Finding HopeMy Experience of Temazepam
Posted on February 19, 2022
When I started taking medication for my ADHD, my sleep cycle went to hell and, after a couple of months, I was almost nocturnal, going to sleep between four and six am and struggling up in the afternoon. None of my usual strategies – listening to audiobooks or films, writing stories in my head, different bedding, and so on – were working; even the sleeping pills that I’ve taken on and off when my sleep has gotten bad in the past haven’t helped. After months of struggling, my GP prescribed Temazepam to hopefully help reorientate my sleep schedule.
As always with posts about medication, this is just my experience and I am not a doctor, nor do I have any medical training. Please don’t start, change, or stop taking any medications without the advice and support of a medical professional.
Temazepam is a benzodiazepine most commonly used to treat sleep problems like insomnia. It usually starts to work within half an hour and the effects are supposed to last for approximately eight hours. It can become addictive so it’s not recommended that a person take Temazepam for longer than a month. As with many medications, it does have side effects, the most common being drowsiness during the day, lightheadedness, and dry mouth. Often the side effects will dissipate as a person’s body adjusts to the medication. (x)
I was prescribed two weeks worth of Temazepam and although I was initially hopeful, I was quickly disappointed. Of the fourteen times I took the pills, I think I managed to get to sleep within two hours less than five times. Apart from those few occasions, I was still struggling to sleep, awake for most of the night, and sleeping into the afternoon, as hard as I tried to force myself up at a more reasonable time. Alarms didn’t work, daylight was painful, and I slept through next door’s drilling; my Mum couldn’t even shake me awake.
I kept taking it, just in case it needed time, but it didn’t get any better. So I went back to my GP to make a new plan – the Temazepam had an expiration date anyway – and she prescribed Melatonin, which my psychiatrist is very supportive of. As it turns out, it’s not unusual for autistic individuals to take Melatonin for sleep issues.
At this point, I’ve been taking Melatonin for two weeks now, first at 2mg and then at 1mg, and it’s a definite improvement over the Temazepam. I’m finally getting some real sleep again, which is great, but I don’t like that I’m feeling drowsy in the day again. So I’m not sure what the long term plan is going to be but I am really grateful to be sleeping again and not being awake all night long.
My First Experience With ADHD Medication
Posted on December 18, 2021
TW: Mentions of self harm and suicidal thoughts.
And ten months after being diagnosed, I finally started taking medication for my ADHD. If you’ve been following this blog, you may remember that I was diagnosed back in January and, due to the disruption it would’ve caused at a crucial point in my Masters, I had to wait to come off my antidepressant (Phenelzine is contraindicated with stimulant medication for ADHD) and then start the ADHD meds. But, as of mid November, I could start taking Xaggitin XL (definitely my most strangely named medication so far); I’d researched it and read multiple accounts that it hadn’t affected creativity and my ADHD specialist didn’t have a problem with trying it when I suggested it. And as I always do, I kept notes; it helps me to remember what each medication was like and hopefully it can be helpful to anyone who might be taking or about to take the same medication. But, as always, it’s important to state that this is a medication I was prescribed by my doctor, according to a plan that we decided on together. This is just my experience; please speak to your doctor if you have any questions about your medication.
WEEK 1 (18mg)
I started to feel the side effects straight away. From the second day, I was experiencing overwhelming, almost constant nausea. It got worse if I rushed around or even stood up for too long and I’d end up curled up on the floor, focussing on just breathing until it passed (by the end of the week, I had figured out and was getting better at avoiding the things that made it worse). That combined with a massive loss of appetite meant I really wasn’t eating much, although most days I managed to force at least one meal down. I also started having trouble with my sleep. It would take me hours to get to sleep – usually between two and four am – which meant that my sleep schedule started to shift. It was so hard to wake up in the morning and that just meant I ended up going to sleep later and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t keep my routine from moving several hours around the clock.
My mental health also took a hit, which wasn’t entirely surprising since I no longer had the Phenelzine in my system. I started to feel overwhelmed and fragile. My anxiety increased and I even had a panic attack, not something I usually struggle with. My depression started to creep back in too; it wasn’t too bad but it was there.
