I take trazadone, I still wake several times a night, but I go back to sleep and no more mind racing. I do so much better (most of the time) with sleep. The insomnia means the next day is lousy. So hard to work through the pain. I work in social services, Need to stay positive with my clients and productive so I make through the next three years - want that full SSA and retirement.

Hi, I think you asked a very important question. Actually without restorative night time sleep we can not recover from Fibro/CFS. There was a sleep study done with normal healthy college students....they were woken up whenever they started into their deep sleep cycles each night. Guess what happened after one week? They developed the same symptoms that we have like fatigue, muscle/body pains, anxiety, depression, stomach problems, headaches...Another study with 50 woman with Fibro showed that each night they had poor sleep, there was an increase in body pain and their regular Fibro symptoms.

Some Fibro/CFS patients are able to sleep with 5-HTP, which is a natural substance, the precursor to serotonin, which along with magnesium, B vitamins, calcium makes serotonin. We need serotonin to fall asleep and stay asleep and it is deleated by stress and poor sleep! There is a protocol for taking 5-HTP. You can read about it in Dr. Rodger Murphrees Book about treating and beating Fibro/CFS. This is also where I learned the info that I just wrote above. I got this book at the local library.

In my case my Dr. treated my sleep problem and all of his patients with a low dose of klonopin. This worked well for me for 15 years. I took .5mg each night. I sleep well with no side effects that I could tell....and slowly together with other things like eliminating gluten, food I was sensitive to, eating organic food, avoiding air pollution my health came back.

However Klonopin is also addictive so I had a difficult episode when I became sensitive to an inactive ingredient in the form that I was taking in the States and the form I took where I used to live in South Korea was different. I tried the 5-HTP.....i couldn't sleep with it, but I continue to take it... up to 300mg anyhow because my nerve tingling and prickling went away and it helped my sleep but not enough... Now I take Trazadone. It is working well and seems to give restorative sleep. I hope after my health condition is higher to try the 5HTP again.

Overall, I would say if there is anything that does need to be treated with natural or medical means for Fibro/CFS it is sleep. There is no way to get better without restorative sleep.

Insomnia has to be one of the worst symptoms.Even when i do sleep, I wake up tired;but without sleep (at least some) I can't function at all the next day.I don't care if it takes sleeping pills for the rest of my life.The only chance I have of any kind of normal life, is if I can sleep.Even then, all the other symptoms can, at times, make life unbearable,but without sleep it would be impossible.

I refuse to go without sleep now, having a few bouts of insomnia that really wore me down. I have taken Zopiclone in the past which is a prescription sleep aid. Once I started taking Cymbalta I started sleeping regularly. I also take Clonazepam around 8:00 which helps me get to sleep. Without sleep I'm so much worse off.

Yes I take Abian Zolpidam is the generic. This medication will knock you out. Even if you have to use the restroom in the middle of the night you can still fall back asleep. I do not feel groggy when I wake up neither. Good luck