A bit of background: I pulled all nighters with large dose amphetamines often, ended up with psychosis and was in the hospital. I couldn’t sleep at all, but was prescribed sleeping meds and was off it completely and everything was good for years. But being stupid and in depression I pulled all nighters again with amphetamines but this time got schizophrenia. My life has been very bad so I kinda believed the strange thoughts in my head. I couldn’t sleep at all for months, but got clozapine and finally could sleep. I swore never to take amphetamines or pull all nighters again,and haven’t ever since then (5 years).
I am now slowly tapering off clozapine, originally started with 250mg, but I am stuck at 25mg clozapine, to be exact actually 25mg clozapine with ambien 10mg and sleep supplements like melatonin and valerian. Ambien and the sleep supplements don’t do much but they slightly increase sleep quality. I’ve been on this for a year. With this I sleep around 6-7 hours, sometimes less, and still tired in the morning.
That’s the only way I can sleep. Any lower than 25mg clozapine + ambien and sleep mix, say 23mg (even with ambien and sleep supplements), I can’t sleep and will remain awake the whole night. I’ve tried countless times. I’ve tried to sleep naturally and even with Ambien and sleep supplements, although I start to feel sleepy, I can never actually fall asleep. I partly dream while being awake (not sleeping) and the dreams are always me trying to sleep and nightmarish. I used to be able to take naps and catch up on sleep after sleeping for a few hours prior to schizophrenia, but never able to now.
I’ve tried everything, GABA, trazadone, theanine, lunesta, reishi, high doses, etc, nothing can make me fall asleep. I tried other sleep methods too but none of them work. The fact that I can sleep with clozapine shows that it’s not something I can change environmentally. I think I messed up my dopamine receptors or something, scary…
I just want to sleep naturally again… I hope someone can help…
I have a similar problem, only with zyprexa. It’s not uncommon to get dependant on psych meds for sleep.
The reason it happened with me is probably being on them for very long. They have changed my brainchemistry, and things that normally should help for sleep, like most sleep remedies don’t work. I get some relief from melatonin though, and possibly a few other supplements like L-tryptophan and magnesium.
A technique that works for some is to switch psych meds from a heavy psych med to a lighter one to make the transition off psych meds easier. Zyprexa for example affects at least 17 different receptor types in the brain, while for example seroquel only affects 7 different receptor types. So by switching to a less heavy psych drug the brain can partially start recovery with the receptors that aren’t affected any more. If sucsessful it should in theory be substantially easier to come off alltogether later on.
Clozapine is considered the heaviest of the atypical psych meds. If you want to try transitioning to a lighter psych med I would recommend seroquel first, because it is usually good for sleep, it might even be good for sleep at subclinical doses, and is prescribed as a sleep medication off label. There are ofcourse other drug options. You should discuss this with your doctor if you find it interesting.
@letmesleep , Have you tried Sleep Hygiene Interventions? Look it up on Google. You must put all the interventions into practice for it to work. They are working great for me now.
I am a 50 plus year long chronic insomniac who used to get zero hours of sleep every other night. Now, I get 6 to 10 hours of sleep every single night with Sleep Hygiene practices.
same. people seem to ignore this kind of suggestion. but it is extremely helpful. i used to be up 3 days straight regularly. even 5 days straight. and i started practicing sleep hygine and now i can fall asleep in usually minutes even when im not tired and sleep everyday.
I have tried many different kinds of sleep improvements like these but they don’t work for me.
Before I had the schizophrenia episode and clozapine, I never had any sleep issues. I slept like a baby every time. Even on rare days when I didn’t get enough sleep, I could easily take a nap or catch up on sleep. And I never took any sleeping supplement ever. Now I cannot nap at all, nor can I sleep at all, not even a tiny bit naturally.
I don’t have just insomnia, I have severe chronic insomnia. I can be awake for three days in a row, most of the time in bed, but never have one minute of sleep. I am then forced to take clozapine to sleep. It’s scary and I’ve tried it many times.
But the strange thing is that most of these methods improve my sleep hygiene, and I do feel better in bed, but I still cannot sleep. Most of the sleeping supplements or prescriptions I take, I actually start feeling sleepy and it looks like it’s working, I close my eyes, but the last receptor is like “no” and I can’t sleep. It’s possibly that I sleep maybe for a few minutes I just keep waking up.
And I am not exaggerating when I say I can’t sleep. I literally can’t.
So why don’t you just take the clozapine? I HAVE to take Risperdal, Geodon and Seroquel in order to sleep. I have no choice in the matter. I have to do sleep hygiene in addition.
No, I have been unable to come off. I have made a few attempts, but the insomnia is too severe.
Make sure to have a good supply off clozapine at home, that way you have some security if something should happen. You can ask your doctor about getting a 3month supply at once, maybe this will put you a bit at ease mentally.
It’s probably not impossible to come off, but we don’t have the conclusion, so we just have to keep trying things.
You might just have to keep taking Clozapine. It’s probably best to stay on an antipsychotic if you have schizophrenia and Clozapine is a good antipsychotic. I wish I could take it but it didn’t eliminate from my system fast enough.
Another thing you can do is like what @Mr_Hope said and switch to Quetiapine. Then over time try to slowly taper off until you can sleep again without it.
There was one member here @Headspark who sucsessfully got off zyprexa with the benzo clonazepam and a large dose of the supplement glycine.
He still could not sleep normal after quitting zyprexa, but at least he found a lesser evil, and apparantly he started slowly regaining natural sleep, being able to sleep a few hours naturally after a year or so. Haven’t heard from him in a while though, so don’t know how he is doing now.
Ofcourse getting dependant on clonazepam poses another problem though. My doctor thinks it’s a bad idea, but I might try another drug, gabapentin too see if it does anything for sleep.
I do not have schizophrenia anymore, and do not want to rely on a powerful drug the rest of my life. It makes me tired, slow, and is not good for my health.
About 5 years. First year I was on 250mg, slowly decreasing the dose and then was down to around 100mg by year 4, and slowly decreasing again and in current year at 25mg. If I just take 25mg of clozapine I cannot sleep, I have to combo it with sleep meds/supplements. Which I think is healthier than taking 100mg clozapine without any sleep aids, as I still get all the side effects of clozapine at that dose.
I was on clozapine for about 5 years and I had developed a terrible physical addiction to it. It was really bad when I tried to get off of it. It wasn’t sleep that was my problem.
Yes, it is definitly healthier. Maybe your brain will slowly get more normal now that you are on low dose. I think we have to be patient about these things, because sleep is the number one thing to preserve health.
I was taking clozapine id only had it a week. I started passing out. It kept me up at night. IDK what you want to take just be careful and tell your pdoc about this. Don’t live in misery. I hate it. Good afternoon.
