I’ve been taking Zolpidem for about 13 years now and suffer from addiction. I’ve sought treatment for this but it doesn’t work as now I cannot sleep without taking something. If you haven’t taken Z-type sleeping aids, I would definitely suggest not to start, as from experience the consequences outweigh the benefits. I’ve lost a considerable amount of friends/reputation/etc. from the abuse. Every experience that you hear about from sleeping aids, I’ve been through it (from the loopy fun to binge eating to weird sex to psychosis to crashing my car)
Take this with all the weight a message board advice from a non-doctor is worth but have you tried Trazodone instead? It’s used widely for sleep issues and it’s effective for many. And have you looked at something like Ketamine for a possible long-lasting solution?
I had a good experience with Trazadone. Very easy to get to sleep, eliminated anxiety about going to sleep, and got restful sleep, with only a little grogginess in the morning. No withdrawal when I stopped cold turkey after 2 years. Nowadays I just have valerian tea or magnesium before bed.
I got a subscription for 1 package when I had major sleep issues as a young adult and i immediately wanted more. Best 2 weeks of sleep i ever had. Luckily the doctor did not allow another subscription
I really like zolpidem and other substances.
I almost never took them for more than 3 consecutive days.
I still have a lot of zolpidem laying around and don't take it, because I know the brain gets uses to them and the magic is gone. Amazing how people react differently to addicting substances.
Back when I used zolpidem, I found that it is best to use it as a reset button, not as a daily crutch.
I do take 300mcg melatonin but I found it has no diminishing returns and in fact it has a negative feedback -- after 3 days of melatonin, I don't need it for at least another week.
I keep the zolpidem for "recreational" usage, but I don't want to use it with my wife and daughter in the house in the remote possibility I get sleepwalking(never actually happened, I just get amazing auditory hallucinations before I fall asleep).
That bums me out. I’ve tried two different z-types for very occasional days where I need to get up early - maybe 4 days a year. Anyways, I feel like I’ve had 2 hours of sleep on them even when I get a full 8 or 9 hours. They must really disrupt my sleep patterns.
(Genuinely curious and not trying to downplay the seriousness at all)
What would happen if you took a month off work and all your obligations and stayed home and didn't take anything for a whole month? My understanding is the human body can't go more than about 10 days without sleep [1].
So I assume at that point you would fall asleep, and then over the coming ~20 days hopefully you could normalize it and get back to some kind of unassisted "regular" sleeping.... ?
I've actually decided to take some time off work because of my addiction issues. It's more so the cycle. I'll stop taking Zolpidem/Zopiclone for several weeks/month (the first several days -- terrible shakes, chills, nightmares, several days without sleeping etc. Zopiclone/Benzo withdrawal is far worse) After a while, I'll eventually adjust but I have insomnia/poor sleep so I'll eventually cave in due to sleep deprivation then I'll pick back up.
For the past year, I would roughly take 90mg of either Zolpidem/Zopiclone in a single night. On average, I roughly go through 100 pills a week (I have pharmacies that sell to me...I know sketch).
It wasn't always like this, when I first started taking medication after going to Stanford Sleep Clinic, I would just take a pill or two a night and have fantastic sleep. It was like this for several years but eventually my tolerance increased and my work stress/insomnia got worse with age.
I want to reiterate that I've destroyed/damaged every meaningful relationship in my life. I state this all out because I've realized that people have a strange fascination with Ambien.
I can understand the strange fascination with Ambien. My wife was prescribed it one time. She would take it and then soon after want to have sex. Mind blowing sex (for me) every time. She was insatiable and wanted to do things way outside her norm. But the next day she had absolutely no memory of any of it. That weirded me out and I encouraged her to stop taking them. Though to be honest I wouldn't mind one or two of the ambien fueled sex sessions a year. Absolutely mind blowing, but also exhausting.
I've been witness two sleepwalking events with different peopl. Both were fully conversant and aware of their surroundings, they just did odd things and we assumed they were drunk. Later we found out about the ambien and how neither had any recollection of the event.
If I were you (and I was) I'd seriously consider going to rehab. They'll have experience easing your withdrawal symptoms and getting you on a road to breaking the cycle.
