u/dur4354

Hi there. M25 here. I had quit Lorazepam 1 mg, Escitalopram 10 mg, Fluvoxamine 50 mg and Zolpidem 10 mg Cold Turkey after taking all of them regularly for only 21 days. I had self harm intrusive thoughts going on a continuous loop(Probably a form of OCD) and general anxiety beginning 1 month prior to my medications. These significantly impacted my daily life and because i became very worried due to the self harm thoughts my sleep got disrupted as well. I went a week with only 4 hours of sleep in total in Late December because of all that. I finally went to the psychiatrist and he got me admitted at a psych ward for observation and started me on the said meds . I will tell the exact dates when i started on them (when i got admitted) and when i quit- 5 Jan 2026 and 25 Jan 2026 respectively.

I thought the withdrawal wouldn't be much harder and i could cope with whatever came in my way.

My anxiety and the negative thoughts didnt improve much in the meantime, but my sleep was pretty much normal. I felt what they call akathisia or internal restlessness for around2 weeks in late Feb and Early March which then ceased and i could still feel pretty normal.

Now 2 months after stopping the meds( exact date is 24 March 2026), i began getting sleep disturbances again. I would go on to have completely sleepless nights(days as well) for the following 10 days before i got little sleep ranging from around half and hour to 2 hr for the next 4 or 5 days that followed after the sleepless nights.

After that, again from 15th April till now, I have had many sleepless nights and barring them, on most nights i have got maximum of only 1 or 2 hour of sleep each night that too very shallow. I thought the sleep disturbances were only temporary and would not last this long. I never thought that i would not get even 5 hour of sleep for a single night after being sleep deprived that badly.

Initially i was hesitant to go back on the medicnes because i was aware that this might be due to withdrawal and going back would probably mean losing all the improvement i had accumulated in the 3 months. But after 1 month of sleep disturbance of this extreme level combined with increasingly intense self harm thoughts and mental changes, i finally decided to go back to a psychiatrist. In the meanwhile, it had been around 36 days(5 weeks) and i had got less than 12 hours of sleep for each week. (

Fast forward, I visited another psychiatrist on 30th april 2026 and described everything i was going through including the decision to quit without consulting the previous psychiatrist. He prescribed Clonazepam 0.5 mg and Escitalopram 10 mg and said to re-visit him after 7 days.

I took both the meds as prescribed. I got 6 hours of sleep for the first two nights when i started them back, but the following nights, the story remained the same-i didn't get any sleep at all or got around 1 hr of shallow sleep at most.

After 7 days(last Thursday) when i again visited him, i told him that clonazepam wasn't working too well either, and it was then that he told me to stop clonazepam and start zolpidem instead. I was already skeptical about quitting clonazepam abruptly this time, so i asked him if it was okay to stop it cold turkey again after 7 days(I took it only for so long) and he said that i was completely okay. I was very confused in my mind as to what should i do now as i couldn't take both of them together-both of them being CNS depressants and about cold turkeying another benzo again. I finally decided to go with the doctor and began taking zolpidem 12.5 mg the same night. Escitalopram was told to be continued further(i take one in the morning). My blood pressure has also risen from all this. I got a 150/90 reading both the times i went to the psychiatrist.

Even after being on zolpidem, my sleep hasn't improved a bit. For these 5 days since i started on zolpidem i didn't get more than 1 or 1.5 hours of sleep every night. Tonight was almost a sleepless night as well. One thing i forgot to add is that whenever i fall asleep, its like my brain immediately realizes its falling asleep and gets back to being awake like it doesn't want to sleep anymore or that sleep is something it doesn't remember anymore or has deleted from its system(it is not a very clear example but it is what i feel).

Not to mention, my entire life has come to a pause and i am basically bed ridden at this point. In the beginning, i tried many things to tire myself out or regulate my circadian rhythm thinking my sleep problems may be due to it, but nothing helped. I rememeber when the sleep troubles began i was jogging around 4 km and walking the same distance each day besides the usual walking you do in your day to day life. I even tried putting the phone away three hours before sleep, following routine sleep hours, reading myself to sleep but none worked. So i abamdoned them all after around 10 to 12 days of trying all those techniques to get my body to sleep.

I get constant racing thoughts at night, i cannot figure out anything or make simple plans, i have difficulty doing simple analysis or doing critical thinking. I am ruminating 24x7 despite not wanting to and on top of all that, the suicidal thoughts are always there with me on a continous loop.

So, to conclude it, i haven't slept more than 1 hour each night on an average with around 20 sleepless nights in 52 days and feeling like that i am not a human anymore. I don't have an idea what is going to happen in the future to me.

