Re: stimulants and intolerable insomnia

[Anonymous]

Hi sugargremlin,

I’m on a narcolepsy support forum on Yahoo groups and the people there who have taken Xyrem say it was the worst experience of their lives! Also learned that you need to take periodic drug holidays from the stimulants as one’s tolerance builds up – but talk to your doctor about this. I remember my mom taking drug holidays (she was on ritalin or dexedrine). Met someone just diagnosed with narcolepsy with similar day/nighttime issues as mine and who just started taking modafinil a day after me, which is really useful as we will now compare our progress, keeping in mind that we are all different and the drugs react differently for each of us.

My daytime alertness is good on the modafinil (provigil) but sleep at night is still an issue. I have kept a log for the past 3 weeks to objectively record what I can. After 1 week I will increase the doseage and see if it helps.

The thing about the spontaneous arousals is that many of them were so short in duration that I would not have recognized that I was awake. But it’s just as impairing. So a sleep study was really vital to see what was going on, I would never have known what was happening, nor would my GP. Soooo glad I did the ritalin experiment as it would have been challenging to diagnose without that and the family/clinical history. Not that I’m suggesting people go out and borrow other people’s meds, but I was truly desperate for the daytime ADD symptoms, and found to my complete surprise that it instantly helped my sleep issues.

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