My experience of zopiclone (down the rabbit hole)

i asked my husband to go to his doctors to get them i am so ashamed of that x

To be clear, are you taking the lorazapam only for sleep?  

Do you also take zopiclone for sleep, or do you only take it during the day for anxiety?   You said you are taking 1/3 of 7.5mg 3X a day. So, a total of 7.5mg a day, right?

I don't blame you for wanting to get off all this stuff, and if you can just reduce it, eliminate some of the meds and get onto a lower dose of others, that's a step in the right direction.

I'm currently taking 25mg of zolpidem a night for sleep. I take it in two doses because it's short acting, i take 15mg at bed timea and another 10mg about 5 hours later to get more sleep. I also take 5mg of diazapam at bedtime for the past 8 months. i'll explain below. 

I don't have a kind of anxiety where i feel like taking anything for it, or during the day. i am told that i'm overanxious, but i don't have physical symtoms from it (thank God).  i don't often notice anxiety in myself, but i am a kind of person who feels very rushed in the car, even if i'm not in a hurry and i will want to weave around the other drivers and will get upset if i get caught at a red light or in slow traffic. When i ponder it, i realize i feel trapped and i crave escape from the restriction. So i guess that would be called anxiety. But i don't have any urge to take anything for it. i just avoid driving. But i used to have a job for 25 years where i had a lot of driving, they reimbursed our mileate, we drove so much. i'm retired now, i avoid things that make me feel "trapped." 

From late 2012 until the end of February of this year, i also took zopiclone 7.5mg at bedtime, together with the 15mg zolpidem.  I wanted to get off both, but i wanted to get off zopiclone first because for me it had some bad side effects that i don't get from zolpidem.  The side effects, i have called 'de-realization,' though i'm not sure that's the right term for it.  It's like a brief semi-psychotic state when i first wake in the morning which wears off in 20 minutes or so, not every day, but once in a while, and i also had at least one complete black out where something happened involving other people that i have no memory of. I have taken zolpidem for 20 years and never had any effects like that, though some people do, so i was sure it was the zopiclone causing the bizarre side effect. I tapered off the zolpidem in January and February, 1/4 pill at a time over two months, and got completely off it. It wasn't very hard for me because i am taking so much zolpidem, and i have never had any withdrawal symptoms from zopiclone that i know of, and as much zolpidem as i take at night, i've never had any withdrawal symptoms from it during the day or at all.  I just take it at night not because i'm craving it but because i want to sleep.  

When i got off the zopiclone, i faced tapering off the zolpidem. i could do it a little bit, but i decided i wanted to see an addiction meds doctor because it was such a high dose to get off.   The addiction meds doctor prescribed diazapam 10mg and told me to just go off all the zolpidem and switch the diazapam for the zolpidem. That sounded scary, but it worked, i was able to take one 10mg diazapam at night and stop all the zolpidem overnight  with no withdrawal symptoms, and slept much  better on the diazapam because zolpidem is very short acting, diazapam is long acting. i slept better than in years.  The problem was, it left me hung over all day, and all night, to a point where i could barely function. it would just start wearing off and it would be time to take more. I kept taking it, but i dreaded taking it.  

The plan was to taper off the diazapam which is supposed to be easier to taper off than zolpidem because it's long acting. So, i started tapering off by 1/2mg. I got down to 8mg and was having trouble sleeping.  The hangover continued and it meant that all day, i was more tired than i would be from lack of sleep. i just wanted to get off the diazapam ASAP, i didn't mind going back on the zolpidem, just deal with that later, so i used the zolpidem to help me cut down the diazapam. I gradually increased the zolpidem until now, i'm up to 25mg again, AND, i am still on 5mg a night of diazapam.     So i'm worse off than when i first started working with that doctor and his plan.

A problem i had that threw me off this whole project is that i was beginning to have severe hypoglycemia this year, waking up in the morning very impaired, like no coordination, falling, not able to walk, and twice i woke up laying on the floor with no memory of how i got there, so i had a blood test and it showed my glucose was 32 which is extremely dangerously low, so i stopped working on the get-off-the-meds project and just started working on trying to find out what to do about the hypoglcemia. Eventually this led to a diagnosis of a tumor called an insulinoma, very rare, not malignant, not cancer, but life threatening because of the fasting hypoglycemia which could cause seizures and coma and brain damage and death.  The cure is surgery.

so, in september, i had major abdominal surgery, and for that reason, i continue postponing the get off the meds project, because i get my best healing during sleep, it seems.  Recovery slow, but no more hypoglycemia, yay.  