According to Wikipedia, withdrawal symptoms can be severe including seizures, vomiting, etc. To do nothing of the discomfort from a lack of sleep. It would take incredible will power to overcome something like that.
It also sounds like there are some treatments that can help fight an auction, including other medications that bind to some of the same receptors. Or very slowly weaning someone off (but then you have to figure out something else for the insomnia.)
10 days without sleep is a great recipe for an epileptic seizure. Don't experiment with this kind of stuff without consulting a neurologist / sleep expert.
I periodically used to periodically take a day off work and sleep pretty much the entire day to refresh myself during periods when I was having trouble sleeping at night. I found getting yourself back to sleep when you never get to 100% awake is a lot easier than getting to your initial sleep, of course this was with rather mild sleep issues related to stress and anxiety.
This isn’t really an option anymore as a father of young kids
I've had some weird side effects from Zopiclone. They're effective, even when benzodiazepines haven't been, but the side-effects are concerning. On multiple occasions, I've woken up and the room appears to bathed in a yellow light (even though no lights were on and it was still dark outside), and on a few occasions I've been looking at the time on my phone, blinked, and it's suddenly four hours later. I've no idea whether I just fell back asleep and checked the time again, four hours passed and I did _something_, or it just made me misremember the first time. They're not drugs I would use lightly.
Benzodiazepines on the other hand I've had no issues with (no desire/need to increase the dose, no withdrawal even when I've been taking them for prolonged periods, no side effects), but I don't find them as effective. I have seen the destructive effects they can have though - a family member had to taper off them over six months, and at the end she was cutting the smallest dose tablets into quarters as she still couldn't quite get off them.
I had a week course of Zolpidem and it only worked first two nights. The rest was what some describe as the visit of a walrus. I thought I was sleeping but I was doing things.
Try getting prescribed seroquel instead. A lot more powerful, and will help you sleep. Less (known?) downsides as well. I guarantee you that you will be able to sleep with it.
I am happy that this works for you, but you can't really compare a Z-Drug with an atypical antipsychotic. That's some dangerous medical advice.
Also (from wikipedia) on Seroquel / Quetiapine:
"Despite being widely used as a sleep aid due its sedating effect, the benefits of such use do not appear to generally outweigh the side effects."
He's saying prescribed seroquel. That means he would have to consult with his physician beforehand.
This guy drove away his friends, crashed his car and had psychotic episodes. During a 13 year addiction to the zolpidem. That's way past the "there may be some side effects" phase.
This is a gross misunderstanding of what Seroquel is used for. It's one of those medications that several different side effects depending on the dosage.
Yes, it can be used as an anti-psychotic. However, in most of the cases I've heard, it's used as a sleep aid.
This was the case for me, too. I was on it for 10 years and ultimately went off because I grew out of my chronic insomnia. Aside from a muted personality and nightmares (the latter controlled by another medication), it was pretty fool proof and had very little consequence in my particular case.
As always, it depends on the person, but the blanket statement you quoted doesn't seem fair.
Seroquel is quetiapine. People are calling it an anti=psychotic because it is an anti-psychotic. That's its main use, and that's what it's licensed for.
> Quetiapine is a medication that works in the brain to treat schizophrenia. It is also known as a second generation antipsychotic (SGA) or atypical antipsychotic.
If doctors are prescribing seroquel for sleep problems i) that's pretty scary and ii) it's an off label use.
Quetiapine is labaled an anti-psychotic yes, but its pharmacological characteristics are not that straight forward. It has a much higher affinity for H1 (histamine) receptors than for D2 (dopamine) receptors. Meaning that in low doses it acts like an anti-histaminergic drug, having a very limited effect on dopaminergic systems. Around 60% of D2-receptors need to be blocked for a typical anti-psychotic effect, and that is nowhere near what is happening with say 50mg of quetiapine, which is a normal dose for sleeping aid. In those low doses it mainly acts on H1, alpha-1, M3, M1, and some 5HT type receptors. At a minimum of 300mg per day, it pharmacologically starts to act as an anti psychotic.
There is a nice brief summary of this in Stahl's Essential Psychopharmacology.
