My Last Ambien

I wish that I could part with Ambien. I take 5mg every night. When I first started, I would fall asleep in less than 20 minutes. Now it's at least an hour. I still wake regularly however. I hate the night because sleeping has become so stressful. I need something to turn my mind off. I've tried meditation, but I've not had much luck.

hi all!

I have been afraid to try ambien for the exact reasons people have posted here about it. I was prescribed a bottle at diagnosis and never opened it (except to give a couple to a friend - I know I know, very naughty!!).

I do take 20mg of melatonin each night, and I was taking a medicinal marijuana called Dream which I recently stopped just because I was not loving the taste of it. One thing that may help folks who feel groggy from the melatonin is to take it earlier. In my research I found that we should be taking it around 8pm instead of say 10pm for its effects to really work on the pineal gland.

Before all the meds and induced medical menopause, I slept like a champ - never waking up to even go to the bathroom. Now I wake up pretty much once every hour. It’s rough!!!

I did start taking Lexapro, an antidepressant. I fought taking ADs for a long time but finally gave in to try. It has greatly helped reduce my anxiety, my hot flashes, and I think I may be sleeping a little tiny bit better.

I do listen to Tara Brach podcasts to help me fall back to sleep. I also listen to her husband Jonathan Foust- love them both!! Very soothing. It works like a charm!! And if I don’t fall back to sleep right away (rare) I at least meditate aka beditate.

Good luck to all who are working their way off Ambien

When perimenopause rolled around, long before cancer rolled around, I found myself sleeping a couple of hours--or not at all--every night. I was close to suicidal from insomnia. I went to see my GP, whom I trusted, but got booked with a physician's assistant I'd never seen before. She said something to the effect of, "I don't know what you're going to do but I'm not giving you sleeping pills." I felt shamed, like I'd asked for a month's supply of morphine to sell on the sidewalk.

So I went to see my gyno, who prescribed an estrogen patch. Bingo. I slept. For eighteen months I felt like myself--and then breast cancer. The estrogen patch flew off and once again, fueled by menopause and anxiety, I was sleepless. Mercifully, my oncologist prescribed ambien. I don't know how I would have made it through chemo, rads, twelve surgeries, without it. A good night's sleep prepared me to face whatever the day brought.

Ambien let me sleep peacefully night after night, without the struggle to settle the monkey brain. So for eight years I took it almost every night. Then I moved out of state, away from my team of physicians who understood my medical history. So I figured it was time to learn to trust my body again and allow it to sleep naturally. And I determined to break the habit. I put the bottle of ambien on a very high shelf and went cold turkey.

The first night was pretty awful, but I kept at it, and on the third night I slept OK. Vivid dreams, sometimes kinda wierd, persist, but I suppose after all those years of suppressing them, my body/brain is learning how to dream again.

I still have a bottle of ambien but it lives on that high shelf and I take one only on the rare occasions when I've given sleep an honest shot and just can't do it. And never two nights in a row. I know how easy it would be to slip back into the habit of effortless sleep.