For many years I have taken Ambien on an occasional basis. It worked pretty well and I had no problem with dependence. I had a rough patch this past summer and started taking it regularly (this is under a doctor’s care). Now that the holidays are over I decided to try and kick the habit (not because of any particular problem with it - just because it is another damn drug). I tapered down the dose I was taking, then spent two sleepless nights without it. On the third night I found some leftover Nyquil in my medicine cabinet and took that (oh boy! a reason to take Nyquil). This got me to sleep, but it wasn’t really a great sleep. I did it again the next night, then switched to a sleep aide product with doxylamine succinate (what Nyquil uses). My reasoning behind this was that this OTC drug might be easier to kick than Ambien, however I don’t really know if this is the case.
If you have weaned yourself from Ambien, I would like to know your experiences. Am I better off simply going cold turkey?
I fully intend to discuss this with my doctor and I understand that you are not him.
When I decided to be done with it for good I just stopped. Pretty much resigned myself to 3-4 sleepless nights and did it. I did taper down before getting to that point, but it still sucked, I hate not getting enough sleep and that’s exactly what happened. Now its been a couple of years and I sleep much better without any drugs at all. Substituting OTC stuff for ambien sounds a bit iffy to me, you might wanna mention that to your doc if you’re still taking them when you go see him.
Doxylamine succinate/Unisom (like diphenhydramine/Benadryl) is not physically addictive, but like anything else it can be habit-forming in the psychological sense. I can’t speak to whether Ambien is physically addictive, having never taken nor researched it. But it’s obviously more potent than other sleep aids, because it’s prescription whereas they’re OTC (and has a much longer list of side effects). Whether it’s Ambien, Nyquil, Unisom or Benadryl, though, they **all **have side effects. Still, if natural sleep is out of reach for you, then Unisom/Benadryl are almost certainly safer and less potent (being OTC) than Ambien. I would avoid Nyquil due to the acetaminophen content (try the new ZZZquil instead).
If you’re into personal recommendations, a small dose of melatonin has helped me fall asleep on many occasions. It’s less potent/slower-acting than Benadryl, but Benadryl gives me drowsiness hangovers. Meditation and relaxation videos on youtube have also been highly conducive to restful sleep, in my experience.
I went cold turkey-ish. When my prescription ran out, my doctor wrote one for 30 days and told me that was all I was gonna get. I had been taking it nightly and he said someone my age (30) shouldn’t need something to sleep every night. I started taking melatonin the same night I stopped with Ambien. There were about three nights of rough sleep followed by a couple months of weird dreams (which I never got while taking Ambien) and then everything returned to normal. I tend to wake up a few times a night, but it’s rare that I can’t go back to sleep in a few minutes.
I use it once every two weeks or so, only for those occasions when I take the overnight Megabus between Chicago and Kansas City. It’s the only thing that makes it possible to sleep on a moving bus. Otherwise, I never use it.
It’s only ‘very addictive’ if you are addicted to sleeping. Otherwise, it’s mildly psychologically addictive, and the withdrawal is basically, as noted by another poster, a few days without sleep. I’ve been using it every day for years now, and occasionally in that time I’ve had my prescription run out, and I can tell you that there is a vast difference between going a week or two without my Ambien fix and, say, going a week or two without alcohol or other ‘very addictive’ things I’ve put in my body in the past.
To the OP, you definitely should talk to your doctor, but they are probably going to tell you to just do without it and see what happens. Resign yourself to at least 2 sleepless nights, at least that’s been my experience when my prescription has run out when it’s run out in the past…generally I’m up for around 2-3 days, and then I’m back to my usual, lovely ‘normal’ sleep cycle, which sucks. Myself, OTC stuff doesn’t work for me at all, and if it works for you I’d question why you went on Ambien in the first place…you should do OTC if you can. I’ve tried everything from herbal remedies to basically everything you can get OTC for sleeplessness, and none of it does anything for me (large quantities of alcohol or other, um, controlled substances aside)…which is why I use Ambien. I don’t have any of the seemingly long laundry list of horror side effects I’ve seen in these threads from other posters, so to me taking it every night (and actually getting to sleep 7-8 hours a night) works perfectly.
(quoted from the abuse section): tolerance and drug dependence can still sometimes occur in those without a history of drug dependence. Chronic users of high doses are more likely to develop physical dependence on the drug, which may cause severe withdrawal symptoms, including seizures, if abrupt withdrawal from zolpidem occurs.[58]
So, what you are saying is that, if you abuse the drug and mis-use it, it can have detrimental effects, and that if you do that it could cause severe withdrawal symptoms, right? There is a shock. That doesn’t make it ‘highly addictive’, it means that it, like many things (even OTC stuff) can be abused by folks who want to abuse it, and if they do abuse it, they can then have more severe withdrawal symptoms.
My assumption is that this thread and the OP are using the drug as it was prescribed to them, not taking it at very high doses for recreational use, perhaps freebasing it and shooting it up with heroin chasers or something. If that is in error then I agree, could have some more wide ranging withdrawal symptoms than I’ve had in my many years of using it as the little label on the bottle says to use it.
When I click on your link, here is the section it goes too:
Which is all about abuse of the drug. If you wanted me to read something else, you should have quoted it. I have no doubt that some percentage of people who use the drug even as directed have issues, even perhaps withdrawal symptoms…but you claimed it was ‘highly addictive’. Could you quote the part in the Wiki page you linked too that says that?
Reading through the whole thing, I assume you actually meant this part:
Which is interesting. I didn’t know that, and I’ll have to talk to my doctor about it, though as I said I’ve been using the drug for years now with no adverse effects.