Yes…I had three good days. Energetic and healthy days where I did normal things and didn’t feel nauseas or dizzy or unable to walk. In fact two of those days I went on half hour walks.
Last night I only slept 5 and a 1/2 hours. I’m assuming that means today will be another bad one. I haven’t been up long enough to find out, but it truly seems now that if I sleep 6 hours or less I feel sick and often very sick and if I sleep 7 hours or more I’m pretty much myself. Not that I’m without the fatigue and weakness, but I can do stuff and feel productive and my mood is good too, while I often start despairing when I feel shitty with no sleep for days on end.
The problem then obviously is to figure out how to sleep regularly. I have a small arsenal of natural products that are supposed to help induce sleep. I alternate them so that my body does not get accustomed to anything in particular. Some of the natural sleep remedies can cause dependence too and they are not all good for you long term.
It seems that the best one I’ve found is a combination of Valerian, Passionflower and Hops. The Valerian and Passionflower are both potentially mildly habit forming. We’re not talking anything like benzos or pharmaceutical sleep aids but nonetheless I won’t take it more than a couple of nights a week. I sleep on those nights quite well.
I also take a variety of amino acids, which are not habit forming and I take them nightly. Tryptophan, Glutamine and GABA. I know they help because I sleep even less if I don’t take them. There are other inhibitory amino acids I’ve experimented with but I settled on these. Others that can be tried are Glycine, Taurine and Theanine. Aminos need to be taken on an empty stomach. Other non-habit forming nutrients that aid calmness are Inositol, Magnesium, and Niacin and Niacinimide.
I’ve also resumed my tapering the Lamictal. As I said I would, I got 5 mg pediatric Lamictal tabs. (my doctor never fails to amaze me with how cooperative he is!) I’m cutting them in half so the taper is only 2.5 mg from a 125 mg total dose. I feel really good about getting back to the taper. It may be extremely tiny amounts I’m tapering now but at least I’m moving again.
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thanks for your comment Kelly…
Please stick with the CBT. My mom practiced that before anyone had a name for it. It is basically common sense and positive thinking. Mom, born in 1919, saved me from a life full of anxiety that was crippling. I no longer suffer from this and as she taught me it takes a lot of practice to learn to think differently. Now I have a son who is 24 and was diagnosed as Bipolar II w/major depressive disorder and Anxiety as a separate issues. He also suffers from DDD (Degen. Disk Disease) so throw in a lot of chronic pain and muscle spasms. He tried the mental health drugs for over a year and they did not work and made him very ill plus he gained fifty pounds during that year. We slowly removed him from this course and have been using the CBT, the natural common sense approach my mom taught me. It works, it takes daily practice but it is soooooooooooo worth it. He is now fifty pounds lighter and he is happy. He may never be able to support himself but we will continue to try to get him to that. But being happy and at peace with ones self is a must. So practice, practice, practice your positive thinking techniques and you will feel better.
I’ve just found this support forum for Benzo removal; just for interest, I signed up. http://benzoisland.org/index.html
Val,
I’ve just started going to a peer run group that practices a form of CBT. I’ve never been able to handle the mental health practitioners that practice CBT, but I’m actually excited about this peer led group.
Let me know how you find your therapy…so many people find CBT helpful—I’ve yet to make it work for me…
Here’s to both of us getting some good coping skills!
Glad to hear you’ve had a fairly decent spell…
I just signed up for some Cognitive Behavioral therapy which will commence 4/22; we’ll see how it goes.
It’s good to hear you feel up to resuming some tapering. I really wish you the best of luck.
Good for you! I’m glad you’ve had some good days. You deserve them.
I, too, have found that the amount of sleep I get is a good predictor of what kind of day I’m going to have. That’s the only really good thing that came from my diagnosis and drugging–I learned how sensitive I really am to the amount of sleep I’m getting. Now that I’m tapering off the trazodone, I’m a little concerned about what I’m going to use to replace it on those nights when I just can’t seem to drift off. Aminos sound like a good idea. I’ll have to do some research.
Take care!