Anxiety/Sleep/Medication help please!
 

I have a few questions I'm hoping someone can help me with.

I've been sober 2.5 years. I have a long list of mental health issues, including PTSD, which I am on multiple medications for. I have seen HUGE improvements in my mental health through sobriety, hard work, and finding the right meds. I used to have horrible nightmares. I still do occasionally, but the bigger problem now is more that i've become subconsciously afraid to sleep. I was on gabapentin for anxiety, and my psychiatrist increased my dose at night in hopes it would help me relax and sleep. It helped a little at first but then not so much. I started getting worried because I'd been told it could cause depression and I'd been struggling a lot with depression ever since the increased dose.

Before I was on the gabapentin I was on a different anxiety medication. This was almost 3 years ago. I'd just gotten out of the hospitals after a suicidal episode. I was having flashbacks and panic attacks pretty much constantly, so I was taking this medication very regularly. It worked, but I had to go off of it because it made me really sleepy. Now I don't take anxiety medication during the day, and I really need something that can help me sleep. I've stopped taking the gabapentin, and would like to go back to this other one. Unfortunately my records are very complicated (I've been to a few different doctors since then due to financial issues, and I've had to try LOTS of different meds since then). So, I'm not sure what the medication was. What I do know:

I also previously took Prazosin, which is what I'm on now. I thought that was the one but now that I'm seeing the pills it's not. I'm hoping it will still help with sleep, as I've heard from others it worked for them, but so far not so much.

It was a tablet, as I was having to cut it in half. The other ones I've taken have been capsules. I feel like it was white, but I could be wrong on that.

It was prescribed by my addictions psychiatrist during a time when I was struggling hugely trying to get sober, so it wouldn't have been anything that had addiction potential. He tended to prescribe more non-traditional type stuff (like gabapentin that's for seizures but also helps with anxiety) since a lot of traditional anxiety meds would've caused addiction issues for me.

It wasn't a sleep specific medication, because at the time I was taking it during the day, and I used to have big issues with abusing sleep meds so that's not an option for me.

Sooooo....does anyone have any idea what this medication might have been? I'd love to get back on it since I know it worked for me! If not that, does anyone have any suggestions of what might work in this situation? I'm really struggling with sleep right now, and this nighttime anxiety is driving me crazy! No matter how tired I am, as soon as my head hits the pillow my eyes pop open and I'm wide awake fighting sleep! It takes me many many hours to fall asleep. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

(If you're wondering, I am doing a lot of other stuff outside of medication to work on sleep. I'll take suggestions on that too if you really want, but I'm pretty well versed in that. I just need a little chemical type help to get over this hump and start sleeping again. I'm on a very bad cycle and it's causing issues everywhere else in my life because I can only sleep a few hours a night. Thanks!).

Given your addiction history it sounds like buspirone (Buspar.) It has little addictive potential and is usually prescribed for Generalized Anxiety (among other things.) It is not a sleep-aid per se, but by ameliorating the anxiety it can be helpful for sleep.

Pull up a picture and see if the pill looks similar. Oblong white pill, can be divided.

BTW, it can be very useful to keep a medication journal. Really helps for situations like this :)

Hope this helps.

trazadone?

I wish more than anything I'd kept a journal back then...but at the time my life was soooo much about survival that keeping records was way outside what I was capable of! I never would've thought that almost 3 years later I'd be in a situation where the one thing that worked was something I was taken off of. :( So frustrating! Unfortunately at this point I've done so much research on it that all the names and pictures are running together and getting confused with the actual memories. So frustrating. I just want to sleep!

Thanks for taking the time to reply. :)

Hi Riverbird,

Can you recall the specific pharmacy or general pharmacy chain where you once filled the prescription? Regardless, pharmacists tend to appreciate these types of trivia questions :)

:grouphug:

Just don't take trazadone on top of caffeine. You'll usually go to sleep anyway, but you might have some jarring dreams. Sometimes it's perfect, though--and it tends to put me out in 10 minutes if I close my eyes and lie still.

I know where I filled it. It was the cheapo clinic/medicaid pharmacy where there's always a million people and giant lines. Would they have it on record there?

I got in touch with the records people at the hospital and they said I could come in and sign the forms and they would find my records, but that it could take weeks. I guess that's better than nothing.