Monday, September 24, 2012

Dream Water or Insomnia Water?


Or in my case, drink to panic and then wake up every few hours to make sure I'm not dead. 
Source


I have just not been sleeping through the night. Not one night in...I don't even know how long. I wake up at 4 or 5 am and lie there in a state of mild unease and anxiety. Sometimes I fall back to sleep and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I take melatonin, sometimes I take Advil PM, sometimes I drink sleepytime tea. Nothing seems to consistently work. The lack of sleep makes me a forgetful, confused and weepy girl. I need a hell of a lot of sleep to function on all cylinders.

Last night, in an effort to get more sleep, I drank a little shot of a natural sleep aid called Dream Water*.

Right after I drank it I went to take my daily dose of Zoloft (I'm serotonin-challenged) and stopped suddenly before I could shake the pill out of the bottle into my palm. I realized with a shock that the "natural" sleep aid I took could have unfortunate interactions with Zoloft.

Then I did what I know I shouldn't have done. I googled drug interactions with zoloft.

The active ingredients in Dream Water are melatonin, 5-HTP and GAMA. I have taken melatonin many times before but was completely unfamiliar with the other two.

The google search led me to a list a mile long of drugs to NEVER TAKE ALONG WITH ZOLOFT. There were little red exclamation points next to each drug name. It may as well have been a giant skull and crossbones and a blinking red neon sign that read "IMMINENT DEATH".

In the list was 5-HTP. Before I panicked too much (I vaguely wondered if I should be making myself barf) I noticed some other medications on the list. They included Advil, almost every cough medicine known to man, and a migraine medication I've taken for years. It appeared as though they put every medication available by prescription AND over the counter on the "do not mix with zoloft" list.  So, I relaxed. I did not commence "fingers down the throat" or "head to the ER" mode. I just went to bed. But my brain continued to worry about the possibility of dying in my sleep so I woke up about every two hours, ALL NIGHT LONG. Thanks Dream Water!

What I realized, though, was that as much as I hurt and often wish to be relieved of the pain and work of grief, I don't want to die. I'm not ready to go. Even the thought of being with Dave again isn't enough to give me a real death wish of any kind.

There are times when I see young families and think that maybe my chance for that is over and was taken from me the day Dave breathed his last. There are times when I wish for an end to my pain. But not once have I actually wished to die.

I want to live. I want to feel true joy and happiness again.  I know deep down that I deserve it.

At the very least, I have now recorded these thoughts I'm able to have on a "good day" and can remind myself that I've felt this way, this hopeful, and that I can feel it again. I can access that emotion again. Maybe on a bad day I won't be receptive to this feeling, but it's there. It's filed away for later. The terrible, black days always have a light at the end of them.

Knowing that is sometimes the only way through the days when hauling myself out of bed feels impossible.

*This is not an ad for Dream Water. It would be a pretty crappy ad, if so. 

7 comments:

  1. Interesting research and helpful text. Thank you for your time writing it.

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  2. Sleep is sooo important, we learn how much so when there is a lack of it. I, too, have sleep issues, and hence functioning issues the next day. Do you get plenty of physical exercise? I find if I am really tired from walking, biking, swimming or whatever, it helps my sleep.

    You so do deserve joy and happiness again, I search for something joyful everyday, can't wait until it occupies more space in my life than it does now. I keep thinking about it, and maybe someday those thoughts will just transform me into that state again. Hope you have sweet dreams again, without the Dream Water!

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  3. Thanks, Anon!
    I do get a lot of exercise, though I could get even more, I suppose. Maybe I'm just not getting tired enough during the day, though.

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  4. You know what works for sleep issues? Lorazepam! (Ativan) I keep it for those bad nights, because I too have noticed that sleep deprivation makes EVERYTHING WORSE.
    And we don't need that. (You can take it with Zoloft.)

    You know, I keep thinking that I need to test my survival instinct by going bungee jumping or something. You have found a much less involved way of discovering something really valuable about yourself. It's important to realize that we really, actually do want to live. I haven't achieved that yet. I keep thinking about Romeo and Juliet, and their lovely romantic end. Of course, they were mad at their parents, and they were also self-involved teenagers. Sigh.

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  5. I know that I cycle. I could not sleep more than 4 or 5 hours in the first 2 months then slowly I worked up to sleeping 8 hours. Now I am at almost 6 months and I am back to waking up at 4:00 am. It sucks. I agree that the lack of sleep makes us more forgetful and less engaged.

    I have no death wish at all. I know my husband would kick my butt if I chose to leave our grown children. He had no choice(massive heart attack will do that).

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  6. I crave a decent nights sleep! Seems no matter what I do, all I can achieve is 3-5 hours! Then toss and turn! Greg counselor says, " sleep when ou can..." that's great if you don't have a job to do!

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  7. and, Does the Dream Water help?

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