Don’t Get Addicted To Sleeping Pills
Here are 5 effects
I was hooked on sleeping pills. For 28 years.
This is perhaps one of the least talked about of addictions.
In my late teens, I usually had difficulty falling asleep at night; rolling and turning till midnight. I would also on some nights, wake up in the middle of the night or towards dawn and not fall asleep again. The meds call it insomnia. So I fell for Valium, also called Diazepam according to the American Addiction Centers, when a drugstore attendant friend introduced it to me. He gave me the 5-milligram tablet to swallow. I slept like a baby. The next day I felt a calmness I had never felt before.
I’d made a solid discovery! Valium put me to sleep at night and calmed me down considerably the following day. For someone who is anxiety-prone, this was more than refreshing — I loved this pleasurable, peaceful feeling.
I graduated to 10 milligrams as the months passed, then 15, and then 20 as the years rolled. I didn’t know if I was taking more than the required dose. All I cared about was this sleeping pill, Valium, did a good job of putting me to sleep and calming me down. But as I was to discover, the consequences of addiction and abuse are not at all funny.
The 5 effects of Valium I found.
- Forgetfulness
- Drowsiness
- Euphoria
- Confusion
- Insomnia
Forgetfulness
With every dose of sleeping pills, short-term memory especially, suffers. I’ll narrate an instance. A friend borrowed some documents from me and returned them on the agreed date, after which I misplaced them. I would call him a few days later and give him a good dressing down, lamenting how people lack courtesy these days and don’t return borrowed items. He listened to me calmly and his first statement was: “Michael. What is wrong with you?” You can imagine my embarrassment and concern when he reminded me about the moment he returned the items.
Drowsiness
After taking the pill at night, there was this constant feeling of weakness, lightheadedness, and drowsiness the next day. I would feel hopelessly sleepy — as if under a spell — and sleep for hours when I closed from work. My to-do list got thrown out the window, and productive hours were wasted! This drowsiness appeared to receive a boost after every drink of water.
Euphoria
I’ll try and explain this one. I would take the tablets before bedtime, and sleep well. The next day I would wake up with this intoxicated feeling and excitement that is completely out of character. Usually shy and introverted, I would transform into a chatty, bubbly, unrestrained dude. In one such state(I still can’t believe it) in my twenties, I walked straight up to a lady I had feelings for and poured out my heart to her — in her house! Were her parents at home? Well, I didn’t care.
Confusion
This I guess, results from prolonged use of these sleeping pills. This time I’m a full-grown adult with children; some in their teens. More than once I’ve momentarily stopped at someone else’s door in our apartment block, almost grabbing the door handle and uncertain whether that is my door. Lord have mercy. Another time and before I knew it, I had driven through on the left side of a roundabout, getting ahead of other cars when I should have waited and followed the cars ahead to circumvent the roundabout from the right. Again, unlike me.
Insomnia
Use of sleeping pills will eventually lead to more sleeplessness, I found out. I had to take it every day to get some sleep. Second, I needed higher doses. Somewhat conscious of health matters, the thought of taking more than 20 milligrams scared me. That intoxicating feeling thus faded over time, even when I took it. Then a more severe type of insomnia would set in when I stopped taking it. I could lie in bed the whole night turning this way and that and not sleep a wink! Months would go by and I’d start retaking the pills, even when I was sleeping better.
The wake-up call
What got me scared was when, into my late forties, I started experiencing this fluttering, rapid-heart-beating discomfort in my chest. This usually lasted only seconds, sometimes minutes; on some days, intermittently for hours. I didn’t pay much attention to it initially. My hospital visit showed I was alright.
I sat in church one Sunday with that feeling and began a frantic search on my phone: What causes rapid heartbeat? Why do I feel my heart beating rapidly sometimes? Then I found the related term: palpitation, on a Mayo Clinic page.
One webpage led me to another. What is palpitation? Are palpitations life-threatening? Is flutter the same as palpitations? I found out from a study captured in a National Institute of Health publication that palpitations or irregular heartbeat could count as adverse effects of Benzodiazepines — a family of medications to which Valium or Diazepam belong. I kept searching: What are the side effects of sleeping pills? What are the effects of long-term abuse of sleeping pills?
Together with several others, the five effects I mentioned above popped up. I’ve never touched those pills since then. The fact that all five have vanished to a large measure is what convinces me that I suffered the ill effects of Valium.
Reading from Healthline, not all instances of irregular heartbeat and palpitations are related to drug use. Strenuous exercise, stress and anxiety, excess caffeine or alcohol, and dehydration are among a whole range of possible causes. Apart from that, palpitations in most cases are harmless.
But my mind is made up.
Bottom line: Sleeping tablets or sleeping pills like Valium and the other benzodiazepines, described medically by the Health in Aging Foundation as tranquilizers, sedative-hypnotics, or simply sedatives, are supposed to be prescribed in the short term to restore your sleep cycle and ease anxiety.
These days I sleep like a log. And that is because I have discovered natural alternatives for sleeplessness that come without all the adverse effects and dangers of sleeping pills. And they sure knock me out at bedtime.