To be clear, I am very much against prescribing anti-psychotics as sleeping aids. But I don't think there is a strong case for calling quetiapine anti-psychotic in low doses.
> Yes, it can be used as an anti-psychotic. However, in most of the cases I've heard, it's used as a sleep aid.
I've never taken anti-psychotics. I've asked my doctor for anti-depressants a few times (usually during relationship issues) and they are not my thing.
You're not a medical doctor, right? Obviously, or you wouldn't be giving out such frivolous advice. Dude... it's an anti-psychotic drug.
If you're referring to anti-pyschotic drugs, then no, I don't - at all. I meant no offense, I was just suggesting caution that's all.
Edit: I just wanted to acknowledge that there are probably a lot of beautiful people who find this drug helpful. I didn't mean to get down on you, I struggle too. I'm sorry if I jumped the gun with my statement.
Looks like that poster is in a completely different category from the general population. It says so in your quote as well: "does not appear to _generally_ outweigh the side effects".
That's a rather common mistake and I'd guess many doctors do it as well. Treatment risk depends only on alternatives. A pill that gives your a 0.01% chance of sudden death is an absolute no-go for genpop, but may be heaven-sent for a particular patient.
I've taken it for over 10 years and am better than ever. Hasn't suffered any harmful side-effects either. Of course, side-effects differ from person to person. But it's worth a try. Z-drugs and benzos are way worse.
Moreover, if you're severely addicted to Z-drugs like OP, the benefits probably do outweigh the side-effects. Not every person is the same, and the cost benefit analysis differs accordingly.
Could you expound? It's always been in the back of my mind and I take a fairly low does, but would love to hear more about how it started, symptoms, and how it's affected your life.
I'm really sorry, that sucks. There is some new medication that is supposed to treat it (I think I saw an ad on TV for it).
I took olanzapine 5mg for a while, but my doctor kept increasing the dose as I was "non-compliant" up to 10mg, then more to 20mg as I kept getting hospitalized for compulsive suicide attempts because the medication completely axed my judgement.
I gained about 40 pounds on it, developed dyskinesia after about 6-8 months and ended up cold turkeying off of it, but 5 years later, the movement problems still stay... Unfortunately it also destroyed my executive function too; I can barely even string together coherent thoughts and perform programming work without being overly medicated on ADHD drugs.
I know there's valbenazine and other Parkinson's drugs (selegiline works decently enough on a daily dose, but MAOIs can become dangerous in certain circumstances), but they don't solve the root problem.
Now I can barely even control my hands, legs or face and it's mildly disfiguring, but it's not like I care anymore...
Same. I’ve been on Zolipdem for about 5 years now ya amazing not to take 2 or 3 hours to fall asleep.
I’ve never had any meaningful side effects. No sleep walking, binge eating, or anything.
I am certainly, in the clinical sense, addicted - eg if I miss a dose I certainly notice, and there is some degree of tolerance, but I’m still better off than before I went on it.
> I am certainly, in the clinical sense, addicted - eg if I miss a dose I certainly notice, and there is some degree of tolerance
I believe the correct term is "dependent".
There is a lot of misinformation and stigma out there, so I think it's really important to distinguish between addiction (e.g. insatiable cravings), medical dependence (e.g. someone taking anti-psychotics because they will otherwise have psychotic episodes, or someone taking antidepressants because they otherwise have manic depressive episodes), and physiological dependence, where your body's receptors have up/down-regulated to adjust to a "new normal", and withdrawal symptoms may occur if treatment is stopped.
I've been here too! Took zopiclone for a bout of insomnia but after two weeks I was dependent, either I wasn't sleeping without it or the quality of sleep was terrible if I tried going natural. Got prescribed Quetiapine at 25mg, which at that dose is not for psychosis but sleep (or an adjunct for people with bipolar, which is not my case either)
Only needed 3-4 days of it and I could reset myself, back to normal sleep. Was already scared that I'd become dependent on this, but atypical neuroleptics in low doses are less associated with tardive dyskinesia. Do seriously consider it.
Otherwise you could try an antidepressant with sedative qualities, like trazodone or mirtazapine, both very effective too. Best of luck to all, insomnia sucks.
