I have a long plane trip ahead of me and I’ve requested a prescription sleep aid from my doctor. The first time he gave me Ambien and it didn’t help me sleep at all. I never even got drowsy on it.
This time he is prescriping mirtazapine, which is an anti-depressant.
Does anyone have experiences with this drug?
Anyone have recommendations on what I should be asking for?
Ambien doesn’t really make you drowsy. It still works, but it isn’t intuitive as to how it does.
I have had lots of sleep problems in the past. I have taken most of the major classes - including remeron (mirtazipine). It certainly did make me drowsy the first couple times I took it - within a week or so it didn’t do jack for me. It kind of made me almost drunk the first couple times - and I threw up an entire 32 oz of Hawaiian punch all over my friends bathroom. It was like a scene from The Exorcist.
Your doc is making educated guesses. If you are looking for these drugs to make you drowsy - you probably are going to be disappointed. I think plain old benadryl makes me drowsier than temazepam (for example) - but with a big hangover the next day. I can take and function - without getting really sleepy anything from chloral hydrate to temazepam. Drugs that end in “epam” are probably what you think you are looking for.
Temazepam is probably considered one of the strongest - if not the strongest. It is also considered addictive (didn’t have that problem) - especially in the UK.
I did find melatonin to be somewhat helpful for adjusting to different time zones.
Good luck. I wold recommend trying whatever you want to try BEFORE your trip. I doubt most people throw up on remeron, but it is the only drug that did that to me - and it pretty much knocked me out the first couple times. Would not have wanted to have been on a trip.
Now I use ambien. Doesn’t make me drowsy, but does help me sleep (just a little).
I’ve mentioned before that I got seriously addicted to clonazepam (Klonopin) and had a very prolonged nasty withdrawal. One of the withdrawal symptoms in intense insomnia. The docs gave me one med after another that were supposed to help me sleep.
Remeron (mirtazipine) what the only one that worked. Even with by brain cells on fire (yeah, clonazepam withdrawal is like that), the mirtazipine (at a very low dose even) got me the sleep I needed, at least for a week or so. After that, I began to notice annoying effects, but I don’t know if that was from the mirtazpine.
Mirtazipine is apparently some kind of industrial-strength stuff. The doctor told me it was an antidepressant. But another doctor (later) told me it’s more commonly prescribed as an anti-psychotic, and he wondered out loud just why the other doctor had prescribed it to me.
Why not try Benadryl? It’s indicated for use as a sleep aid and available over the counter.
Have you tried otc stuff? Benadryl. Melatonin. Valarian. All may work.
Benadryl works well for me… I just take a little more than the recommended dose. I am definitely not a doctor so please don’t take that as medical advice… but it does wonders for me!
As someone with a nasty sleeping disorder I’ve tried a few sleeping drugs in my time. They do vary so much between each person - what will knock one person out, wont touch another.
Mirtazapine completely wiped me out and turned me into a walking zombie - I’ve never felt so truly awful on a drug before. I was unable to function and trying to wake up was nearly impossible - that was after one day on a low dose. It was slightly funny being in work meetings the next day, my mind was so slow I was about 3 minutes behind everyone’s laughter, I had to force myself to move my head to look at other people, trying to move my own face to reflect emotions was robotic, I could not comprehend a thing that was actually said because I was too busy focusing on staying upright. When I came home that evening (took tablet the night before), I sat down on my bed and woke up 12 hours later still dressed.
Unless I have a wish to write off 48 hours of my life I will never take that again!
As suggested by DataX try it before you travel, it might not do a thing for you! But I wouldn’t try it and travel, there would have been no way I could have arrived at a strange destination and functioned.
Temazepam is my sleeping drug of choice - it doesn’t really send me to sleep, I can still ignore it if I choose but if I let it, it will give me a couple of hours and has no next-day issues.
Personally, with long flights … I just suck it … I’d rather arrive at my destination a bit tired rather than dopey! I live in Australia, long flights are normal! It’s not as though you do much on a flight to tire you out anyway - you’re just sitting there.
Thanks for all the replies, everyone. I really do appreciate the info and experiences.
I plan to try this stuff before traveling. I travel in about 3 weeks so I’ll have a couple of weekends to experiment. I did the same thing with the Ambien. I just never noticed any difference with the or without the Ambien.
I hadn’t tried benadryl or anything else OTC. I probably should have, but I thought the prescription stuff would be more reliable for this kind of thing. If this stuff makes me sick or loopy for a full day I’ll give the benadryl a shot.
Indeed it’s an antipsychotic, but one with a side-effect of inducing sleep. So it’s been quite common for many docs to prescribe it off-label for sleep. It’s probably not a bad idea to try it for extremely episodic use such as you describe in your situation, but I would NOT prescribe it myself to anyone to use chronically for sleep problems.
Meant to add: It’s an antidepressant too.