Talk of circadian rhythm 👨🎤
Sleep has been something that eluded me, it was like falling down a cliff in December 2024. It started with waking up at a 6 am (instead of a minute before the 7 am alarm – almost always my norm). Then 5 am, 4 am, and landing on about 2 am. When that was done, it turned into falling asleep becoming a problem. When I thought that was the worst of it, the panic attacks started. Profuse sweating, heart palpitations, impending doom, namely death. My body was on high alert, but it didn’t know what to fight.
An invisible enemy, that Rona
I’ve always been a fighter of danger. Sick? Rest and exercise carefully, paying attention to my body. Spinning out on black ice in the car, calmly brake and make slow corrections. Someone with a weapon? Grab and clear the weapon, and fight. My brain didn’t even think, it just did these things before. But there was no black ice, person with a knife, or a normal viral infection to fight. Rona is an invisible enemy, I had to find a way to fight it for me.
Benzodiazepine the life preserver I hardly knew 🛟
What pulled me through this back then was a spouse who knew I needed it: Xanax. Nothing that worked before for addressing rare sleeplessness. This includes, and am certain not limited to, melatonin, Benadryl, CBD, CBN, THC, and trazodone (knocked me out while completely clogging my sinuses, so I’m forced awake). Gabapentin and Lyrica helped early on, but gave me uncontrollable tremors even on low doses, and their efficacy seemed to wear off within a week (I did not want to keep going up).
Back to Xanax: with two screw caps of 5 and 10 pills, it lasted me six months (with some to spare). It shut my mind down so I could sleep. At first, it was 3 – 4 hours, but inched back up to 7 (my normal) after adding a more long term sleep option.
Going to battle 🥷
In January and February, I hit the sleep thing as hard as I could. Sleep phycologist (and everything that comes with that) ✔️, inpatient sleep study (nothing found, other than poor sleep) ✔️, and a psychiatrist to prescribe heavy hitting sleep drugs ✔️
What I found for me was, it’s a very complex problem. Anxiety wasn’t and still isn’t helping, and it fed off insomnia and made it worse. Xanax is not a long term solution, so I moved on to Lunesta (or as some call it, baby Ambien).
After being on Lunesta for about 7 months, I switched to Mirtazapine 7.5 mg, and it is where I still am.
What worked for me, kinda
It is an ongoing deal with insomnia. What works for one, doesn’t work for all by any means.
In order to put myself in the best possible path to success with sleep, I hit every area I could. And, I typically fall asleep fast 90% of the time. I still have occasionally wake ups. No one thing solves this for me. If I don’t take Mirtazapine, I wake up around 2 - 4 am, and have trouble getting back to sleep (those buggers are small!).
- Blackout shades
- Foam ear plugs
- White noise
- Comfortable eye mask
- Logging sleep with a tracker (if it doesn’t cause anxiety!), or written - helps with false insomnia, and to try to gauge what helps or hinders it
- Night guard to address TMJ while sleeping
- Keeping the temp cool (67 degrees Fahrenheit)
- Getting up and reading or moving to another place if awakened too long
- Mirtazapine 7.5 mg
- Occasional CBD with low melatonin gummy (bumps up falling asleep faster, and increases REM slightly)
The bottom line
Insomnia is unique to the individual. It requires a ton of trial and error for each case. It is trying one thing at a time for a couple of weeks, which requires a bit of upfront work and planning.
I have met folks who say even Xanax doesn’t help. For me, early on, almost nothing worked. Time and having the brain heal are important too - that alone is a hard thing to accept, I still struggle with that.
If you’re struggling with sleep, I encourage you to reach out to specialists and address it. It was a huge weight pulling me down early on, and having it mostly controlled gives me time to address other symptoms.