What To Do About Nightmares?

[Sues]

I use the sleeping pills to just fall asleep. They really don't have any influence on whether I have nightmares or not. I wish it was as easy as just taking a pill, and bam! no more nightmares. But no such luck.

 

[Gamereign555]

The dose on Prazosin can be increased if needed, I take 2 mg capsule before bed. The nightmares are gone, along with the night sweats. I was having dreams I would describe as both vivid and gruesome content, either suffering disfiguring injury or witnessing something fatal. My last nightmare, I walked off a cliff in the dark and fell all the way down to the bottom. I then got up and walked around on broken bones. I also recall dreams in which I would be walking around my hometown down a familiar street. I played with roadkill after I fell back asleep I was in the same spot in my bizarre dream and realized that I was impaled through my chest and out my back with a long piece of wood, I could feel the awkwardness of the muscles trying to move with it sticking out of my chest as I walked down the road. I only felt anxious and disturbed after I woke up and thought about how messed up the experience was.

I also had cryptic but violent dreams about both my stepfathers, it was one of them with the other's face, I was hiding from him, he found me and grabbed me by my neck and was screaming at me... I considered this cluster of nightmarish dreams as flashback related, it was a reminder that the stepfather I was blaming for early childhood abuse was not the only father figure who was mentally and physically abusive to me, that one rocked me pretty bad but I learned something from it. My worst nightmare yet was absolutely terrifying and was considered a 'false awakening' and also a 'lucid' dream. When I became aware of my inability to wake up, I started to look for signs, differences in what reality was for a way out and suddenly I was floating above myself lying in bed. I looked around in disbelief and amazement but then was suddenly pushed back into my head and body, a very strong force on my chest. My eyes opened and I gasped and couldn't move, the room looked the same and I stared at the wall. I was paralyzed and had a strong sense of what was behind me.....it was black and appeared to be shrouded in a robe or something. I could not turn around to confirm it was a dream and that there was really nothing there, I looked at the door way to my room and the hall light was on, light creeping in from under the closed door. Suddenly I felt a slight pressure on my left shoulder and in a very vivid, precise tone whispered in my ear " You can wake up now".

I gasped again, was alerted... I looked at the doorway, it was open, and the hall light was off. I somehow knew I was awake and the nightmare was over, The dark figure I was sure was behind me was still in my head and I seemed to be unable to move easily as I thought of the experience. It probably took me 10 minuites of psyching myself up and telling myself it was a dream...

No amount of Prazosin would have prevented that last nightmare. High levels of distress and anguish not to mention the exhaustion of the panic attacks take their toll on your mind and you can end up experiencing some of the rarer types of dissociation such as derealization and depersonalization. This happen to occur while I was passing out from exhaustion. I started dreaming while I was at a certain level of awake and sleep and I ended up experiencing depersonalization in and out of my nightmare. The result was pretty damn scary.

My point is that you have to keep your anxiety in check and depression as well. If you are on meds for those issues and prazosin isn't working, then there might be an issue with your other meds, either they aren't pulling their weight anymore or they are causing sleep disturbances. More than likely it is a sign you should switch SSRI or up the dose possibly. Or take more Prazosin, under doctor approval that is. Also don't take Prazosin while intending to stay awake, it isn't dangerous really to do so aside from a bit of dizziness on standing. It only works in my experience if you take it just once approximately every 24 hours, right before bed to up to an hour before bed. So just one per day before bed. More than that and it seems to lose most of its effect when you need it most. If you start having hazy dreams that are hard to understand one night and then vivid adventurous dreams then that is normal and its working to keep you calm. Perhaps it is possible that the drug isn't working for you after all but that's an issue of dosage or a result of contradiction from other meds. However I did hear from my doc that it doesn't have the desired effects for people who do not suffer from ptsd, the only other body part prazosin effects is your prostate lol.