One Week Medal

Rather than bore with every day race commentary, I thought I would give it a week before declaring any kind of real progress on the sleeping drug war. It's been a week now. Actually it has been 8 nights. 8 nights without prescription meds and I'm still here to tell the tale. It hasn't been plain sailing and I'm not expecting that to improve in the near future. It is really hard work. But I have gone 8 nights now without sleeping pills that I was/am so addicted to that I previously haven't been able to last 24 hours without. That's something that I would not have thought possible just a month or so back. Not that I'm doing this on my own merits, mind. I'm still popping pills, just hopefully pills that are a little less invasive. About 3 or so weeks back, I started introducing valerian tablets. Now, I had absolutely no idea what or who valerian was, only that it was a prescription free alternative being promoted to help with sleep issues. Being prescription free, I didn't hold very high expectations for it. But it seems to be doing an ok job. Might just be sugar pills, but I'm not game enough to find out just yet. My sleep patterns are still a little rough. The positive side is that I'm not having too much trouble in falling asleep. That was a big issue prior to my starting on the prescription meds. It would take me hours to fall asleep. So it is good that I haven't compromised that phase. I've starting trying to help the situation by introducing various sleep inducing techniques that I've been reading up on. Trying to stop my mind from starting to race is the biggest problem I face when trying to sleep. It takes some effort not to think, but I am getting a handle on that now.

 

As I mentioned earlier, my sleep patterns are a little inconsistant and disjointed. Over the past 8 nights, I have probably woken 3 to 4 times a night for about 4 nights. I'm then kind of drifting through to the next wake period. One night I went to bed with quite a bad headache and took some painkillers as well. I slept right through the night on that occasion.

 

The main difference I am noticing compared to the prescription meds is the prolonged after effects of the herbal tablets. I haven't expected that from a so called herbal medicine. I've been waking up feeling quite groggy and it takes me nearly through until lunchtime until I really feel like I'm with it again. I don't know if it is because I am not getting a consistant sleep, and that's why I am tired. Or if it as a result of the pills themselves. I wouldn't have expected them to be that strong. Last night I took a punt and took a lower dosage. The result was that I didn't feel it was any more difficult to fall asleep, I slept right through the night (I think), and I felt reasonably bright when I woke up. Was it the lower dose, or was it the longer sleep period ? Can't tell after one night. I think that I'll have to start keeping a log of exactly what I did and what the result was. Right now I'm glad of 2 things. It looks promising that I can learn to sleep again without the aid of addictive prescriptions meds and, if worst comes to worst, I now have an 8 day longer supply if the well ever runs dry.