u/NickVangaurd327

Hi all, I could use some help.

I’m off 5 years of heavy benzo use and spent 10 months tapering and have been off completely for about 6 months now, sleep was my biggest issue due to insomnia and restless legs, which are pretty bad

(had them before benzos they are better now that I started iron supplements)

but they got worse one month out of the blue and my psychiatrist put me on 300mg of gabapentin and I took it for about 25 days.

I had to stop taking it cold turkey and ended up not sleeping for about 5 days straight and ended up in the hospital, I was used to getting about 5 - 7 hours of sleep before this with occasional Insonia episodes every week or so, mostly a day or a few days at worst.

But it’s been over a month since I jumped off gabapentin and I’m not not sleeping right, I get maybe 4 hours of light broken sleep if I’m lucky and falling asleep is the hardest thing in the world, the sleeping anxiety and deprivation are agonizing, and I’m scared of sleeping now so it’s harder.

I’ve tried everything from melatonin, magnesium, weed, CBD, supplements, etc. nothing, it’s a nightmare and was not this bad before starting let alone stopping the gabapentin. Can anyone give me some encouraging advice please? It feels like I’ve lost a lot of my progress and yet it’s somehow worse :(

Hi all,

I recently stopped 300mg of gabapentin after about 25 days of constant use, and I completely stopped sleeping for about 4 days after loosing my script and had to stop cold turkey, ended up in the hospital for a week while they tried to figure out what was wrong. It was getting better before starting / quitting the gabapentin.

But nobody would really listen and none of my doctors have really ever listened, they kinda scoff at anything I tell them. I’ve had to basically do everything on my own, tapering and all.

It’s been about a month off now and I keep having these involuntary racing thoughts of mostly background music that I can’t get rid of without serious effort and only for a short time, trying to go to sleep is almost impossible as I’m now having this fear of going to sleep as it’s been so bad through the process as I also have quite bad RLS too.

I didn’t have the racing thoughts before stopping the gabapentin, I’ve been off benzos fully for about 6 months now after tapering for 10. Was on clonazapam 2mg going up to 4mg at the height for a few years before starting to go down with librum for about a year or so till I jumped off.

I’m quite stressed and don’t feel naturally sleepy at all most if not all the time, even if I only slept 2 hours the night before and didn’t fall asleep till 6am.

I’ve tried everything from ashwanda, hydroxyzine, Seroquel, trazadone, THC, CBD ect. I get to the point sometimes at the worst where I’m so sleep deprived sometimes I can really only breathe till I just eventually fall asleep.

But they all either don’t work or seemingly make it much worse, I start spiraling from not being able to fall asleep and get stressed and anxious to where it all just feeds itself in this vicious cycle of insomnia. I try to tell myself to relax and that if I chase sleep I won’t, but I can never really calm down enough no matter what I tell myself or try.

I’ve gone into stress or anxiety induced “psychosis” or something like it a few times as well imagining symptoms that arnt there or where at one point and have to fight myself out of it, it’s hard to trust what causes what or if I’m imagining it from stress and anxiety or if it’s actually real, I’ve found it best to just remove possibility’s.

I can manage everything for the most part but the lack sleep is what’s really just destroying me. And naps are basically an act of divine intervention as they are so rare.

Any advice? Thank you!

Hi all, I recently stopped taking 300mg of gabapentin after 25 days of use as it just kinda stopped working and wasn’t really beneficial to begin with. However after stopping I didn’t sleep for maybe 4 days give or take for a few hours. It eventually returned to 5 - 6 hours a night.

After this I was asked by my pcp to try iron supplements and I took two 28mg tablets the first time and slept for 7 hours or so but it didn’t feel like I actually slept, the next day after 1 28mg dose I didn’t sleep at all, tossed and turned all night and didn’t stop moving for even a solid min and it’s just gotten progressively worse from there with racing thoughts and being hot, nothing feeling comfortable and my legs aching.

I stopped taking them 2 days ago after about 5 days of use give or take and I fell asleep for about 5 hours last night but woke up and everything was terrible again, I couldn’t get comfortable and everything just felt so bad I had move.

I’m hoping it will get better from here I have neurology coming up, I haven’t had iron levels in blood looked at but it’s on the list. I’m just curious why iron supplements would cuase such an aggressive response. I’ve always had pretty aggressive RLS, but It wasn’t ever this bad for this long before.

Any advice? Thank!

Hi everyone, I’m having extreme waves of insomnia that no medication seems to make a dent in while it’s active. When sleep meds do work I still wake up a few times throughout the night, but I get enough sleep for the most part.

But when it doesn’t work, it really doesn’t work, my body will shug off every pill or supplement I throw at it. Doing nothing or anything is irrelevant.

I took clonazapam for 4 years up to 4mg a day at the tail end before going to librum 25mg to 5mg after 9 months to going off from 5mg.

The last 2 months after jumping off have been full of random waves of insomnia and daytime mental fatigue beyond belief that come and go, or trigged due to a rough day, and when it hits nothing works.

These things pale in comparison to the symptoms during the taper like extreme confusion spells, and panic attacks. but I get to the point from these insomnia waves that I feel like I’m going insane from sleep deprivation, it’s agony.

Everything else is manageable to a degree, but I’ve gone 72 hours with less than 8 hours of sleep during some of these insomnia episodes and it physically hurts to be awake and I get scared of sleep during it because the whole process is so traumatizing.

I’m missing a lot of work days that I can’t afford to continue missing.

I’ve tried everything I can think of.
Rememtion 8mg
3mg lunesta
Melatonin
Gabapentin 300mg
Seraquil 50mg
Magnesium 400mg
Unisom
Hydroxizine
Warm and cold baths
Etc.

My body shrugs it off like it’s nothing, insomnia and restless legs continue. I’m at a loss, my doctor has basically given up and doesn’t really acknowledge it being benzo withdrawl, I basically had to taper myself off. Same for my last physiologist. Multiple Hospital visits through the tapering was also unhelpful.

Any advice? Thank you all!