Brain drain and sleep problems

[Guest guest]

Glitter said:

<<For me, it's the inability to think -- to form coherent thought, to be

able to think craetively, to have no memory of recent events, to have word

retrieval problems -- sometimes my brain feels like some cotton batting

taking up space in my cranial cavity and nothing more.>>

I experience the same thing, Glitter. I get stupid. I'm three years

post-withdrawal....it used to be a lot worse. I look forward to continued

improvement.

Regarding an earlier thread concerning difficulties with sleeping, messed-up

Circadian rhythms, etc: I experienced a lot of trouble with sleeping for

probably the first two years post-drugs. I still go through periods of time

when I have difficulty sleeping (brains take a long time to heal...).

Early on in my withdrawal process, I found out that I had absolutely no

concept of normal sleep. I hadn't slept without drugs (Risperdal or

Seroquel, sometimes paired with trazodone) in well over a decade. Drugging

myself into oblivion every night gave me some pretty warped ideas about

sleep.

I became upset and alarmed when I didn't pass into unconsciousness the

minute my head hit the pillow. I had almost no tolerance for that period of

drifting before sleep, when the mind goes to unusual places and worries can

spring up unbidden. I became panic-stricken at the thought of two or three

nights in a row where I got insufficient sleep.

While supplements like magnesium and calcium were quite helpful in getting

me to sleep, they didn't always keep me asleep, and I had to learn to accept

those frequently-occurring days when I had to try and function on just a few

hours' sleep. I used to get pretty crazy when sleep-deprived, so accepting

it wasn't an easy thing to do.

I ended up approaching it the same way I approached withdrawal. I told

myself that everything I was experiencing was just from lack of sleep. I

reminded myself that my brain was healing, and brains take time to heal. It

wasn't me, and I wasn't crazy. I was just tired.

That approach seemed to give me a little control over the whole problem.

Every time I repeated that little mantra to myself, it got me to step back a

bit and watch what was going on with me, instead of jumping right in and

reacting to everything with maximum emotional drama (I can do the drama

thing really well, LOL).

Once I got myself stepped back a bit, I was able to be much calmer about the

whole thing. I saw that, while I had some pretty uncomfortable symptoms, I

didn't die from it, my life wasn't ruined, and eventually, I WOULD get some

solid sleep. When I removed that element of panic, the whole became much

less threatening, which in turn enabled me to sleep better.

I still have a lot of nights where I don't sleep very well and I wake up

feeling tired the next day. (This is another area where I look forward to

continued improvement.) It doesn't happen as often as it used to happen,

however, and I am far less affected by it. I don't get nearly as crazy as I

used to get from sleep deprivation. I think a lot of that improvement is

due to my brain gradually healing, but much of it also comes from my

deliberate change in perspective.

I've begun to notice that many of the coping skills I had to develop to

survive the withdrawal have transferred themselves into other areas of my

life. It definitely makes up for some of the suffering.

Speaking of sleep, it's definitely time for me to go to bed. Good night!

Kim