The cough was still hanging around and I had multiple migraines (some that I managed to cut short with medication and some that took me out of commission completely) but both of those could’ve been left over from coming off the Phenelzine, having been big problems throughout that process. I’m not sure.
WEEK 2
The nausea, the lack of appetite, and the trouble sleeping persisted. As did the cough (I’ve taken several COVID tests since it started and they’ve all come back negative). I also felt even more scattered than usual: I couldn’t focus on whatever I tried to do and I started losing my train of thought mid-thought, which was very stressful. I felt completely unable to do anything.
By the end of the week, it felt like everything was starting to fall apart. I was really struggling to write. What I’d thought was just a few bad days (unpleasant but not unheard of) turned into an awful week; the internal flow that makes writing so easy and so calming was suddenly absent and even the forms of writing that have always felt easy (regardless of whatever’s going on with my mental health) felt awkward and forced. My mental health had started to get really bad – my anxiety and depression had gotten a lot worse – and that just made it worse. And on top of that, I had started to have suicidal thoughts again, which I haven’t had – consistently, at least – for years.
WEEK 3 (36mg)
The nausea and lack of appetite were still really bad so I wasn’t eating much. I tried but it was really hard. Sleeping was also difficult. I was wide awake all of the time – like I was highly caffeinated – even late into the night, which didn’t help in my attempts to get my sleep schedule back to normal. Most of my nights were disturbed one way or another and I had one night where I never went to sleep at all; I didn’t even start to feel sleepy until I’d been awake for over thirty six hours. It feels very strange considering that even three months ago I could barely stay awake, even with two Red Bulls in my system; talk about from one extreme to another…
I was still struggling with concentration and my mental state was only declining. I was consistently depressed – feeling hopeless and alone – and there were days where I struggled to get up, not just because of the nausea but because everything felt so overwhelming and difficult. The suicidal thoughts continued and I did self harm once. My anxiety also got worse and I had another panic attack.
WEEK 4
The nausea got even worse, lasting all day and making it even more difficult to eat (or do anything at all, to be honest). And having no appetite didn’t help with that. My sleeping was still awful too, despite how physically exhausted I was starting to feel after so many nights of poor sleep. The cough and difficulty concentrating continued and I had a couple of days that were monopolised by migraines (or maybe one migraine that never quite went away).
My mental health deteriorated further. I was incredibly anxious and my depression just got worse. I’m pretty sure it’s the worst my depression has ever been, based on what’s been going on in my head. The suicidal thoughts continued but they are different to what I’ve experienced in the past. It’s been a lot. I can’t know for sure whether this is down to the lack of antidepressant in my system, a reaction to the ADHD meds, or both.
That last week was a big week, which was unfortunate considering how awful I was feeling; it made it hard to enjoy or get the most out of those events – going back to therapy after several months away, my Mum’s birthday, and a visit from a friend for both work and fun – and then I felt physically worse afterwards, physical exhaustion and pain in addition to the ongoing side effects of the medication.
So it’s been a rough month. The nausea and trouble sleeping has been awful but the anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts have been worse by far. And losing the ability to write has been unbearable. After speaking with both my psychiatrist and ADHD specialist, it’s been decided that I’m going to stop taking the Xaggitin and try Bupropion, which should – hopefully – help my depression as well as my ADHD. So that’s another month gone and the waiting game begins again.
Now That I’ve Finished My Masters…
Posted on September 25, 2021
After two years of being utterly focussed on my Masters, it’s definitely weird not having something specific to work on, having no deadlines to meet, and so on. It’s strange but also a welcome relief: between working on the module of the moment and dealing with whatever the pandemic threw up, plus my health stuff, it’s been an exhausting time. While I’m excited to start working on the next project, whatever that may be, I do need a break first – to rest, recover, and recharge my body and brain – and there’ve been a handful of things I’ve been looking forward to doing for when I finally reached this point.
