I am starting to have trouble sleeping again. For the last month or so I’ve been waking up every hour or so. Often I can go back to sleep. But when I do I’m still plagued with plenty more awakenings.
When I first got diagnosed I was having horrible sleeping issues. I couldn’t go to sleep. My mind would spin. I would relive every interaction that I had had and analyze every minute detail. I would run scenarios over and over, especially if it was a dramatic, or perceived dramatic event. I would plot and plan how I would interact with people the next day. With all this shit going on I could go a week with very little sleep. Oh how tired I’d be, yet my mind just wouldn’t stop. At my worst I was averaging 4 hours of sleep a day for maybe 2 weeks straight.
Then came the seroquel. I would take 75mg and soon after I would sleep all night. I’ve been doing that for a good year. Although, I do feel that I’ve lost a lot of insight from the loss of nightly intellectual churning, I was still happy to have that off switch. If I was stressed about something and I felt that I needed to analyze deeply, I would just not take my dose. If I didn’t take my pills I would find it near impossible to sleep.
Well lately it’s not the falling asleep that has changed; it’s the staying asleep part that is killing me. We have recently upped my dosage to 200mg to 300mg a day due to my mood instability. I truly don’t know if the sleep pattern correlates with the change in dosage. I think this issue has been creeping up and lately has gotten to the point that it has become very noticeable. How can I not sleep with that much dope in me.
Another thing that corresponds the awakenings is nightmares. I don’t know if it really has to do with it or not. I am embarrassed to even mention it, but hey it’s my fucking blog. But I have been getting these horrible dreams with a shadow person in them. Like a spectral, insubstantial yet tangible, ethereal, opaque, ring wrath with hood and the works. I know this sounds stupid, but as manly as I try to portray myself, these dreams cause me anxiety. It is always real world images of my room. He come in and slowly walks around my bed, getting ever closer. Often he touches me or holds me down so I can’t breathe. It’s weird, I know I’m dreaming but I can’t wake up. I feel paralyzed as I try mentally to move, overcome and combat his crushing weight, shake my wife for help, or try to ask for help. I go into panic mode, trying to awake. It just seems that I can only stare as he comes for me. I usually wake up at some point once the fear culminates to the point of breaking. Here are the strongest and most prominent ones lately. He came in and leaned over me and kissed me forcing my mouth open and began to pump his essence into my mouth through a sort of proboscis. I awoke before his essence could perform its intended purpose. In the other one he grabbed my feet and began to drag me off the bed and out the dog door, my struggling reaching no avail. It wasn’t my physical body, but a fully formed shadow of myself - my soul possibly, yet totally my very living quintessence. I knew if he got me passed that door there was no coming back. I woke up just as my arms’ strength gave way and the last of myself was consumed through the orifice. Not only is the dream filled with overpowering dread, there is always a feeling of pure evil in my room as I awake. Often I roll over, reposition myself, and try to think of something different to try to not go right back into the same dream when I fall back asleep. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I can’t get back to sleep due to strong feelings of dread. I wouldn’t even mention it, but for the fact that it has escalated in frequency. I have had these dreams occasionally as far back as I can remember. Occasionally being the optimum word here. Try waking up to that shit 1 to 5 times a night where you aren’t even safe in your sleep. It gets real old quickly. No wonder they call them night terrors. I have to deal with the demons inside me daily while roaming this earth; it doesn’t seem fair to have to battle them nightly as well.
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3 comments:
i also suffer from terrible insomnia. The seroquel (100mgs) helps but when i dont take it i toss and turn all night, reliving every bit of minuetia that occurred during my day. Its ridiculous. Its to the point now that if i dont take my meds, ive accepted the fact that i will not sleep. I HATE IT!
I guess we just have to stick with the meds, and try to get as stable as we can and hope it works out for the best.
Mutha - Yes, exactly. Although I can occasionally be lazy and take a nap during the middle of the day. I this is depression though – not wanting to deal with waking life. Yet when I do take a midday nap, my awakenings are compounded. I wake up every 15 min or so and look at the clock, although each mini-nap seems like an hr. Each dream seems in real time. But yes, for the most part if I don’t take my seroquel I expect not to sleep, but to perpetually toss and turn until I finally just get up and take the damn pills. The weird thing is that with 300mg in me you would think I could stay asleep until the alarm goes off and then likely hit the snooze excessively. I hate when you try to go blank only to realize a few mins later that you are well into a complex analysis of the day’s minutiae. (Hey, I had to use it!)
Later, Ash out…
I've had the dream with the shadow person on zyprexa before. Scary!!! It felt like the thing was right on top of me and I was awake but couldn't move my body. There's also some comments about seroquel and bad dreams here: http://www.furiousseasons.com/archives/2007/02/seroquel_and_bad_dreams.html
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