Home sleep aids?

[Alex K]

Hey Losty,

Do I understand you correctly that you do sleep, but the sleep you get does not make you feel well rested and does not restore your strength?
If that's so, that's a bit worrysome and I would see a sleep lab asap to monitor you a few nights. One of the things causing such symptoms is sleep apnoe for example, and you suffering from asthma, it doesn't seem so far-fetched.

To throw another random thing out there, do you have any potential sources of carbon monoxide in your flat such as maladjusted boilers?

[SteelCurtain]

There's a lot of research out there that says it's the pain pills being a disastrously poor long term pain management tool.

http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2089371

Patients develop a tolerance and need more and more of an incredibly addictive substance, and if they ever come off, most patients report an increase in base level pain. Losty, I'd imagine your sleep issues are a direct result of these pain pills, I'd talk to your doctor.

I was speaking more to my experience with opiate free pain management, but yeah there's that.

Sorry, didn't mean to generalize.

[Jackalope]

I was speaking more to my experience with opiate free pain management, but yeah there's that.

Sorry, didn't mean to generalize.

It's cool... I wasn't exactly explicit on that point.

[vorlon13]

Benadryl and dramamine have the same active ingredient.  Check price per mg and get which ever is cheaper.

Either is very safe, even at high dosages, and just 2 or 3 dramamine would knock me out.  In my days before 12 Steppers, that was the safest and least side effecty thing I took.  And note, regardless of what else I was abusing, the dramamine always put me to sleep.

Yep.  Benadryl, even just one, was just the thing back when I was using cocaine daily.  (Kids, dont do that.)

Back in the day, one could mail order bottles of 100 diphenhydramine tablet (IIRC, that is the moniker) bottles from the skeezy ads in the back of humor magazines and worse.  I'd order them 10 bottles at a time for a price break and to save on S/H.

And there were other pills that could be acquired that way too; caffeine (up to 357 mg/pill), ephedra (I did scads of that), the decongestant drug that you have to ask for at the pharmacy now, (I forget precise name) and other nasties.

Curiously, in nearly 3 decades of 12 Stepping, I've encountered damn few others that abused ephedra, (or considered their use of it abuse maybe) although a nice lady I know made a meeting topic of it once, along with other OTC(ish) drugs she fancied.

A friend of mine dated a guy who's roommate blew up their kitchen trying to make something (not meth) and was lucky the damn house didn't burn down.


And there's more stuff I won't discuss here . . .

 

[Jackalope]

Yeah, I wouldn't discuss my many indiscretions either.

[robvalue]

Field experiments have shown my voice is "soothing" and "aids sleep".

(My wife has fallen asleep in the middle of many of our late night conversations. She's not the only one either.)

[Jackalope]

Field experiments have shown my voice is "soothing" and "aids sleep".

(My wife has fallen asleep in the middle of many of our late night conversations. She's not the only one either.)

Oh, you poor bastard.

[robvalue]

Lol

I'm then left wondering how long I've been talking to myself

[brewer]

For those of you extolling the virtues of diphenhydramine (Benadryl) there is a new study out just recently that links anticholinergics to altered cognition and brain atrophy in otherwise normal older adults.

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2016/images...041116.pdf

I also was a Benadryl proponent (used it for years) until I read the study. Now that I'm pushing 60 I'm not going to take any chances and limit my exposure to anticholinergics. I suggest that you make your own risk vs reward assessment. I know that you're not that old (yet).

Just stopped the Benadryl 2 nights ago. Not sleeping to well either.

[Faith No More]

Not that it'll cure your insomnia, but you could always try a white noise generator. I simply use a fan to create noise, and I can't sleep without it anymore.

If you do decide to use OTC medication, I've been using Zzzz-Quil with some moderate results. It's essentially Ny-Quil without the DXM or acetaminophen, which doesn't knock me out, but it does seem to make me sleep more soundly. Of course, there's a bit of a trade-off in that it makes me feel a little groggy the next day.

You have my sympathies, Losty. Insomnia is a real bitch to deal with.