Seroquel makes you wake up. at night and wanna eat chocolate. Too much of it makes you feel like a zombie the next day. SCAREQUEL should be the name. Ive sleep walked on that stuff
To the people in this thread advocating antipsychotic medication for anything other than treating psychosis and as an adjunct for severe depression, don't. These medications are serious things for serious situations and can have unexpected effects on you mentally.
I went on them in my early twenties due to a nervous breakdown, and while they stopped the endless loops of thought and insomnia (I ended up sleeping ten hours a night without breaking a sweat), they reduced my libido, made me gain weight, and worst of all, robbed me of my natural sharpness and creativity. It was as if my brain had been wrapped in a layer of bubble wrap, and my ability to come up with those sparks of inspiration that you need to do intellectual work was almost extinguished. I'm 100% now, fully recovered, but it took me about 3-4 years to get back where I was before it all happened. If your doctor thinks you're right for them, go for it, but only as a last resort.
They do work, but they're the last tool in the box that you only want to use when everything else has failed.
Here where I live doctors prescribe anti-depressants like candies. They robbed me of two years of my life. The worst for me was derealisation and strong hallucinations. I started strongly believing that life isn't real, that what I am seeing is just a dream or that other humans are just objects that happen to move and speak. Hallucinations were crazy scary, like I saw things as if atoms of objects got magnified hundreds of times or everything was constructed of polygons (like you would switch wire frame rendering). Absolutely crazy thoughts like I was convinced that if I cut myself with a knife it will give me pleasure like scratching an itch. I had a couple of suicidal episodes and ended up in hospital. Somehow nobody connected that this could be anti depressants. I then stopped them on my own and few weeks later started CBT therapy. That fortunately was the most I needed to "repair" my thought processes. I am okay, but I sometimes have the flashbacks of what happened. It's just a reminder to stay away from these things. I understand this may help other people but it didn't help me. When I talked about hallucinations with the doctor he just prescribed a different one. Every 4-6 months I had a different one.
Sadly, in a lot of places, antipsychotics from the 50s (i.e. Chlorpromazine) are the FIRST kind of therapy given, even to adolescent patients with "generic" depression, alongside SSRIs.
No consent given or asked for, let alone informed consent. You are told "take this".
This is not in circumstances of hospitalization, let alone involuntary hospitalization, but regular outpatient treatment.
People who are in a bad place generally don't research meds, and if they are not extremely uncooperative, or paranoid, will take them and the doctors' words at face value.
Consequences are severe and long-lasting.
Absolutely shameful and despicable. These doctors should be shamed by the scientific community for [almost] using prehistoric notions of "hysteria" to mistreat ilness by basically showing "see, he's not crying anymore! PROGRESS!" while pointing to a barely awake, sedated patient.
Any and all progress is usually SSRIs and psychotherapy, if available. Why do they give these antiquated meds that are not appropriate for the situation (i.e. CPZ) is beyond me. These are not psychoses, this is Episodium depressivum, gradus moderati .
Sorry, had to get that out. This is from personal experience.
>To the people in this thread advocating antipsychotic medication for anything other than treating psychosis and as an adjunct for severe depression, don't. These medications are serious things for serious situations and can have unexpected effects on you mentally.
The dose makes the poison. A small dose e.g. of seroquel, for a few days, has a great risk:reward profile for panic disorder
As said elsewhere in the thread, there are nuances even in pharmacology. Your situation sounds terrible, and I am very sorry you had to live through that. However, some anti-psychotics lack anti-psychotic properties in very low doses and are safe. But yes, as a general rule neither anti-psychotics nor z-drugs/bzo-drugs should be used for long-lasting sleep disorders.
Agree with this. I’m on antipsychotic medication due to psychosis and insomnia. Works great but there are a lot of side effects, which I take additional medication to correct.
Fear of losing natural sharpness has had me avoiding antidepressants, which I should probably be on. Just too much fear about losing edge for math/programming.
Wellbutrin could fit here, it's energizing and doesn't make your feelings 'flat' but careful with the insomnia. I had to stop it because of that, and after a week or so of stopping it I started having tinnitus (the morning it started I woke up from a dream similar to EHS - exploding head syndrome)
Could be related/unrelated, who knows.
