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Tuesday, May 31st, 2005 09:32 pm
ativan, trazidone, and digitek russian roulette
Before anyone leaps to call a suicide hotline, *no*, I just had to look them up today. Well, so I could use one, and no, not the digitek.
This is a long story and doesn't improve upon retelling, but me and sleep have had issues for a while, since when I'm depressed, I sleep too much, and in between, have had a rather morbid terror of sleeping too much, which leads the other direction--abuse of stimulants. I honestly think the only thing that keeps me off the speedball-junkie track is my equally morbid terror of arrest and indictment. Seriously, nothing quite keeps one on the straight and narrow than A Certain Cousin's long term stays among the good Feds. So yeah. Anyway. We're going on twenty-seven hours and no sleep, which even for me is excessive, so I braved my bad memories of Ambien and asked my grandmother to borrow one of her sleeping pills.
Thing is, she has like, three kinds of sedatives. Well, two I can identify, anyway. She empties her pills into a plastic daily pill thingie, since she's on a bewildering array of prescriptions, including for her heart, which is good strategy, yes, but also kind of scary for us that can't ID pills on sight. She took three of one set and gave them to me with good wishes.
It's not that I don't trust my grandmother. I love her. I do not believe she would pull an X-Files Eve on me and feed me digitek by mistake. But. I am also me, who never accepted candy from strangers and used to cut my own Ambien script pill into quarters because of a Certain Incident We Shall Never Discuss. So. I sat down wiht three empty pill bottle and went looking up pill descriptions. By process fo elimination, we have ruled out that I'll be accidentlaly poisoned--it's definitely one fo the other two. Because I am anal, I lookd up teh side effects for both and am mostly comforted that I won't be zombie like tomorrow. I will, however, be rested. That is sounding like nirvana.
Right now, I honestly feel like I could go on in this particular form of exhausted purgatory for a very, very long time. It? Is not pretty.
Maybe add some warm milk. Hmm.
Okay, setting time, took it at 9:32 PM, now 9:50 PM, so far, no effect. I shall time this.
This is a long story and doesn't improve upon retelling, but me and sleep have had issues for a while, since when I'm depressed, I sleep too much, and in between, have had a rather morbid terror of sleeping too much, which leads the other direction--abuse of stimulants. I honestly think the only thing that keeps me off the speedball-junkie track is my equally morbid terror of arrest and indictment. Seriously, nothing quite keeps one on the straight and narrow than A Certain Cousin's long term stays among the good Feds. So yeah. Anyway. We're going on twenty-seven hours and no sleep, which even for me is excessive, so I braved my bad memories of Ambien and asked my grandmother to borrow one of her sleeping pills.
Thing is, she has like, three kinds of sedatives. Well, two I can identify, anyway. She empties her pills into a plastic daily pill thingie, since she's on a bewildering array of prescriptions, including for her heart, which is good strategy, yes, but also kind of scary for us that can't ID pills on sight. She took three of one set and gave them to me with good wishes.
It's not that I don't trust my grandmother. I love her. I do not believe she would pull an X-Files Eve on me and feed me digitek by mistake. But. I am also me, who never accepted candy from strangers and used to cut my own Ambien script pill into quarters because of a Certain Incident We Shall Never Discuss. So. I sat down wiht three empty pill bottle and went looking up pill descriptions. By process fo elimination, we have ruled out that I'll be accidentlaly poisoned--it's definitely one fo the other two. Because I am anal, I lookd up teh side effects for both and am mostly comforted that I won't be zombie like tomorrow. I will, however, be rested. That is sounding like nirvana.
Right now, I honestly feel like I could go on in this particular form of exhausted purgatory for a very, very long time. It? Is not pretty.
Maybe add some warm milk. Hmm.
Okay, setting time, took it at 9:32 PM, now 9:50 PM, so far, no effect. I shall time this.
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From:*curls up in and sighs*
Oh baby, I'm going thru a similar experience, and man does it suckify! First clue for me is my spelling ability goes straight to hell.
*giggles* Oh man, my spelling in AIM is so bad anyway, I'm not sure anyone could tell. But yeah. I tend to get even more eclectic in letter choice once I hit a certain level of exhausted.
Sleeping pills are a blessing and a curse - they make me sleep, but I feel like a pod person when I wake, and one time I woke up in the middle of the night with a whopper of a visual hallucination of spiders, which was just loads of fun.....yeah, um fun. *eyes straight jacket nervously* Hot milk is good, and white noise helps sometimes.
Oh my God. SPIDERS? *shudders* Oh *man*--that would--no. Don't even want to *think* about that.
The milk I may try tonight. I have a sneaking suspicion that tonight isn't going to be any better. *sighs*
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From:Eve reference = NEVER NOT FUNNY.
This much is a lethal dose!
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From:*writes down for chat with doctor*
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From:*also writes down for doctor visit*
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From:it doesn't take too long and isn't too complicated to use. it also saves me from tossing pills just because i don't know what they are.
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From:::hugs:: I hope the sleep fairy comes soon.
