Ambien Withdrawal and Headaches

[Denise]

I was fighting to come off Vicadin so I started taking 10mg of Ambien. Little did I know I was getting addicted again! Now I'm starting an Ambien withdrawal, how long does it last? And what can I expect, help!

[Karen]

Denise wrote:

I was fighting to come off Vicadin so I started taking 10mg of Ambien. Little did I know I was getting addicted again! Now I'm starting an Ambien withdrawal, how long does it last? And what can I expect, help!

Shakes, sweats, night terrors. I never stopped. I did get off for a whole month once by dousing myself full of Valerian root and Melatonin. Took one Ambien one time again and was hooked right back in.

I am off it completely now after landing in ER 3 times in a 10 month period of time because I was acting psychotic from it.

Read my other posts... there are lots of them in the Topix Ambien pages. My M.D. prescribed one of the oldest sleeping pills around (Dalmane) and I was off (no longer desiring or craving) Ambien within 2 days. No withdrawal, no psycho stuff anymore. Everything is well with me now. Except it will take many years to undo all the damage that using Ambien has done financially, physically, emotionally, and relationship wise.

Tell your doc you want off but don't think you can do it without something else. On that note... shun Sonata, Lunesta, Rozerem, etc.,. They don't have the "umph" that Ambien has and they don't work (at least they didn't for me... not at all. Waste of $$$.

Good luck to you. Please keep us posted. I'm in here all the time as I'm finally free of the Ambien monkey on my back and want to help and warn others.

Karen

[kathy]

i have been on ambien for over a year, am now fighting with withdrawl. it is absolutely horrible. strange night terrors are a big one. if anyone has any suggestions, i am hoping for help. how long will this go on. can't go much more on no sleep and the anxiety at night is unbearable.

[WLS]

Fellow Ambien users, abusers and as I am learning here...VITIMS!

So those that have taken Ambien obviously HAD sleeping problems from the beginning.

Ambien was initially a GODSEND. Then my doc advised me that AmbienCR might eventually be necessary as I built resistence (tolerance by any other word, right?)and found that I was still sleeping, but falling to sleep later (took one to two hours) and stayed asleep a shorter time.

So....AmbienCR....then I find it too will "run out of effectiveness.." so my most recent family doc wrote the prescription for Ambien 1 to 1.5 per night (or 15mg)...a half dose higher than regular Ambien was, at least where I started with it...and also 2.5 mg higher than the AMBIENCR to which I had graduated and then outlasted!!

But the reality check is straight-forward. I don't sleep well regardless. When I work my way off Ambien....what choices that are safer will there be for me???

Tell me what's worked for you so I can begin to work with my Doctor to map out a change...for good!!!

WLS

[Lisa1005]

kathy wrote:

i have been on ambien for over a year, am now fighting with withdrawl. it is absolutely horrible. strange night terrors are a big one. if anyone has any suggestions, i am hoping for help. how long will this go on. can't go much more on no sleep and the anxiety at night is unbearable.

This is a great post. I too detoxed myself from Ambien for 1 week with nothing but shakes, night terrors (horrible), rather stay awake then toss and turn and let the fear get in. Finally, I couldn't go with sleep anylonger and I filled my prescription. I will continue to take the recommended dose for the rest of my life. I don't care anymore. I take it at bedtime and do not leave the house or walk around the house unless it's simple stuff (potty, tuck in kids while checking on them in middle of night), however, I will NOT let the dogs outside to potty because I'm not stable enough to. No cooking and certainly no getting on the computer - I just recently cancelled an order I refused to believe I ordered online!!!!!!!!!! I love this forum, not to see all of ya'll in pain but to know that I'm not alone. I'm so tired to hear about all the other illegal drugs out there, well, what about those afflicted by the script ones? Oh, those only happened to the movie stars!!!!!!

[ranger]

Well I am happy there are others out there, I know I am tough, really tough, I am a US ARMY Ranger, I war for a living. But Ambien tears me apart. When I don't have it I stay up for days, night terrors are terrible, the dreams or mabe just hallucinations I have when I lay there without Ambien are so real and so bad it ruins my whole day. What can we do people. I am alll about self help, I can go without it, but I don't want to. I have been on it for about 2-3 years now. Tolerance is terrible, but sometime I take four 10mg pills just to get to sleep. If anyone can help, % have tried everything from melatonin, valerian root, benydryl, everything, sleeping tea, even narcotics, it's time for a change people, it's time to just get tough, that's what I tell myself, but this is kicking ms ass.

[Brenda]

I have been taken ambien for about three months. I ran out of my perscription a day early and figured I'd would deal with whatever insomnia I had for the one night. Little did I relize I would have the absolute worst night terrors of my life! I'm off to my doctors today and am going to see if we can figure something else out. I don't ever want to experience that kind of horrer from withdrawls again.

