Posted by tonyz on February 16, 2010, at 18:52:04
In reply to Re: Desperate for sleep - Help someone, posted by Phillipa on February 16, 2010, at 17:36:14
> Tony seriously the same thing happened to me when a pdoc took away the 50mg of luvox raised benzos to long acting. I didn't sleep for two weeks ended up in ER. The docs said add the luvox backin as evidently my brain needed it. Maybe your're brain brain also missed a med that was stopped without any withdrawal just a thought. Glad your're getting help. Hang on tomorrow will come. I'd try the higher dose of klonopin sometimes you just must do what you must. Phillipa
Thanks for the info. Yep I got in touch w/ my doc and she felt that taking some additional clonazepam along with raising the seroquel made sense. Been ramping up the Nortriptyline - I was going to bump it up but in never occurred to me that the serotonergic action could be too stimulating for me and that may be why the insomnia always gets worse at the beginning of the depression. The good think about Nortriptyline is that there is a therapeautic window and they can do a blood level. So tonight will be the fourth night at 100mg so should get a good reading assuming they take my blood tomorrow. I had a horrible experience with Lexapro - I guess I am one of those 12% people who are affected with insomnia from Lexapro and if you start with insomnia you are in real trouble. I had only taken for a short time and fairly low dosage, but you don't know.
Not sleeping sucks doesn't it?
Tomorrow I go in the hospital as an outpatient, I'm sure I will get slightly berated for having stopped my meds. I actually had been stable on SAM-E for a year and at some point I may give that another try.(that was several years ago) Only problem I think it may have been affecting my sleep a bit. For major depression a really high dose is needed gets expensive. I'm not sure if they have a maintenance dosage for that figured out yet.
I just wish there were another way for all of us instead of resorting to these medicines - so many side effects to deal with. I was even on Nardil at one time.
L-Tryptophan is also something to try for insomnia. Be careful of the brand though. From what I understand the stuff manufactured by Ajinomoto is the best - they claim on their website that when Tryptophan was banned from the US market due to a defective filtering process by another Japanese manufacturer, Ajinomoto was the only company that was still allowed to export to the US. Natural Balance is a label that uses this form of tryptophan. The other brand was marketed under the GNC label; if you do some googling you will see the transcripts from GNC claiming no responsibility. Apparently people got very very ill and settlements were made by the Japanese company so I suspect a lot of the history has not surfaced.
But the current stuff by Ajinomoto should be ok.
However if you check drug interactions a severe reaction is indicated - serotonin syndrome. When I was on 125 Nortriptyline I was taking 1500 mg of Tryptophan and didn't have any problems. That was under doctor's advice.
Anyway thanks for your replies and encouragement.
poster:tonyz
thread:937162
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20100216/msgs/937179.html