Me as well! I wish it would put me to sleep. It gives me restless, crawly legs. I am awake all night if I take any.
I know I’m resurrecting this post, but i wanted to put this info out there, sorry guys. I have been taking zquil for a few months now, I have pretty bad insomnia and have for a few years. For a while I was drinking a few shots of vodka every night to sleep, and as you can imagine, ran into a problem. So i switched to nyquil, viewing it as the lesser of two evils. One day while in the local pharm I noticed zquil mistakenly stocked next to the nyquil and and decided to give t a try. I have had no issues, it doesnt taste bad, and i havnt built a tolerance to it. It works faster than benadryl and cost 12 USD for two bottles. I have been sleeping wonderfully nearly every night since i started taking it. Hope this helps anyone who happens to stumble upon this post.
Cool, and thank’ee! I started the post in honest ignorance, and got a lot of very good answers. The prevailing wisdom seemed to be that Zquil wasn’t a very good idea, but it certainly isn’t as bad as vodka or Nyquil.
(For my part, when I can’t sleep, I just turn on the light and read a while. But…I’ve never had anything like serious clinical insomnia.)
Ultimately…the fact that it’s legal to sell over the counter in this country is probably a fairly high reassurance that it isn’t significantly harmful, at least when used according to proper directions.
I have had problems sleeping since I was a little kid, I can’t sleep no matter what. My doctor had me on some low blood pressure pills to get me to sleep once I found out what they were I stopped taking them and tried zzzquil. It is not a good product! And honestly whatever people tell you is not always true it depends on each person and how their body reacts to it. It IS A HABIT FORMING product. I have never been hooked on sleeping Medicne before like this. When I take zzzquil once I lay down about 5 mins after taking it I get a warm feeling throughout my entire body. I don’t like it. So I definitely would NOT recommend this product to ANYONE !
Yeah, in going over this old thread I notice that some posters with insomnia seem content to just take something like ZzzQuil indefinitely in order to sleep. Because if it’s the only way one can get to sleep, then that’s the logical conclusion. I wonder how often the cause could be something that isn’t more expensive to address than an OTC aid–something like a change in diet, or just getting more exercise.
Sleep problems can be complicated.
What works for one person does not work for another.
The more options the better, but I think some people avoid taking this to a doctor. On the downside, I’ve known people who went to a doctor, had sleep studies, and just weren’t helped much.
Sf9415, meet Sf9415.
It seems you two have some catching up to do.
Chronic insomnia isn’t just taking a little extra time to fall asleep - though taking any extra time to fall asleep when you don’t have a lot of time to sleep can be an issue - when you actually cannot get more than 3-1/2 hours a night for months, even years, which is common for some women due to hormone issues, or having insomnia where you might take 4 hours to fall asleep 4 nights a week but sleep normally (basically crash from exhaustion) the 5th night. In the 4/1 sleep scenario, your day-clock has set for longer than 24 hour days - this can actually happen to people and it makes living a normal life where you have a daytime job (or have to be anyplace at a specific time and alert) really hellish. When bed time falls, your body is under the impression it is around 6pm and won’t cooperate with sleep. The result is that you need to use something to make yourself sleep. Alcohol is a time-tested method but mixed drink and beer/wine have lots of calories and alcohol itself will tear up your guts in quantity and also dehydrates you and takes your blood pressure on a roller-coaster ride. Ambien has been used long term by some people with no harmful effects, but other people have developed severe memory problems related to Ambien. Sinus meds can give you nose bleeds and aggravate problems with dehydration and thickening mucus chocking you until you wake up coughing until you throw up all the thickened drainage - it can, any of it, get rough. So, you look for a variety of items and try to minimize the impact of any one product on your body.
Google diphenhydramine price.
1000 25mg caps runs $20.
I have a runny nose - works wonders.
The ‘Sleep’ meds contain 50mg, the ‘antihistamine’ meds contain 25mg.
When Benadryl was first introduced, one of the most common side-effects was ‘drowsiness’ - a new use was born.
p.s. - I use Temazepam for sleep.
Used to use vodka + Unisom Gel Caps (2). Doc had an attack when I told him how I was getting to sleep.
Temazepam (Restoril) is a benzodiazepine, and those can be problematical. Benzos might be okay for some very short-term usages, but generally not for long-term use. Benzos are highly addictive, and tend to quickly cause dependency (that is, you will need it to get to sleep, and you will need higher and higher doses over time to get any effect), and kicking the habit is said to be tougher than kicking heroin. Be careful with long-term use!
I an baffled why anyone would buy the expensive name brand of something sold so cheaply as a generic.
Fall in love a medication’s ad? Go to SprawlMart. Look at the ingredients list. Buy the thing in similar packaging right next to it with the same ingredients.
Also: Note that different products under the same label might have different ingredients. E.g., nowadays most Unisom products contain diphenhydramine, but one does contain good old doxylamine. Which, of course, is available as a generic.
Chlorpheniramine maleate (aka “Chlortabs”) is another antihistamine that is used as a mild sleep aid.
The caution that different people react to different drugs … differently, must be kept in mind. I’ve known people who got sleepy drinking coffee. So, have a steaming hot cup of joe just before bedtime, right?
Or so I’ve been told.
But a benzo is much preferable to a sleepless night - I have gone 4 days without sleep while testing the continued need for some sleeper or another.
And, contrary to the 'You’ll put an eye out!"-level warnings re. benzos, I have actually reduced dosage.
I tried it when I ran out of my standard insomnia prescription meds. Did nothing. Except taste weird.
I’m baffled, too, but I’ve seen a lot of customers at work reject anything but a particular brand name of a product: ONLY Tylenol brand acetaminophen, ONLY Bayer asprin, etc.
I guess marketing works really really well on some people…