Severe insomnia

Hi,

The have run some tests to discard any organic cause? Like hormones, thyroid or other causes? Or is more psychological? If its psychological your insomnia should start earlier not at 49 or you had any recent traumatic experience?

Hello There,

I am in the similar problem , I am also 49 and have been chronic insomniac for the last 4 years, I had acupuncture, hypnotised, scents, massage, sleeping pills for a couple of weeks but stopped due to side effect I had in the morning also they can be very addictive so stopped, same with anti-depressant , I tried for 6 months they helped me at the beginning but started to have other side effect eg I put a lots of weight on so stopped , when I stopped my insomiac got worse for a few weeks then went back to before I took the anti-depressant, I am not against anti-depressant but worried about side effect in the long run.

I spend the night in a sleeping clinic they measured everything like your heart, to your movement ect.. the resut was that physically everything was fine , but my insomniac was mentally , they also prescribed me more anti-depressant which I dont want to take them , but they also told me that CBT for insomniac could really help , I am now on a waiting list to have 6 sessions of CBT. I sleep between 2 to 4 hours a night and sometime I am awake all night , it is very frustrating as I am now starting to lose my memory . I also had panick attack in the past. I am looking forward to do CBT as they are saying this really help , have youheard of it ?

Hi Gillian I can totally relate. I've been dealing with insomnia for over a year. Starting out of the blue one night taking a few hours to fall asleep then next night I started to worry about how fast I would fall asleep but I got no sleep at all that night, and I started to sweat and get extremely agitated. After that awful night I dreaded going to bed in the following nights and the sweats and agitation continued. It just ballooned into a severe sleep disorder. So I began taking over the counter sleep aids like promethazine which were only effective if I was very calm. Most of the time they didn't work as the anxiety would override it. Also when I finally did get some sleep I would dream a lot, waking up because of them, they weren't usually nightmares but just very vivid like people, places etc. I rarely remembered my dreams before my insomnia began. I would sleep straight through without any vivid dreams.

Long story short I soon began "self medicating" with alcohol to sleep. Sad thing is I rarely drank before my insomnia. Usually a full bottle of wine or 3 bottles of strong beer a night would be enough to knock me out. I basically became an alcoholic because of my terrible sleep.

I've come to the conclusion my problem is not relaxing enough and having a very overactive mind because alcohol (and sleeping pills) increase something called GABA in the brain causing relaxation so when this increased you drop off easily to sleep, this is a reason people with insomnia can easily get hooked on them as that magical feeling of falling asleep doesn't want to get taken away. I've always been an anxious person and I think this finally began to affect my sleep. In the past I would have panic attacks and not be able to eat, but at night I could still sleep fine. So I'm just wondering if chronic stress and anxiety has lowered my natural GABA levels.

Anyway good luck I know how not sleeping cause you to feel awful mentally and physically. You don't realise just how much until you start to lack it! And I find some people are unsympathetic because they haven't experienced it for prolonged times.