Non-addictive prescription sleep med?

34 comments

1. Not prescription, but CBD works great!

   Edit: exercise, CBD an hour before bed, then melatonin 15min or less before bed. Also Valerian root an hour before bed is great.

2. Sounds like you need a better sleep hygiene routine and some healthier working habits. Melatonin isn’t a band-aid you can just stick over a bad lifestyle.

3. Local doctors pretty much only prescribe Benzodiazepines, usually the most addictive short acting ones. They like returning customers. May be you can ask for less addictive drugs like ramelteon, but i think the doctors will recommend benzo as first line for sure.

4. Sounds like you need to look at your diet. Could be something wrong in your gut bacteria. Not a Dr but I had this happen to be years ago, I was taking 3 10g of melatonin and I couldn’t sleep. My problem was too many carbs in a day. I didn’t know until I started to cut out food out of my diet and when I cut out carbs(pasta, bread, rice), I slept like a baby . I later reintroduce carbs but only for one meal a day. Note I had this experience prior to coming to Japan.
   I would recommend playing around with your diet take certain food out for a week or 2 and see how your body reacts. Really keep an eye out for what you eat, try to avoid processed food as much as possible. Have a journal to keep track of things.
   Hopefully this helps you.

   Ps I heard Yakult 1000 helps promote better sleep, haven’t tried but just what I seen online and heard from coworkers. Might be worth a shot, but do your own research of course!

5. I’ve been taking 2 mg eszopliclone for over a decade and it’s really not addicting. Very short half life and mild effects. I believe it’s legal there.

6. Suvorexant, Lemborexant are newer drugs which are a lot less addictive (more precisely lesswithdrawal reaction). Almost any psychiatrist would be able to prescribe it. Although it might depend on your diagnosis.

7. Magnesium is said to be good for restless legs. Family members have also had luck with iron supplements for it. Good luck!

8. 300 micrograms(a super low dose) of melatonin from iherb did it for me. Also before that, imported antihistamine tablets.

9. I use Ambien (sold here as マイスリー) occasionally, and find it very useful. But technically it can be addictive if you take it every day for months. Every day for a week trying to get over bad jet lag is no problem. It’s so cheap that it’s essentially free… just ask your doctor.

10. Melatonin can mess your sleep up if you take it too long, should be used sparingly.

11. Go to your local supermarket and there’s milky type drinks with GABA printed in romaji on them. They’re the same size as the R1 or Yakult drinks and in the same part of the store. Also there are GABA chocolates in the supermarket. These will help you sleep, I usually eat 2-3 chocolates and one drink about an hour before I want to sleep.

12. Not medication but have you tried weighted blankets or acupuncture? I’ve seen them really help. Hope you find some answers here!

13. If you care about addiction you might also want to care about acquired tolerance.

    Addiction : your body gets used to a substance and can’t function normally without it

    Acquired tolerance : your body gets used to a certain amount of a substance, and its effect gets reduced. If combined with addiction, then your body wants you to consume more of this substance.

14. Magnesium glycinate, yakult 1000 before bed and a walk in the sunlight first thing in the morning if possible – 15 minutes is great if you can do it.Natural sunlight will help adjust your sleep rhythm. Also, no caffeine for 2 hours when you wake up. Then, no caffeine for about 8 hours before bed. This routine works pretty well for me.

15. I have used Ambien for years and find it helpful. Many doctors do not want to prescribe it for long term use or even at all, and there are good reasons for this. Still, it works great for me and I am quite familiar with the downsides of it.

    By now you’ve probably read or heard about all the crazy things that happen with people on Ambien, none of these never happened to me. But I am sure they are true for some people.

    **I know a secret about Ambien that I am sure few people know – I can take my 10mg and quarter it and get the same effects. 10mg is way too much to take at once, especially regularly. 1/3 or 1/4th of a 10mg pill is all you need in most cases.**

    Another thing you may want to consider (I have not read this whole thread so don’t know if it’s been mentioned already although it must have) is l-tryptophan, both to get down and to get restful sleep. I use 500mg for good sleep, together or separate from when taking Ambien. l-tryptophan works better when taken with a Magnesium / Calcium / Zinc supplement. If taken 15-20 minutes before bed, and you go to bad and be ready to sleep, it will help you get down. It is easy to miss the narrow window for the effect.

    Since it was a fad in the 90s I have tried Melatonin many times, I have had mostly negative effects from it, and feel awful the next day. Does not work for me despite all the decades-old hype. I experimented with it in various ways and never found it helpful as a sleep aid, and only marginally effective as a circadian rhythm change for jet lag.

    Another common sleep aid which I have found useless is Valerian or Valerian Root, it’s in a lot of sleep aid supplements. It messed with my feelings the next day and I dislike how it makes me feel.

    One more thing that worked for me was Sleepy Time Tea did little to nothing for me but Nighty Nite Tea worked pretty well. Be sure you get the version without Valerian.

    For any of these sleep hygiene is key – you need to do the usual and obvious things like no phone near your bed, get off any screens an hour before sleep, good sleep environment, and be ready to sleep before you need to sleep. Some in-bed reading and ambient music are also really effective for me.

16. If you want prescription stuff, I’ve had good experiences with Belsomra. I take that once a week, the night before my longest workday.