[ranger]

Well, I have been off of Ambien for about a week now, and I can just say that going through the night terrors is worth it to get off the stuff. It really is worth it, I had withdrawls too, I had been on it for quite some time, about 3 years, post-tramatic stress sindrome from war was keeping me up so I satrted the medication just to sleep. But tolerance happens and before I knew it my doctor was perscribing 45 pils a month instead of 30, 10mg, and I got hooked. I was hooked, but for the first week was nasty, but I still woke up from one hour of sleep to get ready for the day and I felt a lot better. I now have my life back, getting off of it is a personal choice, but in my opinion it is the best choice. Just gots to be tough for a little while, hell if I can serve in the US Army, get through Ranger school, and war, and all the crap that comes with the military, I knew I could do this. You can do it too, you can, just hang in there, I promise it gets better.

[Heather]

Hey guys.

So, I've been on Ambien CR 12.5 for OVER a year.
Mistake number one I'm guessing?
but there was nothing I could do, my insomnia was so bad for so long we had no choice.

Now, I'm coming off of it.
And I'm having horrible problems with withdrawal.
I almost landed myself in the emergency room last night.
Thank God my boyfriend was here to prevent that.

To everyone else suffering this hell, the night terrors, the shakes, the mood swings, the depression, the headaches,
I feel your pain.

Anyone know how long this is gonna last?!

[Celia]

Your comments frighten me. I have been taking Ambien for about 20 YEARS...I know
nothing of what you have written on with-
drawal as I've never had a reason to do so. Why are you stopping? I've been
thinking of it, but didn't know that I actually have Ambien use symptoms...what are they?

[clugent]

I have been taking Ambien daily now for 6 months after having been told by two different doctors that there was no habituation/ tolerance, no addiction possible. They were wrong. Ambien should be treated just as though it was a benzodiazepine.*

Over the last 6 weeks I have been able to gradually reduce my daily dose from 12.5 mg of Ambien CR to 4 mg. But now I seem to have hit a wall. Each time I try to make the next cut to 3.5 mg I have acute, severe withdrawal attacks. The physical side of these assaults is not yet all that bad, I get the shakes, my body cycles back and forth from chills that set my teeth to chattering to sudden flashes of heat that leave my bed soaked with foul smelling perspiration. My hearing goes into a wild buzzing-humming tintinabulation; my eyesight becomes tunnel-vision and blurred; my neck, especially under the joints of the jaw, seems to be swollen and produces a very nasty feeling that it may actually blow a major blood vessel. Time seems to slow down enormously, my joints ache, and my heart rhythm becomes wild and irregular. Sleep becomes impossible.

But, worst of all these withdrawal symptoms is the morale/ mental/ mood side of things. I get waves of absolute terror that wash through me, and there is a very strong and totally irrational compulsion to find some quick method of suicide. There is strange feeling during these attacks that I always have been this ill, and that I always will, so why not just end it right now? Luckily this suicidal impulse does not stay with me for the entire day, and I am beginning to find ways of just ignoring it.

Usually these mental/ morale attacks do not last for much more than a hour, but the physical symptoms continue sometimes for most of the day. The night's are the worst, each time I start to fall into an exhausted sleep my mind loses its conscious control and the terrors take over. Nightmares of horrible mutilations, and absolute panic occur in these half-waking stages and they force me out of bed. If my regular sleep time is midnight to 5 AM, I may be up until 3 or 4 AM when suddenly the attacks taper off quickly and I can at last get some rest, usually two or three hours per day.

Apparently Ambien is a newer drug so there are no readily available systems for managing these withdrawal agonies, and I have not been able to find any medical advice regarding how long the withdrawal may be expected. If it is a matter of 10 days of hell, I think I can get through it, but if this lasts for month after month... well that's it.

The people at benzo.org .uk have been helpful in suggesting a very long, very slow taper that features cuts in dose of 3 to 5% every week or two, which might require the help of a compounding pharmacist or a water titration program to insure you get the right doses. But even if their system will work for Ambien, it looks like it will be a long hard road.

__________
*See http://www.benzosupport.org/the_z_drugs.htm
**See http://www.benzo.org.uk

[kim p]

just curious, as i wont take ambien anymore, strictly because of the blurred vision. I took ambien the other day and got 7 hours of sleep (new user), however I woke up with blurred vision, this has been 12 hours now. How long can i expect the blurred vision to last.
thanks

[claudia TX]

I have taken Ambien for years and have been weaning off for a little over a month now. For a few nights have not taken at all but have only slept a couple hours at most, no other symptoms but total lack of sleep. Will I eventually sleep? I am dreading going to bed every night...