My daughter gave me some of her lorazapam at my request, which i thought i would take to help me wean off the diazapam  So, the pills she gave me are only 1/2mg.  I have not yet started on going off the diazapam.  i sometimes will take one lorazapam if i take zolpidem in the morning to get back to sleep and it doesn't work. the lorazapam does get me to sleep.  I would say i take less than one time a week. But i have a sense of caution about it. These meds are so addictive.

you might be interested in looking at the BenzoBuddies discussion forums, they are focused on support for people who are on benzos, or want to get off them, lots of info about tapering there.  

your plan for tapering off the lorazapam sounds reasonable. i'm not clear whether you take it only at night for sleep or if you have been taking it during the day.  I think you said you take the zopiclone during the day and the lorapam for sleep. If you are only taking the lorazapam once at bedtime, 1/2mg is a low dose and you should be able to taper off it, doing it at your own pace. 

I don't consider your amount of zopiclone to be very high and imagine you could, later, after getting off the lorazapam, taper the zopiclone slowly.  I think that most experts in tapering off meds advise that you taper at whatever rate works for you, each person is different, and if you want to stay at a particular dose longer than you planned, some say to do that, don't force it too much, be in charge.  Are you familiar with Heather Ashton MD?  if not, you might be interested in googling her. 

It was easy for me to get off 7.5mg of zopiclone because i was using the zolpidem to get to sleep. Unlike you, i never have had any withdrawal symptoms from either of these meds (taking them at night and then getting anxious or edgy during the day), so i can say that i had no withdrawal symptoms from going off zopiclone. It was a little harder to sleep when i would cut down a quarter so i would just increase the zolpidem for a couple of days to continue to sleep ok, and then i'd reduce it back to my already high dose. The lower my zopiclone dose got, the easier it got to cut. The first two times were harder than the last two. But again, i had the zolpidem to get to sleep so it would've probably been really different if i had just been on the zopiclone.

I was very happy to get off zopiclone.  I never had that symptom again of waking in the morning and feeling psychotic after i stopped it.  By psychotic, i mean, i was in this very bizarre dreamlike world and had no awareness of being in a izarre place, it just seemed like my reality with nothing behond it.  i had no objective perspective on it. And i had that one morning when i am completely blacked out about the plumber who came to my door for an appointment and i told him i didn't need a plumber, and then their office called to confirm my address and they told me the plumber had come out and was told a plumber wasn't needed. i don't remember that at all, i told them "I've been here all morning, no one came."  But then i realized, he really had been there, from what they said, and that i just didnt' remember, even though it was only an hour or so before. Scary.  So glad that went away when i quit zop. 

Both zopiclone and zolpidem have very short elimination half lives. Do you know about that?  Elimination half life is a medical term about how long it takes the body to eliminate a drug. Zolpidem has a half life of only about 3 hours. So if half is gone in three hours, half of that half will be gone in another 3 hours, and half of that half will be gone in amother three hours, and it comes out to being out of your system in only about a day. So if i did go off it, even cold turkey, it would all be out of my system very soon and i would not expect to have continuing withdrawal symptoms. i would still have trouble sleeping because i have had that since before the drugs. But i could be off the drugs and try non drug methods of working on sleeping better. 

Zopiclone has a half life of about 5 or 6 hours.  It will be completely out of the blood in about 3 days, and each day, or every 6 hours, it's half of what it was before, so it gets less and less. 

Lorazapam has a half life of 10 to 20 hours.  So whatever the dose, half of it is gone in at most 20 hours, and if you are taking a low dose, then it gets milder and milder.  But i don't know about withdrawal symptoms. i think if it's done gradually, there shouldn't be withdrawal symptoms.  If you still have symptoms and lower and no dose, after about a week or less, then it's your own anxiety, probably not being caused by the drugs, and a person could try non drug methods of improving anxiety.

Diazapam has the longest half life, it can range from 36 to 200 hours. i don't konw how they determine that range, but i hate so much that i am on diazapam now, because of that. It's going to stay in my blood stream for a long time.  

I have past experience getting off diazapam. Before the Z drugs were invented for insomnia, i was prescribed diazapam, which i took for about 20 years, from the 70s to 1993.  In the last year, i increased my dose due to some environmental things, and i got a tolerance for it so that it stopped working at all, i was up to 30mg for about a week and it wasn't working so i just stopped, cold turkey. i'd  never heard of tapering, it never occurred to me.  The withdrawal symptoms weren't too bad for me. They included some neurological stuff, twitching nerves, seeing things that weren't there, bugs, just once in a while, very little sleep, irritability, sweating, cold, but this only lasted about 3 or 4 days. It would've been much worse by the 3rd and 4th day except i asked the pharmacist how long it can last and he said the average was about 2 weeks, so i felt better, just knowing it wasn't going to last forever, i was on a 2 week vacation from work.  It was bad and yet, not that bad, and then, in less than two weeks, it was totally over. i didn't sleep well, but i always didn't sleep well. i felt great to be off all that diazapam after all those years.  But then i mentioned to my doctor that i wasn't sleeping so good and he prescribed zolpidem in 1993.  That's when that started. sigh. 

