I was taking Allegra-D which worked a handful of times then all of a sudden, it started making me feel super-duper drowsy.
Switched to Claritin. Took it today. Same thing. Worked fine the first two times, then today… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I’ve taken Allegra, Claritin, and Zyrtec in the past and progressed thru each because they stopped working, but they didn’t make me wanna put my head down on my desk and go to sleep. (Scratch that. More than once today I’ve found myself effectively asleep with my head up and eyes open!)
Why would this happen all of a sudden? Anyone got any theories?
Man, I don’t know, allergies and allergy remedies are a real enigma to me too. The drugs that supposedly make you drowsy make me angry, like man-PMS. The non-drowsy ones just make me a space cadet, like where did I leave my pants? And the allergies themselves make me ache all over, every muscle, every joint, every nerve cell in my body detests allergies.
My best luck has been with the non-drowsy “Severe” allergy pills from various manufactures. I try not to do them more than three days in a row though, then the drugs seem to make me feel worse than the actual allergies. My allergy symptoms can come and go in the blink of an eye. I usually know how I’m going to feel by the first couple minutes right after I wake up though. Sometimes I wake up and think, damn, anyone get the number of that train that hit me? Other times I wake up and feel dandy, forgetting all about just a few short hours ago I felt like a used paint brush.
So, I don’t know, if you’re like me you just have to fiddle around with different meds and different doses until you find a somewhat happy medium.
Reactions to medicines tend to be an individual thing. There are things that knock me out that won’t knock out others. I’ve been fine on vicodin but a benadryl floors me. I’m not affected by Tylenol Cold but they put Alias to sleep while she was sitting at the computer.
My guess would be that you have a “zzzzz” reaction unrelated to the medication you’re taking. I say this because Claritin is about the least “zzz” I you can think of. Almost no side effects.
Have you considered that perhaps you have Up and Down days, unrelated to allergy meds? Just a thought, from someone who does indeed have up/down days during allergy season.
Huh. I don’t really think so. When I take the non-drowsy’s lately, I have a deep muscle sedation feeling. Like Benadryl makes most people feel. And only when I take the med.
What I wonder most about is why all of the sudden this is happening. I wonder if maybe my allergies are improving somewhat and now these meds are too strong?
I believe most antihistimines will make you drowsy. The non-drowsy formulas usually add pseudoephedrine, a decongestant which has a stimulant effect on most people. Once you build up a tolerance to that, though, it might not work against the drowsiness anymore.
