Ambien...Does it work for insomnia??

sheltrpn

I am also on Zoloft and my psychiatrist prescribed me Ambien 10 mg. and I slept maybe 2 hours with it, she recently put me on Zyprexa and I am sleeping wonderfully with that, but it isn't a sleeping med, she added that to my zoloft.

britendarkk

I have taken ambien for over a year for insomnia. It is the only thing I have found that can get me to sleep.I don't get nightmares. For me it works great.

Soibhan

I've also taken Ambien for a while now. It works great for me and I don't believe it affects the way I dream. I've always had some vivid dreams, with or without it. But I sure do sleep great and that's such a blessing.

Fireplace

Soibhan,

How much ambien do you take? I just started it for problems with insomnia due to stress/cortisol and find that if I take it at 11 I wake up at 3 or 4 am and then go back to sleep to maybe 6ish.. I have been trying 5 to 10 mg.. I would like to sleep longer.. have you tried lunesta?

anomoly

ambien gave me nightmares and it would wake me up after a few hours of sleep, then i would be up all night. it works differently for everyone. good luck. sometimes tylenol pm works better than ambien for me.

Astroboy529

Hi:

My doctor told me that Lunesta is virtually identical to Ambien. I don't know first hand and havent tried it. However, if Ambien is a problem, an alternative is Restoril. I found it gave me a much better and longer night of uninterrupted sleep. However, like Ambien, you will build a tolerance to it and have to be careful how much an how often you use it. Another plus with Restoril is that it is available in generic form, called Temazepam. Neither Ambien nor Lunesta have generic forms.

tescak

A friend of mine in high school was on it. I don't believe she had nightmares, and I think it helped her get a full night's sleep. Problem was, if she didn't go to bed right after taking it, she would end up in this childlike hallucination-type state (sitting in her mother's lap and talking like a four-year-old, actually believing it when her little brother told her that he "had her nose"). But keep that in mind, and who knows? It may work for you.

adrbassplyr

It really depends on why you are having insomnia. I had insomnia for 2 years and tried probably a hundred different sleeping pills but the only thing that helped was Klonopin which is an anti anxiety and a benzodiazepine. The problem was I was worrying and thoughts were flying through my mind 100 miles an hour so the klonopin basically calms your mind down so you can sleep and when you fall asleep you stay asleep. I have tried ambien twice and both times I took it I would fall asleep after awhile but then wake up 2 hours later and couldn't go back to sleep. Everyone's bodies work differently and what works for me may not work for you, so my suggestion is to try it out. On a positive note ambien is one of the few drugs that is supposed to be out of one's system in 8 hours, so you won't feel drugged out and sleepy the next day! As far as the nightmares, I have had nightmares for about 2 years on and off and I've had them on many different medications, even the Klonopin, so I wouldn't let that fear keep me from trying the ambien - basically, the nightmares can happen whenever or may never happen.

Kaitrin

It does help somewhat for me, but it takes a long time to start working. For me, I have to take it about an hour and a half before bed, rather than right at bedtime. Most people find that it kicks in more quickly than that, however. It still takes me a while to go to sleep after I go to bed, but I think it helps some. I've also used Lunesta and Klonopin and had similar results.

One drawback is that if I take the medicine and then wake up in the night and get up and do something, I will have amnesia for that time period. For example, several times I've gotten up in the night and read a book for an hour or so, only to have absolutely no memory of what I've read in the morning. I have this same effect with both Ambien and Klonopin. I don't think it's happened with Lunesta, but I'm not sure.