one man's poison...

[r.mcmurphy]

i searched and searched, to no avail, to try and find what had caused me to rodeo in my sleep when lamictal was added to my drug regimen. truly it was bad beyond description.

dumped VA dufus pdoc to go to a well respected, recommended private practice doc.

he had no reservations in telling me that the cause of the night terrors and hallucinations were caused by the interaction between ambien (which i had taken for years) and lamictal.

man told me to ditch ambien and substitute seroquel for insomnia, then work back up to lamictal at 200 again. have done so and am now back on my game after loosing 6 mos of my life to ass crushing depression and SI.

one man's experience, that's all.

[quiet storm]

Ambien alone makes me incredibly depressed. I used to hallucinate on it as well. I'd lay there in bed before turning out the light and watch the ceiling move. Its an evil drug for me.

[crazynotstupid]

Hmm. Yeah, makes sense. Read an article on sleep med efficacy recently. Ambine, et al are generally hypnotics--which would lead me to think they could indeed fuck with your sleep like that. Personally I've always felt like something in the neighborhood of seroquel was safer, for some reason--problem for me is the hangover I get. Bleah!

[AirMarshall]

I have never seen any reports here on CB or in the literature of any interaction between Lamictal and Ambien. Offhand I don't know what that interaction would be that would cause (you didn't say exactly what your problem was. Rodeo? Dreaming, sleep movements, sleep walking?) a particular effect.

Exchanging Seroquel for Ambien is reasonable and not uncommon.

Ambien is a hypnotic in addition to being a sedative, so it interferes with memory formation and inhibition. Most people don't report changes to dreaming since it knocks them out and they can't remember if they did dream. There are a few who bad dreaming experiences. Users that don't go to bed or who get up (beyond their control) may do things they would not normally do, and then don't remember it. Ambien does cause visual alterations if one stays up.

Seroquel can be a wonderful sleep aid as well, but it is often reported to cause vivid, colorful and detailed dreams. A drug can't cause specific types of dreams, but it seems to me that some people find this vividness disturbing, though most do not.

I do not think that your previous pdoc was a quack for prescribing Lamictal + Ambien, nor that this combo was an obvious cause for your sleep disturbances, though he could have been more responsive to your side effects.

I'm glad you found a combination that works for you. I too found that Seroquel made a good combo with Lamictal (and Lithium).

a.m.

[r.mcmurphy]

a'martial,

(you didn't say exactly what your problem was. Rodeo? Dreaming, sleep movements, sleep walking?)

i tried to express the nature of the problem : " night terrors and hallucinations ". in other words - as i titrated up the dose of lamictal (lamictal) while maintaining the same dose of zolpidem (ambien), i had nightmares that increased in severity with the dosage.

after reaching 200 for 4 days, hallucinations in my sleep accompanied sheer terror in my sleep.

i use the word "hallucinations" because i had nothing in my experience to compare to. that definition was supplied by someone at CM.

during those 4 days of hell, i was swinging at people surrounding my bed and shouting at them. everything surrounding my bedstead was knocked to the floor. i'd wake with my throat sore from yelling at the people that had threatened me in sleep.

i can not ever remember having anything like this happen to me. i am at the same dose of lamotrigine for weeks again and without zolpidem. there has been nothing similar happening. thus, i can only accept the pdoc's explanation and the process of elimination in indicating zolpidem as the culprit.

seroquel has been effective and together with lamictal has done me a world of good.