Honestly, learning to program. I was listless when I got into university, and couldn't cope with the fact I wasn't the smartest person I knew anymore. That hit me a lot harder than I expected, and cascaded into a complete loss of confidence.
Learning a skill from the ground up I couldn't bullshit from random esoterica I'd picked up from high school forced me to confront my lifelong hubris and put aside my ego. Eventually I got decent enough at it that it became my career. It was a slow, grinding, painful process, but it taught me a lot about humility and the value of incremental progress.
A man, 29-year old, with a history of alcohol abuse suffered from hypoxic-ischemic brain injury after choking on a piece of meat. After an initial, though slow neurological recovery, spontaneous movement and speech disappeared. The patient developed such a severe impairment of arousal that he required intensive auditory and tactile stimulation to maintain a wakeful state. No structural lesions were found using a computerized tomography (CT) scan to explain this secondary deterioration, and conventional EEG-recordings showed no evidence of epilepsy. After a stay in the ICU and neurology department, the patient was transferred to a nursing home without a formal diagnosis explaining his hyporesponsive state. A structural MRI at follow-up showed signs of diffuse atrophy without hydrocephalus.
Eight years passed without any further improvement and neurological follow-up. Eventually, a new nursing home physician with experience in hyporesponsive disorders took over the patient's treatment and performed a new neurological examination to find directions to improve his care. Upon clinical assessment, the now 37-year old patient seemed awake, but showed a complete lack of voluntary movement (akinesia) and absence of speech (mutism). More specifically, the patient showed no affective reactions, initiation of eating or drinking, and remained incontinent. Although the patient showed no signs of spontaneous speech or vocalization on request, he was able to respond to questions or commands with movements with a significant delay (usually a couple of seconds) and with evident ataxia and muscle rigidity. Despite his intact awareness, the patient's initiative was so severely impaired that he remained wheelchair-bound and entirely dependent on nursing care for all daily activities, including the need for enteral tube feeding.
It's incredible how little we still know about some things. They couldn't pin down a cause and this is apparently a significant detail as to why this patient was basically warehoused in a nursing home with no real treatment for literally years until they tried this new thing, which had some short-lived effects.
Several years ago I experienced a (thankfully temporary) severe reduction in brain function, for several weeks. I was shocked by the truly abysmal diagnostic capability of modern neuromedicine for anything less than large-scale physical trauma. In my case, they couldn't pin down a cause at all, except to say that the symptoms were consistent with a viral infection of the CNS. What virus? Who knows, we can only test for a handful of them.
We have the technology, it's just... not widely available yet.
There's a lab at UCSF[1] that actually specializes in doing genome sequencing of cerebrospinal fluid specifically for cases like this. They're talked about pretty extensively in Adam Savage's "Still Untitled" podcast[2] and all the crazy weird things they managed to diagnose this way.
We all have the impression that medicine is a solved problem, but we've still got a way to go. We're still making progress though.
Thank you for that link to the Adam Savage podcast with Joe DeRisi. I watched the whole thing absolutely incredible research he is doing from a layman’s perspective it seems like a very bottom up approach that could take all of the guess work out of disease diagnosis.
Despite the overly inflated ego of many neurosurgeons, neurologists and neuroscientists we have no conclusive picture about the brain as a working system.
We just have a few pieces of a puzzle and no idea what the overall image actually is. Neuroplasticity and adaptivity make this even harder because often you can't just take a part away like in a car and pinpoint issues due to the absence or disturbance of these parts.
If you knockout an area and a patient loses smell, will you say that you found the "center" of smell? We are still poking at the brain and figuring out its responses.
When neurologists just postulate virus to explain the problems like you had, they are just BSing. Oliver Sacks described many cases of neurosyphilis in his books. These doctors are just extrapolating based on that.
Yeah, I got the sense that this was just the default box-filling diagnosis they defaulted to when they ran out of obvious stuff to check for (strokes, gross swelling, bacteria in CSF, etc.)
