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Re: Insomnia caused by grief...

Posted by maryflo on October 16, 2003 at 15:01:01:

In Reply to: Insomnia caused by grief... posted by lostguy on October 16, 2003 at 10:38:20:

Oh, boy.

Lorezapam (ativan): It sounds to me that you've reached the point where you go into withdrawal when you don't take it. When I got "habituated" to it, on smallish doses about twice a week, the insomnia was vicious, and it took a couple of months for me to realize that much of my insomnia was due to the drug. If you search through past forums on this drug you'll see how people have dealt with it. Another place for information is benzo.org, though I have to warn you, it's not pretty.

I think it makes sense to use another medication to help (both for sleep and for getting off the lorazepam), though finding one that agrees with your biochemistry can take a bit of work. In my case, I went through many medications, maybe a dozen, before my doctor hit on doxepin -- this is a (sedating) tricyclic antidepressant, and it put me to sleep from the first night. It lost its effectiveness after a few months, but that was long enough for me to wean off the ativan. (My problem was old trauma - ancient - and something called "complicated grief.")

I don't know too much about antidepressants, but I'd think they would blunt your emotions -- although the amount needed to improve sleep is quite a bit less, I believe, than the amount needed to counter depression. This is something to check with your doctor.

Therapy -- I think this is important.

You have a big job to do right now - grieving a lost child - and that's going to take some time and a whole lot of hot emotion. Grief has its own agenda and its own wisdom and I believe it is something that can't be cut short. Otherwise it comes back to you later in disguise (depression, alienation from loved ones, etc.) and bites you. You just have to let it take you where it's going to take you. It's not fun, but it's been around since the beginning of time (and love), and you just have to go through it. I hope this doesn't sound glib.

Right now -- this may be a really rough time in your life, where insomnia is compounding your troubles. But as I see it you have a couple of advantages. One is that you know the cause of the insomnia. The second is that the insomnia is recent; it is not entrenched. Something to consider might be following sleep hygiene and sleep restriction guidelines (lots of that on this forum) to help avoid getting a big complex about insomnia. And the other thing is to keep allowing yourself to feel awful for awhile; let the emotion express itself and it will eventually lose its punch, and with it the insomnia will probably also lose its punch.

My sleep problems began with a trauma when I was a kid (and "complicated grief")

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