Sleep Help

It's quite safe to take this med. If it wasn't, the pharmacist wouldn't have sold it to your mother. No guarantees it will make you sleep, but it won't harm you. I occasionally take an antihistamine myself if I've had a run of sleepless nights, though I prefer phenergan.

It's best to take it about an hour before you're ready to go to bed. It's not a knock-out pill, and will take a while to work. If you take it at bedtime you'll still be awake for an hour or so, you'll start getting anxious and it won't work at all.

If you do find it helps, be careful not to take it for too long, as it's easy to develop a tolerance to this medication, just like diazepam or sleeping pills, then it stops working. I keep an antihistamine handy for when I've had a run of bad nights, or if I'm anxious about sleeping the night before a big day. I find taking it for a few consecutive nights is enough to break the pattern of poor sleep for a while.

Your doctor is right about sleeping pills and particularly about diazepam!

This might well just be a phase you're going through. You had a few bad nights, now you're anxious about sleeping. That's only natural. Give it a couple of weeks to see if things calm down and if they don't, go back to your doctor. He's not going to dish out sleeping pills on demand, but he can look into what's causing the problem.

And don't get too spooked by the horror stories you might hear on this forum. It is true that some people can develop very serious difficulties with falling (or staying) asleep. I feel desperately sorry for them but they are the minority. In the majority of cases, this is just a passing phase, made worse by anxiety. I'm a former nurse, btw - and a lifelong bad sleeper! But it's never done me any harm. The poor sleep, that is - not so sure about the nursing!