I had similar experience but it was for sudden-sensorineural hearing loss(high frequency) and tinnitus, I consulted a doctor with in 2 days of first signs and he was unable to point me to urgent treatments like steroid or hbot. in next week I consulted well known highly experienced(one 25+years other 30+years) doctors,none tried it.
I found about possible options from another doctor after 6 months and it was too late.
Man, I would like to hear any details on the situation at all that you are willing to provide. When it happened, what you felt like during the experience, what happened upon recovery… The whole thing.
I think this was around July 2017. Most prominent symptoms were severe brain fog and lack of attention (to the point where I could not perform basic tasks like reading multiple sentences), problems with balance, and loss of appetite. Secondary problems included irregular heartbeat, wildly varying sensations of body temperature (without necessarily having a fever), sensitivity to light and sound, and several others. Onset was very fast (a couple days) and recovery was very slow (gradual improvement for 6+ weeks). I can’t say for certain if I ever bounced back 100% mentally, but I think I’m probably pretty close. It was definitely one of the worst things I’ve been through.
Sounds similar to when I had a concussion. It was such a minor hit, I didnt even realized I had something that could cause those kinds of side effects. I'm glad you feel better :)
Thanks for that excerpt. The part I found most terrifying is that not only was the patient given no real treatment, but "Eight years passed without...neurological follow-up", meaning even an examination to see what his status was.
I would never take Ambien myself after someone I know was prescribed it, and instead of sleeping they would black out, blast techno/dance music in their apartment, and scream at the top of their lungs while stomping up and down ("dancing"). Then post about it on social media. All without remembering it, or with only hazy memories.
One of the major side effects of Ambien is anterograde amnesia, some people are less sensitive to it, but generally anything you do in "black out" phase will be a complete blur the next day. I used to take it an hour before bed and try to get some work done, I'd usually wake up the next day to several pages of code with absolutely no recollection of writing it.
Atheist here; you are implying a religious person would believe that taking this (and others as 'a gateway drug' implies) drug makes it easier for demons to possess you? Is that a common thought in some circles? I was raised religiously (catholic and reformed), but never heard about this.
Combine with parts of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis as you see fit, for instance some bored coder looking into why some parts of code suddenly fail, and putting you into debug mode :)
Those people typically have not had any experiance with benzos and are over perscribed. 3mg is equal to 60mg of valium. Someone with no benzo tolerance getting 60mg of valium is going to blackout and act stupid too.
Is this a joke? Sciencedirect is a database hosting academic journal articles. This particular article is from the joural Cortex and reports novel research results. It is obviously not based on a NYTimes article! The NYTimes could of course be more accessible or have a broader perspective.
Ah, the video at the bottom of the paper is really emotional! I hope they can figure out how to prolong the effects. Still, an hour of lucidity and verbal communication and a stroll every few weeks and a visit with the family is infinitely better than nothing at all.
I wonder how does he feel when he's not under zolpidem. We can clearly see him being slow and mostly non-responsive, but I wonder what the experience for him is like - is it like sleep where he doesn't feel/remember anything about it (notice how once under zolpidem he does not think he has health problems), does he feel normal, and if so what is he thinking about, etc?
Totally agreed. I wonder what the ethical side of this is... Give someone a pill and they suddenly "unlocked" from locked-in syndrome. How can you not want to give these people these drugs all the time and let them have at least a partially normal existence.
The problem seems to be that their body builds tolerance to it so that even if you give them this medication constantly it gradually stops being effective. However I do agree that these drugs should be available and it's up to the carers to work out a dose that maximizes the amount of time the person is "unlocked".
My sister suffered severe TBI from a car accident for 15 years before she eventually passed last year. It was pretty shocking to witness the lack of knowledge in regards to how the human brain works, and more specifically lacking in how to heal/treat an injured brain.
Immediately following the accident, we saw other patients in the same condition as her and tracked their progress for comparison sake. The common theme was that patients either made significant progress (with motor skills, talking, etc) within the first 0-3 weeks, or not really at all. It seemed like once scar-tissue started forming in the brain, critical brain connectivity began to get blocked (not necessarily broken). If we can better understand the underlying mechanism behind the "signal blocking" vs "signal un-blocking" aspect seen using this drug in TBI patients, it would be a huge win for all brain related conditions.
