problems sleeping

Hi! Are you finding it harder to come off the benzodiazepine than zopiclone? coz in my mind I think benzos are more addictive with a quicker tolerance buildup.sorry for.getting a bit off topic. Just want to know which is harder to get.off of

I came off diazepam one month ago. I eventually quit at 8mg ti nil.

I has been on 15Mg a day plus what I could obtain street ways. I realised things were getting out of hand and sort support. 

I am terrified of this coming decrease iin zopiclone. I have thought of buying them off the internet and that worries me.g.

I am on a large amount of pain killers.

A large amount of painkillers each day will do 10 times as much physical damage to your body than say for instance valium and zopiclone. Do you take these to sleep, or for other purposes? Have u considered something like serequel? Works like a charm, just dont go too high dosage coz at 800mg I saw dumbells fly and stuff melting, but overall serequel might do wonders, maybe worth a shot?

Hi, me again, yes I totally agree with you benzos are far more addictive as they take a quicker hold on you. Zopiclone creeps up  on you.. Benzos the 60s wonder Drug, given out  Smarties.

Strange enough I get very greedy with dormonoct and alzam, but ativan never interested me much. Any benzo is good for me coz it is a good muscle relaxant but like I said I prefer some of them more than others. Every person has their own drug of choice. My psychiatrist doesnt give me benzodiazepines anymore coz she knows my addictive nature too well. Anyway so what painkiller are we talking about? Stuff with a lot of aspirine?

I have.emphysema,nerve damage in my back and chronic fatigue syndrome.. I am on patches, morphine,dyhydrocodeine

. x

So many opoids

X

Where do you ger Serequel? X

Patches are fentinyl 25 mcg.

I actually spelt wrong I think its Seroquel. With an "o" . Depending on ur country, u get Quetoser which is the same its all Quetiapine. I actually think it might make the cravings for zopiclone less intense. It also stabilizes your moods. Quick question, you know that bitter taste you get in your mouth 20min after taking zopiclone, do you get that anymore or is it gone? To me the pill itself doesnt even taste bitter anymore. Before I swallow it I even roll it around in my mouth a couple of times I like the taste. But its just not bitter anymore

I know the bitter taste and I aISP move the zopiclone around my mouth.

I stil get the metalic taste but not all the tone.

Are you in the UK?

I have given your question great thought. I came off diazepam and had side effects ie paniic attacks, anxiety, restless.

I am to start the zopiclone decrease 20th of this month. I am terrified. X

I can hear the wind here we are getting the after effects of the hurricane here now 70mph winds ...

SA. You in the UK?

Dont worry you'll be able to kick that "zopiclown" out of your life

yes I am in the UK where is SA? X

Zopiclown is a good description. X

 to go off the point a min sorry. This gale force wind frightens  xtorrential rains next.

SA is the great place with the lovely weather. .....South Africa. Just check what doctors give you they once gave me clozapine and I got reduced WCC with infection and bone marrow suppression. Made me sick so they took it away and a week later topshape healthy. Seroquel is one of my highest rated successful meds and it can be used for different kinds of stuff. Except my Lithium, lithium is my baby my precious

So the wheather there cause panic attack type things coz it sounds rough

Sounds a lovely place. What is WCC? ( ssorry) x

Is the lithium for depression???

Yes the gale is causing panic tto me x

Decreased white cell count. Lithium saved my life. Lithium is used for bipolar disorder mostly type 1. My other meds are good but lithium is the deal and its not an expensive med at all

Lithium keeps you on an even keel. Do you have to pay for it? Vast mood swings is it. Serious ones? Sorry if I am asking too much x

Bipolar Disorder 1. Lithium works well the other meds are just there to round up and tie loose ends

Lithium is potent. Doesnt cost much

Serious mood swings? Well ya being locked up twice a week for agro behaviour is quite dangerous. But luckily 3 days after begiñing lithium I smiled for tje first time in a year

