zopiclone

Well keith I am afraid to say I am probably and addict but if I get pneumonia this coming winter then probably none of it will matter cos I will be off this earth but you are right and wise but I am weak and happy

David, don't give up, pneumonia will not kill you, your attitude will Glad to know you are happy though, this is a road most of us are on, finding true happiness.

Thank you jaw444 for taking so much time to share your experiences.

Thanks 4 posting tht jaw. How did u find going cold turkey think that's what am going to have to do as got no help at all of doc today I do no it's guna be dam hard x

Vicky--sorry to hear that.  Going off diazapam cold turkey, 30mg, was not so bad for me.  I had a very happy attitude about doing it, and i would say there is a psychological side to withdrawal and a physical side. i felt happy about it, i was ready so to speak, and also, my first night off diazapam was the first day of a two week vacation from work, which just happened by coincidence, not planned.   The first night, i was surprised to find that i slept a little bit because i didnt' expect to, maybe a couple of hours.  

I didn't realize then what i've learned on the web (no web for me then) that diazapam stays in the system a long time, so maybe that's why i could sleep a little.  The next day, i was actually in a good mood and felt energetic. As the night came on, and time wore on, that energetic feeling changed into more of a tense anxious uncomfortable feeling. Not a nice feeling. And i had symptoms like twitching nerves or muscles, not a lot, not frequent, just a few, and i saw things out of the corners of my eyes, like hallucinations, and i thought i saw bugs crawling on my arm, or one bug, again, not frequently, not very much, just a couple of times at most. I was not tired and i kept busy by reading this medical book i had , Merck Manual, which told about withdrawing from diazapam, and it was mostly reassuring because apparently they only considered people addicted who were on a much higher dose than i was on, 60mg or something like that, but it also scared me because it said abrupt withdrawal could cause seizures. i could see that i was having those occasional twitches so i wondered if that was related to a seizure. But i was not going to turn back, i already had two days into it.  I did get a little sleep that night too, like maybe an hour.

i was tired during the day but not the usual kind of tired because that intense kind of tension continued. Kind of stimulated. i was a single parent of a 9 year old daughter and i had to kind of maintain a normal like, taking her to the orthodontist, picking her up from school, having her friend over, going shopping for food, but i mostly gave her TV dinners that week, i wasn't cooking.  I ate ready made sandwiches from the stores and restaurants downstairs.  

I had to buy some herbs at an herb store,i was taking Chinese herbs at the time, for more general health things, and maybe those helped, i don't know, but at the herb place, i remember being irritated by having to stand there and have a conversation with the guy.  And i think that was the day i went to the drug store and picked up some things and i asked the pharmacist how long withdrawal from diazapam takes, and he said average is about two weeks. That actually made me feel better, the psychological part, because by that day, i was thinking, "This is getting really old, i don't like this, will this ever storp?", that tension.  Hearing that there is an average and it's 2 weeks made me feel better. I didn't like the way i felt, but i knew i could handle it for two weeks.  

I had some sweats.  That night, again i got some sleep, not much, but i wasn't expecting to be able to sleep at all so i appreciated it.  The next day i was still having that tension and pressured feeling, and i was sweating a lot.  And it was on that day that i was feeling pretty bad, and then i was talking to my friend on the phone and that wasn't very enjoyable, and i was drinking chrysanthemum tea, which was from the Chinese doctor, and in the afternoon, as i finished the tea, i felt the sweat break, the heat stopped, and then i was comfortable, and that was kind of a turning piont.  i had an appetite and i just felt better, more normal after that, and after that, i may have still had more of the tension, i don't rmember, i just remember that after that, it all went away, the symptoms all stopped, except sleep was still not easy, but i was really happy to be off the diazapam, i knew i had made it and i had done it and it was done, and i would never go back on it again. i was pretty happy.  

i think the psychological part was very important.  Years earlier in the time i was taking diazapam, i had doctors cut me off many times, and i was miserable. i wasn't using any where near that much, but just not being able to sleep, i wasn't ready for it, i didn't want to stop the diazapam. It was different all those years later, i had a child, i had some health issues, and i wanted to be healthy and no longer struggling to get enough medication for sleep. i was motivated, and i enjoyed the successful parts of the withdrawal and i didn't think the hard parts were going to last forever.  