The underlying mechanism is well known: it activates GABA (inhibitory) receptors causing cells to hyperpolarize. We have all kinds of receptor activators/deactivator drugs, the problem is the brain is complex and we don't know where/when/how to use them to achieve desired effects.
Things like these makes me realize how little we know about the functioning of brain. Manipulating brain digitally would be perhaps one of the biggest technological revolution after industrial revolution.
We know very little about how the body as a whole functions, especially from a systems perspective. Sure doctors can set bones and give you drugs that are in many cases the physiological equivalent of a sledgehammer, but try asking them what the mechanism of action is of those drugs, or you have Crohn’s or rheumatoid arthritis or insomnia or pinched nerve pain in your back. They have no effing idea.
Confirmed. I worked in immunology and people were attempting to model gene expressions and how genes influence each other's expression to finally determine T-cell plasticity.
New cell types or pathways to become cell types are observed more often than you would think and it feels like we are still at the very foundation of understanding <insert field of biology>. It's scary how much we don't know while publically acting as if we figured out 99.98% of biology.
Explaining allergies and their origin is a good example here. It's just people throwing guesses around.
You’re talking to a general practitioner in that case, they won’t know the specific details, just in general. If you speak to researchers or specialists they do have a clue. But we still have a long long way to go
I saw a paper describing a clinical trial of a device which electrically stimulates the median nerve to reduce the severity of tourette's symptoms.
This would be game changing to the Tourette's community. It is so much more than just a speech or tic disorder, and to give the worst affected sufferers their lives back (by reducing the impact of disinhibition, etc) is a fucking miracle.
Sometimes I wish I was smart enough to have gotten involved with things like neuroscience. I watched part of a lecture on certain brain functions a good while back, regarding the mechanics of various mental illnesses, and it was incredibly fascinating. Such a powerful organ that we simply can't understand well enough.
How did you manage that? Graduate degree in the field? I dont have a bachelors degree so thats probably the biggest hurdle for me (and I've run the number several times I cant afford to go back). Even in support roles I imagine the culture of the companies in the field place a lot of weight on academic credentials.
The easiest path for you would be to get a job as a tech in a neuroscience lab. Virtually every lab needs motivated help, and while those jobs may not pay super well, you can learn a LOT and get powerful rec. letters from well known scientists. Those should matter in the application process, especially as we've seen a trend of deemphasizing grades and GRE's (many schools don't even take GREs anymore).
I was very lucky, but also had already received a BE and an MS, then worked for two years in industry before applying to PhD programs.
How do you feel your daily neuroscience work is more interesting to you than your previous EE work?
The brain fascinates me and sometimes I think of a similar change.
I'm working to develop novel brain recording technologies to create brain machine interfaces. I get to use all of my EE background, but apply it to problems at the interface of basic neuroscience and medicine.
My goal is to develop better neural interface technologies to both learn about how the brain works, and also to deliver therapies for patients with conditions like paralysis or psychiatric disorders.
happy to chat - feel free to email me: etrautmann at gmail dot com
to answer more specifically, the pivot from EE to neuroscience was motivated by the applications. I felt as a EE that I had a lot of tools in search of an application I really cared about. In industry, I was frequently applying those skills to disparate problems, but without a long term aim I was highly motivated to pursue.
I applied to PhD programs, all of which should have a stipend and cover tuition. I was very lucky in where I ended up, and while my pay dropped a lot from an industry engineering job, I was still able to live comfortably by my standards for the duration of my degree. I'm now a postdoc, which still pays poorly relative to alternate options, but that's not why I do what I do. It's a privileged position to be in, and likely does constrain my thinking about starting a family, etc. but works well enough for me. Postdocs should be paid more across the board, however.
You are definitely smart enough. The problem is that most neuroscience is extremely incremental and often boring/useless. People like the idea of "working with the brain", but since we have no idea what we're doing, they just end up doing the 237th paper on the regions whose activity is "modulated" by the hippocampus, etc., etc.
There's a lot wrong with the structure of science, and this does lead to some incrementalism, but at the end of the day, we are making huge breakthroughs and our progress in understanding the brain is accelerating.