These are some of the things I’ve held on to when I really felt the exhaustion or my motivation dipped:
- Gentle days – I’ve spent the last couple of months at least working relentlessly on my final project; unless there was a very good reason, I probably spent at least seven hours a day working on various elements of it. I really pushed myself. Unfortunately, my prime working time seems to start around 7pm; that’s when I seem to really get on a roll and sometimes that meant I’d be working until after midnight (those were the really long days), which completely screwed up my sleep schedule. But even if I didn’t get to sleep until 4am, I’d still force myself up as early as I physically could in order to get back to work – my sleep schedule is going to need some serious overhauling. Now that I don’t need to do that, I’m looking forward to having some gentler days. I’m still happiest doing things but it will be nice to do them at a more laidback pace, for a while anyway. I might even sleep in occasionally!
- See more friends and family – I’ve been so buried in this project that I really haven’t seen many of my friends or family, not properly, for ages. I’ve started catching up with people, both over FaceTime and in real life, which has been so, so lovely but there are still too many people that I haven’t seen in far too long. So I’m looking forward to that.
- Read new books – Given that my difficulties with concentration make reading somewhat of a struggle anyway, I could barely manage the reading for my Masters, let alone anything for fun (not that I had much time for that). But I’ve got a list as long as my arm of books I want to read so I’m looking forward to getting into a couple of those. I think I’m gonna start with The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green.
- Watch new TV shows and movies – While working on this final project, especially over the last couple of months, I’ve really only watched familiar things, using them as background noise – something that, most of the time, aids my concentration. I’m now thoroughly bored with all of them and, just like with the books, I have a great list of new things I want to watch, like Black Widow and Girls5eva.
- Swim more – Obviously this isn’t an immediate goal: I’ll have to build up my swimming in accordance with how my hEDS is affecting me. But I am looking forward to doing a bit more here and there and slowly building up. While doing the Masters, I was always aware of how much energy it required, balancing that against the energy I needed to keep working at the necessary pace. So it will be nice to push myself a bit and not worry about whether I’ll need a rest day afterwards, at least until I get into whatever the next project.
- Work on a new project – I have a lot of ideas in the works but they all depend on a bunch of different factors so, as of this moment, I don’t know which one will be my main focus (because, of course, I’ll still be working on the others) but hopefully it won’t be long until I do know and can get started. I’m really terrible at not doing things; I love having a project to work on.
- Release new music – Whatever project I launch into next, I want to keep releasing music. It’s been a while since I released anything new (the acoustic EP was a different kind of release, in my head at least) and I’m dying to put more music out. The Masters was just too big and took up too much of my brain. So, now that that’s done, I’m so excited to start putting stuff out again. I have multiple ideas for bigger bodies of work but those will take time so I’m thinking of releasing a few singles while I pull that next body of work together. There are always songs that I love but that don’t really fit into the concept of an EP or album project so it will be really fun to give them a life out in the world. So, stay tuned! (That pun was accidental, I swear.)
- Finish my album – During my final project, I started writing an album that I’m really excited about. I feel really good about it but there’s still a lot of work to do if I want it to be as good as I think it could be. With the Masters imposed deadlines now out of the way, I can go back to the songs and work on each one more slowly, using everything I learned throughout the process of the project (something that the earlier songs didn’t have the advantage of). I think this album could really be something and I want to give it all the time and attention it needs to achieve that potential.
- Get back to writing on here – I’ve really missed blog writing while I’ve been working and I’ve had to actively restrain myself from writing blog posts when I should’ve been working so I’m very excited to be back and writing here. My brain is bursting with ideas and I’m struggling to figure out how to fit them all in, which, all in all, isn’t a bad problem to have.
There are also things that I’m less excited to do but they are important and I’ve been putting them off, either because they took too much time and energy away from working or because I was worried about how engaging with them would break what felt like the very fragile hold I had on my concentration, like it would be impossible to concentrate on my project again if I stopped, even for a little bit.
So things like continuing my Pain Clinic appointments, getting the prescription for my glasses updated (my current pair are at least four years out of date or whatever the phrase is – it must be doing a number on my eyesight and it’s probably not unrelated to all of my headaches), figure out what’s going on with my therapy situation, make a definitive decision about my medication, and try again to tackle my Trichotillomania. None of these will be fun or easy but hopefully they’ll all improve my life in the long run so they are worth doing.
So there’s my list. I love a good list. I find that they help me organise my thoughts – my often very restless, whirlwind thoughts. It’s been a tough few months but I’m looking forward to diving into all of these things.
Finding Hope 