okay, I guess I can help out here. Little background. ever since I was about 12, just starting the onset of puberty, I have had a terrible time falling asleep. I can be dead tired and it can take me anywhere up to 20 minutes to an hour to fall asleep. I have taken everything imaginable over the counter, except zma (maybe i should try it! lol), until I visited a doc when I was 32. My sleeping problems, understandibly, grew worse when I started using steroids at the ripe old age of 32. My first doc gave me amitryptilines (old school anti-d) which made me feel groggy. After staying up for 3 hours before finally falling asleep, I changed doctors and he gave me ambien. Ambien finally (FINAAALLLY! after 20 years of not being able to fall asleep) gave me that edge so that I can fall asleep fast. I would sleep a night through and wake up the next day feeling fresh! Move up time to present day (34)... Now when I take ambien, 4-5 hours later, I wake up, and just as the above stated, can't fall asleep unless I chew a 1/4 of the pill without water. I fall right back to sleep for the rest of the night. After a while I grew tired of this until a fellow co-worker complained of the same problem - which she was going back to her doctor to get the medicine changed. Anyhow, I talked to my doc and he explained that the Ambien has such a powerful impact, that it's onset is quick and half-life is 4 hours, that when the medicine drops drastically, the body reacts, and the user wakes up. He gave me Ambien Cr which has a longer half life of 6 hours. Guess when I wake up? Yep, you guessed it, 6 hours! Plus, it's so weak, (12.5 mgs over 6 hours instead of the fully wammy of 10mgs within minutes) I could barely fall asleep on it. Sooo, to finally make a long story shorter, today I went back to his office and the nurses gave me ruffly 20 days of Lunesta.
So, tonight I shall try Lunesta and report back on how I sleep. I promise you , it will be much shorter than this post! lol.
On a side a note, a friend of mine had free samples of Ristoril, which is a benzodiazipine medicine, worked WONDERS. I slept 8 hours straight, more natural feeling than anything else I have ever tried, but I hear that if the person who is taking it, will eventually have to up the dosage over time due to the body getting used to it. Also, if the user stops suddenly, that user might have a stroke! So I never bothered to bring that up to the doc. But I have to admit, that was the sleep I have had in a lonnnngg time. From what I have red, Lunesta doesn't build up a tolerance ..
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