Addiction and Sleep Apnea

The Nightmare Of Methadone Withdrawal Insomnia

Life is a process that human beings experience. This experience is a combination of events and interactions with other individuals that can be defined in a variety of ways. Some of the labels that are attached to the various experiences include the experiences being defined as good, routine or bad.

In order to cope with the “bad" experiences there are two basic courses of action that an individual can take. Those courses of action are either to fight or take fight. Fighting an experience could include addressing the situation by keeping the "bad" experience in perspective, seeking help, or maintaining a positive perspective on the situation. Choosing to take flight could include internalizing the situation or seeking a method that provides escape. One such method of escape can be the choice of utilizing pain relieving drugs.

An illicit drug that an individual can turn to in order to deaden the pain, escape the situation, or just to simply cope with life is heroin. Heroin is a highly effective opiate and painkiller that will serve this purpose. Unfortunately, in addition to being illegal, heroin is highly addictive.

For those individuals who wish to be free of heroin there is a treatment program that utilizes a synthetic opiate. This synthetic opiate is called methadone. In order to understand the methadone process of heroin treatment it is important to understand what methadone is, the related side effects and specifically the condition of methadone withdrawal insomnia.

What Is Methadone?

Methadone is a synthetically created opiate that has been sanctioned by governments to medically treat the heroin and morphine addict. The medical use of methadone provides the same feelings of euphoria and release from pain that is gained from the use of heroin or morphine.

The treatment strategy behind the substitution of methadone for heroin and morphine addictions serves two purposes. The first purpose is to minimize or prevent the illegal purchase of heroin. The second purpose is to provide the addict with the needed opiate, but control and release the addict from dependency through the controlled use of the substance.

Methadone Withdrawal Side Effects

As the dosage and frequency of the use of methadone occurs there are various side affects that are experienced by the addict. Some of those side effects include symptoms that are characteristic of having the flu. They include pain in the body, fever, sneezing, mucous flowing from the nose, etc.

One critical side effect of the withdrawal process is sleeplessness or methadone withdrawal insomnia. Methadone withdrawal insomnia occurs because, through the use of an opiate, there is an effect on rapid eye movement sleep. This REM process is that period of a person's sleep in which dreaming occurs and when a person is taking an opiate, such as methadone, the REM process decreases which minimize the dream process.

Methadone withdrawal insomnia takes place as the recovering addict begins to have fewer opiates in their system. With less opiates in the system, the dream process begins to normalize. Methadone withdrawal insomnia then becomes a reality as the patient's dreams are often nightmarish or too realistic in their portrayal. This in turn causes the condition known as methadone withdrawal insomnia.

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Alcohol Withdrawal and Insomnia

Christian Shire

Long term alcohol withdrawal can proceed for years, and a major and problematic symptom of this withdrawal in lingering insomnia. Insomnia is created out of the legacy of poor sleep while using, and also as a result of brain changes from addiction, and insomnia correlates highly with relapse. When we’re tired we get irritable and stressed; and it’s far easier to give into temptation in a moment of weakness. Clinical research supports what logic tells us, and sleeping problems are significantly correlated with greater rate of relapse.

Part of the problem is that insomnia can linger for months or even years after a person quits drinking, depending on the history of abuse, and such long term sleeping problems and the cravings they inevitably create, is a big problem.

Brain changes

Firstly, long and chronic alcohol abuse changes the levels of certain neurotransmitters, and these neurotransmitters are related to sleep. Alcohol is a depressant, and since the brain always likes to maintain equilibrium, when confronted with a continual consumption of this depressive substance, it changes slightly to minimize these depressive effects. This explains in part how alcoholics can drink such huge quantities of alcohol, and it also explains in part why alcoholics have a hard time getting to sleep without alcohol.

When a person stops drinking, their brain is still “wired” as if they were, and since they are no longer consuming depressant chemicals daily, their brain has nothing to slow it down, and it races ahead creating sensations of anxiety, tremens, and insomnia.

There are some medications that can help over the short term, but over the months of long term withdrawal, only time will better the problem and alcoholics are left to their own devices to try to get some sleep.

REM rebound

Alcohol intoxication negatively affects the quality of sleep, and while intoxicated, the mind cannot readily enter into rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the sleep associated with dreaming, and also associated with mood and memory consolidation.

The brain never forgets what it is owed though, and over the course of a long history of alcohol abuse, you are accumulating an enormous debt of REM sleep that needs to be repaid. Once alcoholics achieve abstinence, their sleeping time becomes dominated by prolonged and exhausting periods of REM sleep. Normal REM sleep represents only a fraction of total sleep time each night, but recovering alcoholics may endure almost continual REM, dreamy sleep.

It doesn’t sound all that bad, but it is in fact exhausting, and nightmares and other unpleasant dreams become a hallmark of post sobriety sleep.

The length of this REM rebound period depends on the duration of the addiction, but it can occur for as long as years, and can be a major influence to relapse.

Getting a quality and restful nights sleep can make maintaining sobriety a whole lot easier, and recovering alcoholics need to make good sleeping habits a priority to counter the insomnia inducing effects of long term withdrawal. If sleep remains elusive, a sleep therapist can sometimes offer assistance.

Insomnia A Side Effect of Opiate Withdrawal

Insomnia is one of the dreadful side effects that one experiences when they are going through opiate withdrawal. Opiates include but are not limited to Heroin, Oxycontins, Dilaudid, Codeine, Vicodin, and Morphine. Opiates are extremely difficult to come down off of, more difficult than probably any other drug besides maybe alcohol. Once these drugs are stopped, the body needs a great deal of time to recover. Initially, the person might even require hospitalization because they can be that sick. Clonodine can be prescribed as a temporary measure to assist with the withdrawal, resulting in a temporary relief of the insomnia.

When a person is born, they have natural opiates that are produced regularly throughout their lifetime. They are called opioid receptors which stimulate the brain and are responsible for lifting a person’s mood, helping that person feel motivated for everyday purposes, and natural pain relief. When a person starts using opiates regularly, these opiates is much more stimulating than the ones that a person is born with. This causes the natural receptors to die off and quit producing usually within a year of the addict beginning use of the opiate. So when a person is withdrawing from opiates it is very common for them to experience very lengthy periods of insomnia.

So lengthy that it could be weeks before they get any sleep at all but often years before the insomnia disappears entirely, if ever. There are some drugs that the doctor can prescribe for short term insomnia but they will not risk a concurrent addiction. Most of the withdrawal symptoms have to be worked out on their own, which unfortunately is the main reason that when opiate users do not use replacement therapy to come off of opiates, the success rate is very narrow. It takes a very strong person and one that is much convicted to be able to fight off this demon and cope with the side effects and the icing on the cake is the unwelcome insomnia.

Besides the insomnia, opiate addicts have a very long list of other symptoms that they have to suffer through in addition. However, when the insomnia is compiled with the other horrible side effects, the outlook at that point is quite bleak. Although it is temporary, no one knows for certain how long that might be. Usually doctors will prescribe Valium or Restoril to help the person attempt to get some sleep. No one can underestimate the horrific effects that a person goes through when coming off of opiates and for an extended period after.

Doctors might recommend that the addict begin a treatment recovery program using Suboxone or Methadone. Both of these are long term treatments making the body feel as if it has the opiate in it, of course never getting a high from either, and more importantly, these medications block the opioid receptors so even if the person decided to use, there would be no effect from the opiate at all. This is a very effective treatment and one that will likely reduce any further displays of insomnia.