New to zopiclone, it doesn't work??

Just so you know  zoplicone is highly additive.  I have been on for many years.  the 7.5mg one.  (I was up to using 7 of them at one time).  I am now down to one and sometimes 2.  I don't have any unusual symptoms except that yes they don;t give you a full nights sleep.  Friday night going to try going without any.  I want off these things and another person on my discussions went off them the other night so figure if she can so can I.  I used to hear of evil things happening when go off them like seizures, convulsions etc but that was years ago.  This group I am in discussion with hasn't mentioned that kind of stuff so will try.  My doctor gives me two months prescriptions but I pick them up weekly from my pharmacy.  We are working together to get me off of them.  It was not her that put me on them years ago.  Good luck and keep me updated. 

hi there flutterby.  it sounds like you're cautious about addiction, since you are not taking the Ativan regularly.  That's good!   Ativan defiitely works for sleep.  I have some, 1mg, and i break those in half when i take it, and i am careful to only take it occasionally.  

what makes Zop bad is if you get dependent on it, eventually you can get a tolerance,  so that it takes more and more to have the same effect. And then, a lot of people will find that their doctor, who put them on the meds in the first place, will not keep increasing it, so then it doesn't work for its needed purpose but there is still a physical addiction so that when you try to get off them there are symptoms, including worsening of no sleep of course.  

 I was never on Zop alone. I was already taking Ambien when i first started taking Zop, i added the Zop to the Ambien (Zolpidem) a long time ago. Then, after being on Zop for a year and a half (7.5 a night) i tapered off, a quarter at a time, it took me about 2 months, i was really happy to get off it, but it was relatively easy because i was also taking the Ambien, and if i wanted i could increase the Ambien if i had a sleep problem when reducing the Zop dose. When i increased the Ambien, fortunately i found i could bring it back down once i adjusted to reducing the Zop by a quarter each time.  If i had gone off Zop while not taking any Ambien, i expect that would've been harder.  

Anyway, i wanted to tell you, the reason i went off the zop first instead of the ambien is because i got a weird effect from the zop, really really weird, and i did  not like it, it was scary. i never got it from Ambien, though some people do i think.  what happened when i added the zop in was that about once every week or two,i would wake up in a very weird place, what happened to you reminded me of it----i would be in a very altered state of consciousness, like some kind of psychedelic drug which i used to take recreationally way back in the 70s, but the difference was, on those drugs, i always knew i was on a drug. With zop, i did not know i was on a drug when i was in the altered state. i just thought that was reality, a very weird reality but i didn't know there was a regular reality to go back to, i was in another world.  it was like being in a dream  except i was awake, walking around, on my computer, on Facebook, i posted something weird one time.  Everythign seemed very weird, things didn't have their normal meaning, like my dog seemed odd, and cooking utensils didn't make sense. The episode would only last abut a half hour or less, and when it wore off, i could remember it, and it was troubling.

The worst thing that happened was that one day, i was sitting on my couch, not feeling weird, about 11:30am and i got a call, he said he was the plumber and he just wanted to check my address. He told me my address and i confirmed that it was correct and he said his employee had been to my house for our appointment (which i had forgotten) earlier in the day and that he was told by the person who answered the door that no plumber was needed. i did not remember doing this, but from what he said, i had no reason to doubt him that his guy had come to my house and had talked to me, maybe an hour or so before this call, and i had no memory of it, and i still don't. i never will, as if it never happened. It was really embarrassing, since i had no memory of seeing the guy earlier in the day and when he got to my house the second time, he looked at me funny like he knew something was wrong.  

I wasn't 100% sure it was caused by the zop, but it started soon after i started taking it regularly. After i got off it, i never got it again.   

So, that is not a common effect people have but it does happen, and if it happens to you, it might be a risky thing, dangerous even, if you were to black out and go driving, that kind of thing.  Ambien is known to cause blackouts in a few people. i have never had it from Ambien in 20 years. 

Another thing for you to know about Z drugs like zop and zolpidem is that they are very short acting, compared to diazapam or even ativan, so if you take them habitually for sleep what they are designed to do is get you to sleep, NOT to keep you asleep. They are only for sleep onset.  So if you are someone who's main problem is falling asleep but once you fall asleep you can stay asleep, then they are helpful, but if you have trouble staying asleep, then they will wear off, only half the ambien is left after 3 hours or less, which means the dose is reduced by half after only a short time.  Half of the Zop is gone after about 6 hours or less, so the point is, it goes down in your bloodstream very rapidly, and if you have trouble staying asleep then Z drugs are probably not going to help you stay asleep for very long. If you're not sleeping much for a few days in a row, then you might take a Z drug to get to sleep and you might sleep long  because you're body is so tired and is taking what it needs. It's not the medication that's keeping you asleep, it's your body. 

So, you asked something about seeing a different physician--if it was me, i would want to see someone who who specializes in sleep disorders, it might be a neurologist, i'm not sure. But if your doctor wants you to keep taking it for a week, maybe it won't hurt to take it for a week and if you find it's still not working to keep you asleep, and especially if you're having weird effects like you described, if it was me i would talk to the doctor about those effects and about the way in which the drug is too short acting to keep you asleep. 

Unfortunately, there's no drug way out of not sleeping in the long run. At least not for a lot of people.  There's a new medication out which is supposed to be for both falling asleep and staying asleep. I heard about it in the US, on a TV commercial. i just googled it because i don't remember the name, and i got one hit that can give you some info about it. If it's available in the UK (or another medication of this kind) you and your doctor might want to look into it. I decided not to try to get it because at this point, i want to get off the meds and get all cleaned out from meds and go without sleep if needed (i'm retired but i could not do that if i was working) and any new medication scares me because it takes a long time to learn about what meds really do in the long term.  

Citalopram has insomnia as one of its side effects and also anxiety, so you could ask your doctor if there are any antidepressants that dont have that kind of side effects, i am pretty sure there are some, but they may have other unwanted side effects.  But it might be worth discussing, just to find out if there is something that isn't a possible cause of insomnia.  My friend recently went on antidepressants. She had been on Wellbutrin for a long time and had tapered off and was doing fine, but then tragically her husband died and after struggling with depression for a while, she went back on the Wellbutrin and the psychiatrist also put her on something called Vibrid, i think. i don't know what the generic name would be, you would have to google it. She had some side effects, feeling wiped out, and also very bad diarrhea, but she wanted to keep taking it because it helped her depression. But her doctor said no, she should not take it because of the side effect she was having. The doctor did this test, i think it was a blood test, neither i or my friend had heard of it before, something fairly new, a test that can show which antidepressants will work for you and which won't, or which ones will cause side effects. The doctor then put her on Lurasidone, which is technically an antipsychotic but is used for depression related to bipolar disorder. My friend had never been diagnosed with bipolar disorder before, but she has found that this medication has helped her a lot, i can see it, she is no longer depressed.  

the interesting thing is that blood test.

I'm going put the link to info about that test and the link to info about the newer sleep medication/s that help with staying asleep as well as sleep onset into a separate post because the moderators need to check links out and will delay posts that have links in them and i want to post this now. The two links will follow.