Psychotropic medication discussion thread
in Psychology & Therapy ·
Paul Newman5 said:I use Ativan for sleep; it works best for me, both for sleeping and anxiety. Doctors get annoyed about it though, so I end up mixing it with Xanax during the day. My psychiatrist told me you build a tolerance faster with Ativan than Xanax, though personally, I think it's all the same. Easy to get hooked, hard to quit. Obviously, this isn't medical advice, just what I use to get through the night. You should probably just talk it over with your doctor.
I tried Xanax too. It helped me sleep, sure, but I’d be a complete zombie the next day—totally groggy and slow. Now I only use it when I'm in a "critical" state of insomnia and can actually afford to spend the following day feeling like a shell of a human being... I try to avoid it whenever possible.
Kevin Nguyen3 said:Doctors are the ones who prescribe sleep medication, so I suppose our personal anecdotes don't carry much weight, do they?
If we are talking about pure strength, Ambien is quite powerful.
Of course, since it belongs to the benzodiazepine class, there really isn't any point in taking it long-term, is there?
That's not how it works for me... at least, not for me. I refuse to blindly trust whatever my doctor tells me, which is why I want to hear what everyone else is going through.
And honestly, I don't know if I'd even want the strongest 😬
fadedbear92 said:Maybe you were just taking too low a dose to actually knock you out—how many mg were you on?
It was 5 mg. I suspect she might bump up the dose with these pills so it actually works, but I'll have to check with her first.
The one good thing was that I could fall asleep relatively quickly, which is huge because I usually spend hours tossing and turning before I drift off. But the downside was waking up constantly throughout the night... leaving me completely exhausted in the morning.