Your doctor kind of scares me. He seems to have no caution about getting you addicted to three addictive medications. i'm puzzled as to why he is so free with doing that.  I appreciate that he is compassionate and wants to help you with your symptoms, and i don't like doctors who are rigidly closed minded about addictive medications, because there really is a need for them, but i wonder if he knows of other ways of helping you that he could recommend. Anyway, you seem clear and accepting that you are on your own in getting off the meds, and i feel optimistic that you will make it, one way or another, sooner or later.  And me to.  

Thanks for your response, nice to have some support ☺️

I've come to the conclusion that I am having rebound anxiety from meds. What I take daily differs. I've started a diary to record what I'm taking.

the zopiclone I take about 1 + 1/3 a day that's 4 nibbles over the day. The lorazepam not taken consistently but as my tabs are supposed to last 28 days, when I start to get close to the end I take more lorazepam as a substitute.

ive had 2 weeks of a living hell, thinking I've taken more lorazepam then I should then cutting off for a couple of days. I didn't realise I was getting addicted. It's so complicated. I don't even know how to put into words..

the zapain, I take rarely, in truth they don't even work for shifting a headache. Just lately been trying alsorts to eliminate the horrid feelings I get. I've discovered the only thing that makes me feel better is a dose of zopiclone. I'm now trying 1/4 each time instead of 1/3 but just takes the edge of and lasts about 2/3 hrs before the anxiety comes back.

lately it's there as soon as I wake. I don't feel myself, snakey, weak, head like a pressure cooker, feeling sick, really awful! I've tried so many different combinations. Just want to feel calm and  'normal'. Whatever that is at least how I used to be.

i saw my doc on Monday, he's offered me CBT. MY anxiety is worse than when I was initially diagnosed, a big difference now though, just comes on a few times a day until I take a zopiclone nibble. So I'm in an awful cycle that I can't get out of.

tonight I took 1/4... Didn't work, so I then took 1/2. Still feeling fine! It won't last though.

i was worried I could be diabetic. Had a test done and had reading of 5.2 but wasn't early morning. All healthy there.

i need to go back to docs on a morning appt to have my blood checked. 

I was worried the lansoprazole was making me feel sick in the morning, just trying to eliminate things but so hard when not just taking one medicine. 

I'm going insane with frustration because when that gremlin comes to visit I can barely do anything but cry that I want it gone!

ive known my doc 20 years, moved out of area and changed temporarily, that was when I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. When I moved back I picked back up with my doctor and he continued the prescription.

i am again out of area but still registered with him. I get repeat prescriptions over the phone.

when I last saw him he said, it was the meds I'm on and offered CBT. Nothing else he can prescribe. Also tried to put me back on antidepressants. I'm off them and they were the start of heightened anxiety attacks. Totally mind numbing also. I'm planning to ease off lorazepam and when I've mastered that, then the zopiclone. Can't doo too much @ once.

You seem to have lots going on with you too and must be facing a much bigger battle than I. Yes we can do it!

thanks for reading 😀 xx

if I feel anxious before sleep I take a lorazepam to sleep. This pattern was getting more consistent up until this week. Trying my hardest to reduce relying in them but suffering so badly in the process 😢 xx

i also completely related to Margaret's experience, although I was on other meds also.

A few weeks ago I was in a crazy mess and I really thought what I was going through was to stay for the rest of my life!

Im now just taking 1 x 7.5mg of zopiclone in 2 halves daily and I'm feeling less reliance on them.

with me my other meds were causing symptoms that only zopiclone would eliminate temporarily if that makes sense?

are you just taking zopiclone or other meds also?

feel free to ask anything, hope I can help in some way, not sure where you're at?

there is light at the end of the tunnel and with support and perseverance you will get through it... It's extremely hard and debilitating but not impossible!

I'm here if you need any advice also.

take care and drop me a message if you like😊

thanks for your reply,

you have given me hope, its awfull how many people are in this mess by being on zopiclone, i really think docs should be taught about just how bad these tablets are to take,

all the best

lisa x