapering off the lorazapam and then, will go off the zolpidem.

People who have insulinomas removed all talk about how great it is to have their lives back so i'm hoping i'm going to feel a lot better and more fit with normal glucose, and ready to take on just about anything, including cutting down the zolpidem. Because i have always attributed any grogginess or tiredness or low energy or other symptoms to the sleep meds, i don't know what difference in how i feel getting the insulnoma out will make. I am looking forward to finding out.