But when i was younger and i didn't want to stop taking the medication, it was a hard time, i remember it as a hard time, for some years.  i finally found a doctor who would prescribe 'downers' to anybody, and i started going to him once a month, and after that, at least i didn't have that problem of never knowing when i would be able to get the meds or not.

I know there are a lot of people who would never go cold turkey, and who don't think anyone should (including my current addiction medication specialist doctor). i think it was the best thing for me when i did it.  I didn't even know there was such a thing as tapering. But if i had, i wouldn't have wanted to do it becauese the meds weren't  working, so why keep taking them??  if i was still taking them while trying to get off of them, for me that would've been harder, at least psychologically, and it would've take a lot longer.

But i take seriously the people who report they have tried cold turkey and had a bad experience, and regret it.  I was going to quit all my sleeping meds cold turkey in early 2013, after having that good experieince in 1993, but now i have internet and i googled it and i found a forum site where people are so against going cold turkey and teliing about their bad experiences, and that caused me to be scared and i just ended up procrastinating, staying on it another year, and then finally i did taper off zopiclone, but i had zolpidem to help me sleep so it wasn't hard at all.

I think there is a big difference between benzos like diazapam, and Z drugs like zopiclone. I think it's actually not as hard on the body with Z drugs. Not saying it's easy to do, but just not as harsh as benzos.  I bring this up because there are at least a couple of members of this forum, probably more, who went cold turkey off of zopiclone and were very happy with the result, no regrets, no turning back, going into detail about how much better their lives are now.  I wish i could remember their names, i will try to see if i can find any of them, i might be able to, because it would be better if you could read what they wrote.  You might not have twitching nerves or seeing bugs out of the corner of your eyes, it might be a little less extreme.  I know those people are on here, every now and then they chime in.  

But i would say they were probably ready, psychologically, and i think that's a really important part and is why doctors shouldn't be so casual about stopping sleep medications.     i have been lucky that my doctor never gave me any opposition, he prescribed what i asked for. But sometimes i saw his physicians assistant and she always had negative things to say, she would say how she was worried about prescribing all those meds, afraid for her license--i could only sympathize, i didn't want her to lose her license.  i felt bad, a trouble maker.   The last time i saw her, i had just finished giong off zopiclone, i knew she would be happy and she was. I asked for my other two prescriptions i had been getting, zolpidem 10mg and zolpidem extended release 12.5mg, and she expressed regret and said she wasn't going to be willing to do it much longer, like she was warning me.  It always felt bad, stressful, will this be the time she will cut me off?   Then i went to the addiction medication doctor and he put me on diazapam and took me off zolpidem, but i still have so much zolpidem left from before, and also, i still buy it from overseas pharmacy (nonprescription) and the diazapam is not enough to keep me asleep all night so i take zolpidem in the mornings, but it's way less zolpidem than i was taking before.  glad to say that.  Anyway, i'm sorry you have to go through this.

Thanks jaw 4 the reply I managed to get 3 of my friends mum cos I honestly know I would not of been able to do it am terrified of going cold turkey but am bk at the docs Tom with a plan av drawn up the doc today was not a bit understanding and refused me give me anythink said well uv been getting by 4 now so ul just have to deal with it I was so upset as today was the day I wanted to start afresh with cutting down, he told me to come bk thu with a plan cos he needs to talk to the other docs about it 1st n then look at my plan am going to c another doc Tom n take this plan with me, no way I can wait till thu don't think il get anywhere but worth 1 last try to get help x

thank you for being so forthright. One of may main concerns over those that do appear to be having problems is that it is not some form of auto suggestion Probably not and I am quite willing to be apprehended. We are all old enough to take criticism and long as done as fairly as you have done it. But it is stupid, in 2007 i never took sleeping pills, diagnosed in 2008,  full of anxiety and away we go. I do not really know the first steps to coming off the pills. My consultant says he deals with my blood problems not general health which is probably fair enough.