Silly, I am sorry you have had such a difficult struggle with your health. I know it has to be hard at your age where it interferes with things you want to do. It is good that you are trying to learn more about what you can do to help your situation. However, you really need to enlist your mom's help honey. There may be other medicines your doctor can switch you to if he/she understands the full scope of what you are experiencing. Talk to your Mom and ask her to go with you to talk to the doctor about it.
Let me see if I can maybe help you to understand what you might be going through; but, only your doctor can determine for sure because you have underlying medical circumstances and are likely on other medications. It sounds like what might be happening is that you have been on the same medicine for so long that you have likely reached an "effectiveness flatline" and developed a "tolerance dependency". That does NOT mean you are an addict. An addict is someone who either obtains drugs without a medical need prescription through a doctor OR they can not properly manage their medicines as prescribed by their doctor. It sounds like you have been taking your medicine as prescribed, but your body has simply developed a tolerance where the medication is not as effective as it once was, but withdrawing it brings on unpleasant symptoms also known as withdrawals (WDs). That is aggravating I know, but it is very standard with some drugs.
While Ambien is usually effective in 15 min, a contributing problem factor is that it has a short half life of 2-3 hours. What that means is that within 4-6 hours of the last dose taken all of the Ambien has left your system. Perhaps there is an alternate drug with a longer half life that your doctor can prescribe for you that would smooth things out. Lunesta has half-life of 6 hours so that might give you better relief, but if the medicine is taken regularly the same problem is going to re-develop. You might look into other things that might help you sleep better so you don't feel you need to take something regularly; e.g., hot baths, yoga, herbal teas, etc.
Please be very careful if the doctor suggests changing you to one of the
benzodiazepine family drugs such as xanax, valium, klonopin, librium, etc. Those are quickly addicting and very difficult to discontinue and many are short half life drugs so you would only be temporarily exchanging one problem for a worse one.
Hope that helps some
Good luck sweetie!
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