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From:*shudders* I will keep that in mind.
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From:I'm a chronic insomniac, and have been since university days. I find that getting up and doing something physical, rather than just reading or surfing the net, is helpful. The middle of the night is when most of my housecleaning gets done.
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From:I've been having something similar after I had surgery 1+ month ago, so I sympathize.
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From:In my experience...well in my experience I can shake off just about anything but!
Ativan doesn't make me sleepy. Ativan just makes me not give a shit about anything. My favorite description of Ativan comes from a comparison between Ativan and Xanax. Ativan is like - "Oh. I'm on fire? Eh. Whatever. It's all good. *big grin*" and Xanax is like "What? WHAT?! I'm on fire? WHO THE *FUCK* CARES!!!!??? *maniacal laughter*"
Xanax is BAD. It's evil evil shit. But anyway, Ativan actually keeps me awake b/c I just don't care anymore about going to sleep. There's no motivation. But, on the other hand, Ativan makes 6' 4", broad-chested Boy pass out liek whoa.
Trazadone, I've never taken, but my best friend does - she's bipolar and has REALLY BAD mania and a fantastically well-developed sleep disorder. And Trazadone makes anything BUT sleeping a non-option.
I hope this helps! Good luck.
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From:How come? I got a few from my doc back when I had pneumonia because I was having "feelings of impending doom" (hey, ten days with a fever over 103 will do that to a person...). I take half a one (I don't even know what the mg dose is!) nights I *know* I'm not going to be able to get to sleep, and I have to say, it helps.
So please tell me why it's evil evil shit, because I was thinking of asking for a few more...
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From:So first, you want to look at your dose. From what I understand, something like 2-4mg is pretty high and usually what you're dealing with when any of the things below happen. In *my* experience with Xanax (which is at .5 to 1 mg) - now just me personally and several people/drug addicts I know - Xanax causes more problems than, say, cocaine. I have yet to see anyone end up better off from taking Xanax. This, of course, is worse the higher the dose gets. Even at a more or less daily dose of about .5mg it...
1) Is really REALLY addictive. Dependency is *very* easily achieved. Like all pain killers and anti-anxiety meds, it looses effectiveness quickly and you have to take more and more to get the same effect. To illustrate - a doctor can not legally STOP prescribing you Xanax if you've been on it for a while because (with moderate/large doses over time) withdrawl will cause seizures and even, at the *really* extreme end, death. They have to wean you off it and it's not pleasant. Xanax is also over-prescribed to a huge degree because it's cheap and, in the most blunt-force way, effective. It's probably the top "legal" drug to be circulating in the illegal drug trade because it's so addictive and easy to obtain.
2) It is an anti-anxiety medication so obviously it's supposed to tamp down your anxiety :). The problem is that it does this to the point where it takes away your inhibitions (even the good ones). Like you don't care at all what you say or do and this causes you to make really poor personal choices. You say things to people that you usually keep in the locked-up, poisonous, cruel parts of your heart with the things you Don't Actually Mean. You get really angry and mean and obnoxiously loud and don't even register it because...hey, you don't care - cause you're on Xanax. Though I was never addicted/taking it for long periods, this would happen to me if I took .5mg in an isolated incident - I inevitably had to apologise to people.
3) It makes your short-term memory go *POOF!* After taking that .5mg, I wouldn't remember much of anything I did from about an hour before I took it through several hours after it wears down. If someone reminds me of something specific, I might remember in a hazy way.
My best friend had a serious Xanax Problem and she's still missing months of her life. Months in which she was absolutely, reprehensibly HORRID to her friends and family (ex. - she called her mother a whore - to her face and meaning every inch of it) and managed to isolate herself in Houston with her abusive husband - cutting off all contact with her friends and family (who were in Oklahoma). They still hold it against her - and she largely can't remember any of it. This is a person who had a vibrant cocaine and meth addiction going on for a long time - and it was the Xanax that she regrets the most.
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con't cause I got way more long-winded than I thought I would....
From:The only plus side I've ever experienced from Xanax is that it DOES make you sleep. We call it - The Xanax Coma. :) You WILL fall asleep, it'll drag you down (after a while, naturally, you can shake it off) and keep you there for hours and hours. I found it next to impossible to wake up again actually...
So, I mean, small doses taken only once in a while will not do this to you, but you should be really very cautious. It's the most addictive and evil drug, second only to heroin, I've ever had experience with. Be as cautious as you would be with oxycontin or morphine or something - it's of that caliber. Sadly, I've known a lot of drug addicts. I've seen and known a lot of people on a lot of legal and illegal drugs and my contention is that Xanax is Teh Ev0lest of All.
Wow, that was a lot more than I meant to write. *laughs* I hope it helps! I wish peace and calm for you :)
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Re: con't cause I got way more long-winded than I thought I would....
From:Looks like the wisest thing for me to do would be go back to my trusty Calms Forte, which doesn't pack a punch like the Xanax, but also appears to be less likely to lead me down a path of temptation.
It also sounds like if I ever get impending feelings of doom again, the thing to ask for is ativan. :)
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