diphenhydramine

Usually I take about 7 25 mg pills of benadryl a night to make me fall asleep. Does anybody else take diphenhydramine products to sleep? Anybody notice any side effects? I have been feeling really lethargic and groggy lately and was wondering if it could be the benadryl.

Sometimes I will take 3 50 mg Unisom gelcaps which has the same active ingredient as Benadryl. When I take it, it makes me feel like I'm floating on the bed, but in a very nauseated way. It also has this strange effect where it feels like there's a movie monologue between two or more "characters" in my head if that makes any sense? Also when I get up in the morning I have a chemical hangover that seems to go away after a few hours. But yeah, getting a very lethargic, groggy, stomach nausea in the morning is normal. Maybe try cutting back your dosage to 2 or 3 benadryl.

(edited to include something)

[Edited on Sep 16, 2004 by girlrobot]

After a while your body develops a tolerance and dependency for sleeping meds. Most chronic insomniacs move from medication to medication, but eventually you will end up in the same place you are in now. So, you have two options: 1 switch meds, and 2 ween yourself off of them now before the dependency gets any worse. Also, most sleep aids require a full 7-8 hours of sleep to be fully effective. BTW thats a lot of diphenhydramine for regular use. You might look into perscription sleep aids if you are going to continue to use them.

smoke

weed

listen to this person

I haven't smoked pot in months My fiance never let me and now that I'm not with him I have no money to buy it.

Well yeah herbal remedies are usually a good alternative anyway!

Shit yeah - try NutraSleep by Source Naturals. It's an Herbal/Mineral/Neurotransmitter blend that knocks you out cold. Or load up on Melatonin, which is natural and generally safe too.

seven? That's quite a few. How long have you been taking it? This kind of thing is usually for temporary sleep disorders. You take them for a short time to get back into a good sleep routine.

You may want to try something like Zopiclone, but that might interact with other meds if you're on them.

But if you do try Zopiclone you'd have to only try it for like a week, and you need to do other stuff too, like make sure you cut right down on caffeine etc.

Good Luck though.

MELATONIN is good but as with anything too much of anything is bad ju-ju
I would seriously look into what and why you are not sleeping and see if you can find out the cause of your sleeplessness and work on fixing that. Or you can do what I do, not sleep until you can't take it any more and then just crash and burn for a good natural sleep.

i've been taking five a night for at least a year and i haven't noticed anything...

yeah Im working on that whole crash when you cant take it any more. 27 hrs now and not even remotely tired. I wish I could say this was a drug induced state but I havent had any uppers in over 2 weeks.

ok well my math skills are a little off but thats cause its actually been 37 hours. holy shit i need to sleep.

have you tried benadryl in conjunction with alcohol?
i do that and i can't stay awake if i try.

take some Flexeril if you can get it. its presciption muscle relaxants. i take 2 flexeril, 3 wellbutrin, 1 mobic, and 1 800mg motrin..... i have the coolest dreams ever now and i sleep like a rock.

I used to use sleep aid pills, but they made me ill after a while. Now I just let exhaustion do the work insted of chemicals.

You may not be "noticing" anything, but the damage that you are probably doing to your liver, could cause very seriosu health problems down the road.

Also, diphenhydramine is one of the only effective antihystemines. It is the number one drug used by hospitals to combat alergic reactions. If you over use it now, it may be less effectiv ein the future, and that could also cause a serious health risk if you have some sort of alergic reaction.

You need healthy sleep

Come on. Im in Pain.

You want to see pain? Go down to first methodist church Remaining Men together support group. Thats pain.

Try weening yourself of the pills to fall asleep. Sooner or later your going to develop a tolerance

i used to do that.. i didnt really notice anything besides that i had to take more and more

there was a time when I was taking alot of benadryl to sleep and it built up my tolerance and also raised my histamine levels so I started breaking out in hive every day. I eventually had an anaphalectic reaction to something, I think it was Ibuprofen. My advice is to get off it and start doing yoga to relax your body. They put me on atarax for a while til my immune system calmed down and I started producing enough natural steroids to supress histamine reactions. Also, melatonin is a naturally produced hormone, and if you take it long enough your body may stop or reduce production.
Good luck, Once I was off all the shit I started having some of the best sleep in my life!!!

bad, bad, bad.

go to the doctor.

Flexeril is fucking wondrous though sometimes quite hard to get if you have insurance, but I've found that a couple of good old fashioned trazodone (sp?) do wonderfully for me. I am normally the type to stay up for three days or so, and then sleep for 12-15 hours. That doesn't feel good. Trazodone doesn't leave me all shitty in the morning, and I sleep for exactly eight hours now.

The sleepy drugs, the over-the-counter ones at least, don't help you get proper REM sleep and you can easily get a solid amount of sleep and still feel dead tired the next day. There's some new Rx drugs that are supposedly enough to just nudge you to sleep then they ware off to let you get deep sleep. It's best to avoid 'em; they're nasty addictive and don't help at all in the long run.