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Deleted member 34060
Hey all,
as many of you I have severe sleeping problems. Please see here my introduction for some background information about myself:
https://www.myptsd.com/threads/maybe-ptsd-not-sure.62396/
So, it has been a couple of years now that if I don’t drink any alcohol I just don’t sleep. I can stay up all night if I want and read or do whatever. Weird thing is that during the following day I’m not tired at all. In earlier times when I didn’t get at least 6 hours of sleep then the follwowing I day I would be extremely tired, yawning all day.
Well, it has been a few years that the very moment I was about to doze away I would jolt up with a feeling I was going to suffocate. Which feels really terrible. And I would wake up 2-3 times a night jolting up with just this suffocation feeling. This is particularly true for sleeping in total darkness and quietness. For a while I helped myself by sleeping on the sofa in the living room to the switched on TV, turning the volume down to a barely audible level.
But now since a few weeks it has gone to the next level. What happens now is that now as soon as I doze away I’m getting horrible dreams. Not sure if you can call it nightmares, but I immediately see catastrophic events. I see small children crashing with their bicyles into walls (which would leave them at least badly injured, if not dead), I see car crashes, trains derailing, airplanes crashing, houses beeing flooded and washed away by tsunamis and all sorts of bad things that, well … aren’t real and couldn’t be really described but are just plain horrible. I see all that from an above perspective. I never dream about anything that really happened to me, I never have any flashbacks.
So … 5-6 beers help with that, they let me just drop like a stone, but the next day is very bad of course, in particular as it makes my vertigo a lot, lot worse. And of course it is not healthy, it gains weight and … oh well, I don’t have to explain why it is not good.
So, by chance I heard that „Prazozin“ is supposed to help with that. And that in particular it is recommended for PTSD. Well, Prazosin is no longer available in Germany as it is actually meant against high blood pressure and this off-label use against nightmares is not acknowledged over here. Prazosin is fairly „old“ and by now they have newer generation meds against which are more efficient to stabilize the BP and have fewer side effects, so they took it off the market.
Now, last year I had a heavy cystitis and prostatitis so they gave me „Tamsulosin“ for easier urine release and I still have a leftover of that. This is like Prazosin an alpha channel blocker and I read in a scientific article that it should basically work the same way, maybe not as great and efficient as Prazosin, but basically yes.
So, I tried it with my leftover of tamsulosin for a few nights, although with a smaller dose. The T. comes as 0.4mg per capsule and one per day is the recommended dose, while for P. 1-2mg before sleeping is recommended. So, the dreams and jolting weren’t gone alltogether, but it was definetely better.
So, I’m not sure what to do now. Maybe this was just a placebo effect, who knows ?
Can anybody here relate ? I would love to hear from you about this. First hand experiences, opinions, anything !
Best regards
Frank
as many of you I have severe sleeping problems. Please see here my introduction for some background information about myself:
https://www.myptsd.com/threads/maybe-ptsd-not-sure.62396/
So, it has been a couple of years now that if I don’t drink any alcohol I just don’t sleep. I can stay up all night if I want and read or do whatever. Weird thing is that during the following day I’m not tired at all. In earlier times when I didn’t get at least 6 hours of sleep then the follwowing I day I would be extremely tired, yawning all day.
Well, it has been a few years that the very moment I was about to doze away I would jolt up with a feeling I was going to suffocate. Which feels really terrible. And I would wake up 2-3 times a night jolting up with just this suffocation feeling. This is particularly true for sleeping in total darkness and quietness. For a while I helped myself by sleeping on the sofa in the living room to the switched on TV, turning the volume down to a barely audible level.
But now since a few weeks it has gone to the next level. What happens now is that now as soon as I doze away I’m getting horrible dreams. Not sure if you can call it nightmares, but I immediately see catastrophic events. I see small children crashing with their bicyles into walls (which would leave them at least badly injured, if not dead), I see car crashes, trains derailing, airplanes crashing, houses beeing flooded and washed away by tsunamis and all sorts of bad things that, well … aren’t real and couldn’t be really described but are just plain horrible. I see all that from an above perspective. I never dream about anything that really happened to me, I never have any flashbacks.
So … 5-6 beers help with that, they let me just drop like a stone, but the next day is very bad of course, in particular as it makes my vertigo a lot, lot worse. And of course it is not healthy, it gains weight and … oh well, I don’t have to explain why it is not good.
So, by chance I heard that „Prazozin“ is supposed to help with that. And that in particular it is recommended for PTSD. Well, Prazosin is no longer available in Germany as it is actually meant against high blood pressure and this off-label use against nightmares is not acknowledged over here. Prazosin is fairly „old“ and by now they have newer generation meds against which are more efficient to stabilize the BP and have fewer side effects, so they took it off the market.
Now, last year I had a heavy cystitis and prostatitis so they gave me „Tamsulosin“ for easier urine release and I still have a leftover of that. This is like Prazosin an alpha channel blocker and I read in a scientific article that it should basically work the same way, maybe not as great and efficient as Prazosin, but basically yes.
So, I tried it with my leftover of tamsulosin for a few nights, although with a smaller dose. The T. comes as 0.4mg per capsule and one per day is the recommended dose, while for P. 1-2mg before sleeping is recommended. So, the dreams and jolting weren’t gone alltogether, but it was definetely better.
So, I’m not sure what to do now. Maybe this was just a placebo effect, who knows ?
Can anybody here relate ? I would love to hear from you about this. First hand experiences, opinions, anything !
Best regards
Frank