[chrstnem]

Well, atleast the scientist of this drug got something right. We are all experiencing the same withdrawal effects.
It has been a week since my last ambien. I have to say that the side effects can be horrendous. I had taken tylenol pm to help me sleep. It helped for a few nights, but you know that tylenol does effect your liver. So don't go that route. There is an edginess that goes with lack of sleep, irritability, and the list goes on. I do have to say that I will be taking ambien again, but in a smaller dose. I look forward to a night of sweet sleep. It has helped me get through nights that were difficult. I am a cancer survivor!

[Brooklyn]

chrstnem wrote:

Well, atleast the scientist of this drug got something right. We are all experiencing the same withdrawal effects.
It has been a week since my last ambien. I have to say that the side effects can be horrendous. I had taken tylenol pm to help me sleep. It helped for a few nights, but you know that tylenol does effect your liver. So don't go that route. There is an edginess that goes with lack of sleep, irritability, and the list goes on. I do have to say that I will be taking ambien again, but in a smaller dose. I look forward to a night of sweet sleep. It has helped me get through nights that were difficult. I am a cancer survivor!

I have been on ambien about 2 years. Last summer, I woke up with my hand in agony. It turned out it was broken. I knew I had banged it but couldn't remember how. I know it was from ambien and the memory loss that is associated with about an hour before actually sleeping. I tried getting off of it for a couple of months with relaxation herbs and other sleep meds. Nothing worked. I eventually surrenedered and went back to 1/2 tab or 5 mg. Now I see I have to take more and during the day I've been dizzy and have experienced shortness of breath. I can't stand the thought of not sleeping. I also have leg cramps that drives me nuts at night while I'm lying down. Any suggestions? The docs don't care. They keep writing the prescriptions.

[sleepless in LA]

WOW...
I spent the entire night awake online looking up Ambien withdrawl and symptom. My pharmacy closed ten minutes before I could get there, so I went without Ambien, which as everyone here knows totally sucks.
I can't believe some of your posts. I'm at the point with this stupid drug that I think I'm on the verge of checking into rehab. I am scared to death. I hate being on this, so I want more than anything to stop needing it, but I am TERRIFIED of not having it.
All night I've done the stupid withdrawl thing. I think I've puked everything I've eaten in the last month tonight. lol. I also (everytime I go without Ambien for a day) feel like my ear drum is going to burst. I get the worst ear pain. I only see this listed in a few select medical journals, as it seems to be uncommon, but is there anyone else here who has this issue? If so, is there anything that helps allieviate the pain?
I also take 8 other medications to get to sleep. I was diagnosed with major clinical insomnia a few years ago. I am far over-medicated at night, but my doctors got so frustrated with my inability to sleep, they threw a bunch of medication on the problem and I'm still not sleeping. I also get all the other typical side effects, not to mention others that come from other medication. I take a total of 24-29 pills every night (nice cocktail) and get on average 2-3 hours of sleep. If I go without Ambien, I can forget about sleeping altogether.
Is there anybody here who's insomnia has degenerated to this extent? I am wondering if there is even any point in going to rehab or not.
Thanks

[JulieF]

instead of ambien....xanax helps.. i take the least amt of any one of them... all my friends take the same...that's it...alternate between the 2.. i stay up really late...like 3 or 4.. really can't sleep... reading thru everyones posts, thought i was getting "hot flashes" ..now maybe not.. maybe they are nite sweats?... don't know.. definitely having memory lapses, and ordering stuff online.. no more online after taking any meds!!!!.. that's it..ordered an expensive bag and did not even remember doing that..returned it..that's it...

[claudia]

I have been making some progress, some nights I manage to get a few other sleep; other I toss and turn all night. There is no pattern so I never know whether I will sleep or not. But I feel really good about not taking any Ambien, its been almost three weeks now. It is slowly getting easier, I have not yet reached the point where I can throw out the remaining pills. Justed wanted to share that it is possible, it can be done...

[Dina]

Hi,

I have always been a good sleeper. In July of 2005 I was poisend by my ex-husband with sleeping medication and antidepressants. I did not understand what happend, but woke up in the intensive care. I stayed in a rehab clinic for 2 weeks and have consulted over 20 doctors in the USA, Switzerland and Canada. I only sleep an average of 210-320 minutes each night and it is really affecting my body and mind in a bad way. I tried to use lunestra and homeopathic sleep medication, but nothing helps. I am now unemployeed and my organs have started to fail (kidneys and heart). I would recommend to you to go to a sleep lab and get an MRI (on your brain), so you can see the nerve damage.

good luck

[Caitlin]

Does anyone else find that they cant think? I'm withdrawing and I can barely formulate sentences...It almost HURTS to think hard enough to push out a small sentence verbally. My boyfriend also says that when I do get a few hours of sleep I sweat A LOT! Anyone else have/had these symptoms? I'm especially interested about the sweating...Also, I have been feeling unnecessarily nervous...like, afraid of the dark...really vague childish fears...is this anxiety?