Hi. How are you? X

hi johan

i took diazapam for sleep for close to 20 years, ending on 10/1/93, cold turkey, coming off it wasn't so bad for me, but people differ on this.  I had mostly been on 10-15mg but in the last week i was up to 30mg because of tolerance. The withdrawal symptoms didn't amount to much for the first two days, not bad, the second day i even felt good, "energetic," but by the second night, it turned into increasing tenseness, and some nerve twitches and anxiety and seeing things out of the corners of my eyes that weren't there. The third day was worse, just tense and irritable, i was still functioning, i was on vacation from work but i had a 9 year old kid, was a single parent, and i took care of those responsibilities. I did buy a lot of TV dinners during that period. I did sleep a little bit both of the first two nights, and all the nights of it, on the 4th day i felt about like the 3rd day, just tired of feeling that way and wondering when it was going to end, but i had asked the pharmacist when i was at the drug store how long it takes and he said the average was two weeks, and that was reassuring to me, i figured i could handle that. On the 4th day i was sweating and cold and sweating and cold, and then that evening, i was sweating and i felt the sweat break and after that, i felt much better, the tension died down and that was mostly the end of it, and the first two days weren't bad at all, so for me, it was really only a two day unpleasantness. I still had some symptoms after that, but it was just mild, few and far between. 

About which is harder to come off, i went on zolpidem not long after i went off diazapam, i didn't take it often for the first couple of years, just once in a while, not even once a week, but now it's 20 years later and i've been taking zolpidem regularly that whole time, with tolerance starting a couple of years ago. That's when i switched to zopiclone, which was OK for a couple of months but then not as good, and i added the zolpidem back in so i was taking both. The thing about both of these Z drug medications is that they are short acting.  zolpidem has an elimination half life of only 2 or 3 hours. That means it's out of your circulation within a day.  Zopiclone has an elimination half life of about 6 hours. That means it's cleared out of your circulation, after the last dose, in about three days.  Diazapam on the other hand has a very long elimination half life. It can vary, it's more complicated, but the usual number in most sources comes to about 200 hours. That means it takes 200 hours for half of the last dose to be eliminated from the circulation.  Actually 100 hours is the number given, but diazapam has something called an 'active metabolite' which takes another 100 hours. The Z drugs have no active metabolites, whatever that is. It makes it last longer.

Because of the very long time it takes the body to eliminate diazapam, it's often used as a cross over medication to help people get off the shorter acting benzos and the Z drugs.  The main difference i know between benzos and Z drugs is that Z drugs only affect the sleep neurotransmitter, hypnotic-sedative.  The benzos affect the sleep neurotransmitter and 4 other neurotransmitters, anti-anxiety, anti-convulsant, muscle relaxant, and one other i think. So, that's why i would say it's more addictive  But if sleep is the main issue, Z drugs are as addictive as benzos. 

But the long acting benzos, diazapam is the most commonly used, are often used for helping people get off the shorter acting meds because the theory is that with the short elimination time, people have withdrawal symptoms more often, while with the long acting kind, like diazapam, in theory, it's smoother to get off. So, the treatment is to switch over from the short acting medication to the long acting one, and then start tapering off the long acting one.  

For me, this didn't work.  A doctor switched me from 27mg a night of zolpidem to 10mg a night of diazapam. It totally worked, the diazapam was much stronger for me, i slept all night, it worked good at bedtime. But it gave me an awful hangover that lasted all day and all night, so that i started dreading taking it, i didn't like what it did to me.  I started tapering off it, down to 9mg, that went ok. Then i went to 8mg and it did not work too well for a day or two, but then i adjusted to it. I stayed on 8mg for a long time. It only kept me asleep (together with the zolpidem i added back in, otherwise i would not have slept) for about 3 or 4 hours.  I then decided to use the zolpidem to wean myself off the diazapam, which is crazy, i went on the diazapam to get off the zolpidem, but my experience has been that diazapam is a much worse drug for me, it really stays in my system and never clears out, whereas zolpidem does clear out, every day.  So, back to the drawing board.  Bottom line:  the long acting benzo, diazapam, is often recommended for help getting off Z drugs which are short acting, it's supposed to be easier to taper off of.  For me, it hasn't worked that way.