    I much prefer to get melatonin from iHerb, though.

17. I also second trying CBD as it is safe. But have you been checked for sleep apnea? Restless legs and tiredness, even inability to sleep well can all be signs. I say this since it hasn’t been suggested yet and you didn’t mention anything.

18. Trazodone

19. I drink Etizolam. But not sure how addictive it is. Can’t sleep without it. My head gets numb if I try to. But no other problems like 3 years now.

20. Have you been tested for sleep apnea? Ever since I was diagnosed and use a CPAP I never have sleep problems since. Just a thought.

21. [deleted]

22. Things that help me:

    Body temperature needs to cool off a few degrees before you will get sleepy. Make sure your sleep environment is cool.

    If you have any bothersome noises, use earplugs.

    If there is excess light, reduce it (buy better blinds / curtains, reduce electronic lights)

23. try love. not sex, but just sleeping with someone?

24. Get 15 minutes of sunshine every morning to increase your serotonin, carrying you through the day.

    After a while (up to two months), when the sun goes down, the serotonin will drop and be replaced with a flood of natural melatonin. It will be active until it is replaced with serotonin. It works for most people and has been presented in a series of articles over the last ten years in the Journal of Neuropsychology and also in several journals in Neurophysiology. It takes a while, so be patient, but it works on most people who try it.

    You can get some mild tranquilizers in the meantime which may help with restless leg syndrome, and when you start getting sleepy when the sun goes down, call it a night.

25. Could you provide an update to let us know if the meds you got worked for you? I am having similar issues.

26. https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vaHViZXJtYW5sYWI/episode/YzM1NGU0NGUtZDc3NC00MmQ3LWFhNjctNWEzNTAzZmNhZGJk?ep=14

27. Herbal valerian root and passionflower.

    Take magnesium too.

28. I have some behavioral suggestions.

    1. Go to bed later, if you’re tossing and turning for hours…you weren’t ready for bed. I bet you had a major change in your schedule where you stayed up late and tried to force yourself to go to sleep earlier and just have been failing. Staying up later is always easier, going to bed earlier needs to be done in small increments like moving bed time back 15 mins at a time. Look up resetting your sleep schedule.

    Ideally use a sleep tracking app to figure out when you actually fall asleep. Start 15 mins earlier from that baseline.

    2. Bed / bedroom = sleep only, no phones, no screens, nothing but sleep once you get in. If you’re still up 15 mins after getting in, get out do some meditation, read something boring in dim light for 30 mins and try again. Make it dark!

    3. Set cues for bed time. White noise machines are some of the best cues. Some small clothing you put on to bed can also act as a cue for bed time.

    4. Stop taking baths before bed. That will wake you up. Try to do two hours before. All the non helpful things (eating, drinking, bright lights, anything that gets your heart rate up) should stop around this time or at the very least be winding down from this point.

    5. Try tension and relax technique. This is commonly taught in military, as you can imagine it can be hard to fall asleep in a war zone. Basically you start at toes, tense/flex the muscle and slowly release tension, then the shins, then the calves and so on. Time it with your breath (kinda like present moment exercise).

    Also, I have a feeling sleep is a symptom of other issues. You sound quite frustrated with your situation, I think it’s reasonable to try and do what you can to make your life more comfortable. I hope you find some zzzs tonight. Medicine can be a welcomed bandaid, but are poor substitutes to natural deep sleep. Often on these sleep aid medications you don’t get good deep sleep, it just knocks you out, they aren’t the same thing.

29. There is a mental health clinic that I used to go to near Shimotakiado station where you have to talk to a doctor for 15 or 20 minutes and you have to draw a picture of a tree on a piece of paper (not joking) and then he will prescribe prescription strength sleeping pills that will knock you TF out.

    I got them when I was going though my divorce and was literally awake for days at a time.

    I forget the name of the clinic but it had a little frog cartoon character as their ‘logo’

    I’d sleep a whole 10 to 12 hours sometimes uninterrupted.

    And once I got my sleep game back on, I went off them as they weren’t addictive and now I kinda sleep okay without them but much better than being awake all the time.

30. Melatonin! But perhaps it hard to get in Japan. You can get gaba meds on Amazon but whether they are placebo / quasi drug is beyond me

31. Look into 5HTP and Valerian.

32. Please get referred for a sleep study! If you have sleep apnea it can put a lot of strain on your heart, give you horrible sleep, etc. a friend of mine got one and they got put on CPAP and sleep soundly now

33. I went through like 6 sleeping med before i found one that kind of worked. So each person may differ .

34. UPDATE: Day 2 I changed my dosage to 10mg for DayVigo – レンボレキサント.

    I started at 2.5mg as I heard there were nightmares and anxiety. But this did nothing for me and I tossed and turned all night. I even added 2 more pills in the middle of the night and still nothing.

    Next night I went 10mg and I slept great. Myself, kids and wife all sleep in the same room and I still did not wake up. And when my son woke me up asking for help buying something on Switch Online (I said in a few hrs once I woke up) and I was able to go back to sleep for 3 more hours. No mental side effects. In fact I am working on some financial spreadsheets and I am clear headed and rested. I do feel a slight hangover of some type but overall not a problem. No anxiety, nothing.