Hi there. M25 here. I had quit Lorazepam 1 mg, Escitalopram 10 mg, Fluvoxamine 50 mg and Zolpidem 10 mg Cold Turkey after taking all of them regularly for only 21 days. I had self harm intrusive thoughts going on a continuous loop(Probably a form of OCD) and general anxiety beginning 1 month prior to my medications. These significantly impacted my daily life and because i became very worried due to the self harm thoughts my sleep got disrupted as well. I went a week with only 4 hours of sleep in total in Late December because of all that. I finally went to the psychiatrist and he got me admitted at a psych ward for observation and started me on the said meds . I will tell the exact dates when i started on them (when i got admitted) and when i quit- 5 Jan 2026 and 25 Jan 2026 respectively.

I thought the withdrawal wouldn't be much harder and i could cope with whatever came in my way.

My anxiety and the negative thoughts didnt improve much in the meantime, but my sleep was pretty much normal. I felt what they call akathisia or internal restlessness for around2 weeks in late Feb and Early March which then ceased and i could still feel pretty normal.

Now 2 months after stopping the meds( exact date is 24 March 2026), i began getting sleep disturbances again. I would go on to have completely sleepless nights(days as well) for the following 10 days before i got little sleep ranging from around half and hour to 2 hr for the next 4 or 5 days that followed after the sleepless nights.

After that, again from 15th April till now, I have had many sleepless nights and barring them, on most nights i have got maximum of only 1 or 2 hour of sleep each night that too very shallow. I thought the sleep disturbances were only temporary and would not last this long. I never thought that i would not get even 5 hour of sleep for a single night after being sleep deprived that badly.

Initially i was hesitant to go back on the medicnes because i was aware that this might be due to withdrawal and going back would probably mean losing all the improvement i had accumulated in the 3 months. But after 1 month of sleep disturbance of this extreme level combined with increasingly intense self harm thoughts and mental changes, i finally decided to go back to a psychiatrist. In the meanwhile, it had been around 36 days(5 weeks) and i had got less than 12 hours of sleep for each week. (

Fast forward, I visited another psychiatrist on 30th april 2026 and described everything i was going through including the decision to quit without consulting the previous psychiatrist. He prescribed Clonazepam 0.5 mg and Escitalopram 10 mg and said to re-visit him after 7 days.

I took both the meds as prescribed. I got 6 hours of sleep for the first two nights when i started them back, but the following nights, the story remained the same-i didn't get any sleep at all or got around 1 hr of shallow sleep at most.

After 7 days(last Thursday) when i again visited him, i told him that clonazepam wasn't working too well either, and it was then that he told me to stop clonazepam and start zolpidem instead. I was already skeptical about quitting clonazepam abruptly this time, so i asked him if it was okay to stop it cold turkey again after 7 days(I took it only for so long) and he said that i was completely okay. I was very confused in my mind as to what should i do now as i couldn't take both of them together-both of them being CNS depressants and about cold turkeying another benzo again. I finally decided to go with the doctor and began taking zolpidem 12.5 mg the same night. Escitalopram was told to be continued further(i take one in the morning). My blood pressure has also risen from all this. I got a 150/90 reading both the times i went to the psychiatrist.

Even after being on zolpidem, my sleep hasn't improved a bit. For these 5 days since i started on zolpidem i didn't get more than 1 or 1.5 hours of sleep every night. Tonight was almost a sleepless night as well. One thing i forgot to add is that whenever i fall asleep, its like my brain immediately realizes its falling asleep and gets back to being awake like it doesn't want to sleep anymore or that sleep is something it doesn't remember anymore or has deleted from its system(it is not a very clear example but it is what i feel).

Not to mention, my entire life has come to a pause and i am basically bed ridden at this point. In the beginning, i tried many things to tire myself out or regulate my circadian rhythm thinking my sleep problems may be due to it, but nothing helped. I rememeber when the sleep troubles began i was jogging around 4 km and walking the same distance each day besides the usual walking you do in your day to day life. I even tried putting the phone away three hours before sleep, following routine sleep hours, reading myself to sleep but none worked. So i abamdoned them all after around 10 to 12 days of trying all those techniques to get my body to sleep.

I get constant racing thoughts at night, i cannot figure out anything or make simple plans, i have difficulty doing simple analysis or doing critical thinking. I am ruminating 24x7 despite not wanting to and on top of all that, the suicidal thoughts are always there with me on a continous loop.

So, to conclude it, i haven't slept more than 1 hour each night on an average with around 20 sleepless nights in 52 days and feeling like that i am not a human anymore. I don't have an idea what is going to happen in the future to me.

