Health - Benzodiazepines and sleep problems

[the creator]

SWIT have been lingering around the forums here for some time now and finally decided to register and participate. For those of you who don’t recognize my name I was one of the founding members and site administrators of chemhead, which sadly was shut down. But back on topic.

SWIT has chronic insomnia problems and has for many years now. He has tried many different pharms for sleep. His doctor had him on Temazepam 30mg, which seemed to work but he would still wake up several times throughout the night. SWIT even increased it to 60mg and had the same problem. Even taking It 1 hour or 30 minutes before bed SWIT would wake up after only two hours of sleep and not be able to get back to sleep. I know Temazepam has between and 8 and 22 hour half life so SWIT would think that after 2 and a half 3 hours the plasma levels wouldn’t drop drastically enough to wake him up. So SWIT’s doctor offered to give him XANAX and SWIT happily agreed. The odd thing is his doc skipped the .25mg, .5mg, 1mg and went straight to the 2mg barsJ SWIT almost fell over when he saw what strength the doc wrote for. He told SWIT to take one (WHOLE ) bar a half hour before bed and see how it worked. To the amazement of SWIT it worked like a charm and now it damn near takes a nuclear explosion to even wake him up. Which is fine with SWIT he really likes his sleep. But the problem is when he wakes up 8 to 9 hours later he feels like he has been ran over by a tank. I know the half life for xanax is 6-12 hours but SWIT is still dragging ass late in the afternoon which is like 16 hours after taking it. With the Temazepam SWIT would sleep like shit but at least there was no hang over. Has anyone else ever had this problem with xanax? SWIT will be going back to the doc in a few weeks and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on a better benzo to try for sleep? Also SWIT does have a script for 10mg Valium Tabs but is worried these may cause an even worse hangover. Anyone have any thoughts on that? What benzos have the least after affect? SWIT does take 80mg of adderall XR in the morning, but he had the insomnia long before he started the adderall.