Trazodone Withdrawal
I’ve been suffering with insomnia for over 6 Months. I know these forums can be of a negative bias however I’m in a real low patch feel like it’s ruined my life. It started after my 7 year old daughter had unusual patch of not sleeping and keeping me and my partner up for 4-5 weeks straight. She suddenly went back to sleeping however I couldn’t recover I progressively got worse and worse sleep both struggling to fall asleep and stay asleep, getting around 2-4 hours, it was always particularly bad when I had something important on the next day, I tried everything to resolve it myself, sleep hygiene & CBTI based, but it started causing day time anxiety impacting my work and social life, hence went to my GP.
After an unsuccessful trial of antihistamines I was prescribed Trazodone as the solution to the anxiety and insomnia back in January. Looking back I feel like this is where things really took a turn for the worse. I started on 75mg it made me sleep 7-8 hours from the off however I had a horrific adjustment period, unbearable anxiety and depression for 2 weeks straight while the doctors simply said ‘‘stick with it, you’re body will adjust’’. I did level out to the point where it was bearable but felt like I wasn’t getting real rest, day time fatigue, over worrying about everything, symptoms of depression and brain fog was a big issue.
After a few weeks my sleep started falling off again waking up early, getting 4-5 hours, with the day time effects this felt worse than before so decided to come off the tablets after a couple months of taking them. Dropped to 50mg initially had some withdrawal which lasted couple weeks then settled, sleep wasn’t effected that much. After another couple weeks decided to drop to 38mg and really started to feel myself again which was great so decided to drop to 25mg the week after, again fluctuating between 4-5 hours each night.
One week after the drop to 25mg withdrawal really set in, it started with a full blown panic attack out of nowhere then dizzy spells, brain fog, weird physical sensations and jerks, disorientation, uncontrollable crying and depression everyday. It’s been 2 weeks of this and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Has anybody else have any experience with this level of withdrawal? How long did it last?
Sticking with 25mg dose for now and following CBTi principles but I was meant to start a new job this week and had to tell them I can’t start so have huge financial pressure to be better soon as well.
Hoping some of you can offer worse of support.