Hi there. M25 here. I had quit Lorazepam 1 mg, Escitalopram 10 mg, Fluvoxamine 50 mg and Zolpidem 10 mg Cold Turkey after taking all of them regularly for only 21 days. I had self harm intrusive thoughts going on a continuous loop(Probably a form of OCD) and general anxiety beginning 1 month prior to my medications. These significantly impacted my daily life and because i became very worried due to the self harm thoughts my sleep got disrupted as well. I went a week with only 4 hours of sleep in total in Late December because of all that. I finally went to the psychiatrist and he got me admitted at a psych ward for observation and started me on the said meds . I will tell the exact dates when i started on them (when i got admitted) and when i quit- 5 Jan 2026 and 25 Jan 2026 respectively.

I thought the withdrawal wouldn't be much harder and i could cope with whatever came in my way.

My anxiety and the negative thoughts didnt improve much in the meantime, but my sleep was pretty much normal. I felt what they call akathisia or internal restlessness for around2 weeks in late Feb and Early March which then ceased and i could still feel pretty normal.

Now 2 months after stopping the meds( exact date is 24 March 2026), i began getting sleep disturbances again. I would go on to have completely sleepless nights(days as well) for the following 10 days before i got little sleep ranging from around half and hour to 2 hr for the next 4 or 5 days that followed after the sleepless nights.

After that, again from 15th April till now, I have had many sleepless nights and barring them, on most nights i have got maximum of only 1 or 2 hour of sleep each night that too very shallow. I thought the sleep disturbances were only temporary and would not last this long. I never thought that i would not get even 5 hour of sleep for a single night after being sleep deprived that badly.

Initially i was hesitant to go back on the medicnes because i was aware that this might be due to withdrawal and going back would probably mean losing all the improvement i had accumulated in the 3 months. But after 1 month of sleep disturbance of this extreme level combined with increasingly intense self harm thoughts and mental changes, i finally decided to go back to a psychiatrist. In the meanwhile, it had been around 36 days(5 weeks) and i had got less than 12 hours of sleep for each week. (

Fast forward, I visited another psychiatrist on 30th april 2026 and described everything i was going through including the decision to quit without consulting the previous psychiatrist. He prescribed Clonazepam 0.5 mg and Escitalopram 10 mg and said to re-visit him after 7 days.

I took both the meds as prescribed. I got 6 hours of sleep for the first two nights when i started them back, but the following nights, the story remained the same-i didn't get any sleep at all or got around 1 hr of shallow sleep at most.

After 7 days(last Thursday) when i again visited him, i told him that clonazepam wasn't working too well either, and it was then that he told me to stop clonazepam and start zolpidem instead. I was already skeptical about quitting clonazepam abruptly this time, so i asked him if it was okay to stop it cold turkey again after 7 days(I took it only for so long) and he said that i was completely okay. I was very confused in my mind as to what should i do now as i couldn't take both of them together-both of them being CNS depressants and about cold turkeying another benzo again. I finally decided to go with the doctor and began taking zolpidem 12.5 mg the same night. Escitalopram was told to be continued further(i take one in the morning). My blood pressure has also risen from all this. I got a 150/90 reading both the times i went to the psychiatrist.

Even after being on zolpidem, my sleep hasn't improved a bit. For these 5 days since i started on zolpidem i didn't get more than 1 or 1.5 hours of sleep every night. Tonight was almost a sleepless night as well. One thing i forgot to add is that whenever i fall asleep, its like my brain immediately realizes its falling asleep and gets back to being awake like it doesn't want to sleep anymore or that sleep is something it doesn't remember anymore or has deleted from its system(it is not a very clear example but it is what i feel).

Not to mention, my entire life has come to a pause and i am basically bed ridden at this point. In the beginning, i tried many things to tire myself out or regulate my circadian rhythm thinking my sleep problems may be due to it, but nothing helped. I rememeber when the sleep troubles began i was jogging around 4 km and walking the same distance each day besides the usual walking you do in your day to day life. I even tried putting the phone away three hours before sleep, following routine sleep hours, reading myself to sleep but none worked. So i abamdoned them all after around 10 to 12 days of trying all those techniques to get my body to sleep.

I get constant racing thoughts at night, i cannot figure out anything or make simple plans, i have difficulty doing simple analysis or doing critical thinking. I am ruminating 24x7 despite not wanting to and on top of all that, the suicidal thoughts are always there with me on a continous loop.

So, to conclude it, i haven't slept more than 1 hour each night on an average with around 20 sleepless nights in 52 days and feeling like that i am not a human anymore. I don't have an idea what is going to happen in the future to me.