Reading the HN title, I was immediately reminded of the Oliver Sacks book Awakenings[1]. He discovered that the drug L-DOPA could temporarily awaken encephalitis patients from a coma-like state. I wonder if the article's title "Awakening after a sleeping pill" is a reference to that book.
There's a House M.D. episode about this. It's one of my favourite episodes, but if you weren't already following the show it wouldn't be the best one to start on, as it involved Wilson doing a lot of analysis on House's way of thinking which you'd lack context on.
Out of curiosity, I brought this up to a professor in 2009. Examples were circulating online back then regarding Ambien and lock-in syndrome with similar temporary reversal effect.
Got basically told off with denial and laughs.
Experts often get stuck on this point where their ego supercedes any notion of new science, exploration and potentially disruptive information.
Found out promethazine (over the counter antihistamine) can make me sleepy after trying to use it to help with virtual reality sickness.
I've recently started taking it a few times a month to help out when I am having poor sleep, in an attempt to kick me back into a decent rhythm.
Reading the experiences in this thread of people using Seroquel or Zolpidem and their negative reactions - I am feeling a little sketchy about my crutch.
Careful with antihistamines. I've abused diphenhydramine in the past. Like crazy amounts each night. And I know at least 2 other addicts who have as well - one even claimed they shot it lol... so it can be addictive (and slightly physically addictive hard to get sleep until after 'withdrawals' end).
it helps 'slow down my thinking' and just kind of nod out to nothingness when taken alone. and combining with other drugs/alcohol amplifies
I feel like it has permanently worsened my memory. For sure brain fog is definitely noticeable for weeks after stopping.
There are also a few scary articles I've read linking to alzheimer's/dementia. It kind of makes sense from my limited wikipedia understanding of brain chemistry that blocking Acetylcholine would have long term effects. amped up version of this action is used to kill people vx seren etc
im sober from everything now. but every once and a blue moon i'll take diphenhydramine if i'm having serious insomnia.
one night feels restful. after that it just exasperates & continues the cycle. It also is hard to take just one, I literally have to buy a travel pack, take one, throw the rest away or i will keep taking them until they are gone. annnnd now i want one to zone out. don't abuse drugs kids!
Different drug and underlying affliction, but the film "Awakenings" is worth watching if this story piques your interest. It's a true (though highly dramatized) story. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099077/
What happens when the sleeping pill wears off? Does the patient revert to his previous state until administered another dose, or does a single dose permanently change the patient?
> After consultation with his family, a single dose of zolpidem (10 mg) was administered by the nursing home physician. This dose is frequently used for patients with persistent hyporesponsive disorders (Bomalaski et al., 2017). Within 20 min, the patient started communicating spontaneously, asking the nurse how his wheelchair was to be operated, and requesting fast food. He managed to walk while being supported by the staff and phoned his father, who had not heard his son's voice for years. Despite evident retrograde amnesia, going back three years before the brain injury, and an apparent hearing deficit, he was cheerful, alert, and showing interest in the people and objects surrounding him.
> Two hours after zolpidem administration, he gradually fell back into his diminished motivational state.
I believe it would be on you to interpret it more charitably. I'm unsure how you've found a way to take offense with words that aren't readily associated with malice.
"Slither" is definitely a negative term. A human doesn't slither, unless it is up to something nefarious, sneaky, malign, or evil. The devil is seen as serpentine in the Christian religion, and historically known as 'slithering about' to do evil. The apple offered to Eve, as part of the 'fall from grace' of humanity, was offered by Satan in serpent form.
The English language evolved and formed over centuries, in parallel with Christianity as a religion. Hence, many such negative or positively charged words and phrases exist.
For example, 'awesome' is "good awe" and "awful" is "bad awe", but why is "some awe" good, and "being full of awe" bad?
Because there is the concept that one cannot withstand being in full presence of God. Having some "awe" of God withstandable, but all? Will destroy you. To be filled with awe, something immensely wonderful to have some of, is horrible.
Irregardless of the current state of Christianity, English is derived from its historical, cultural roots, and some words can be "associated with malice". And again, I've only ever heard 'slither' used in reference to a human being in a highly negative connotation.
NOTE: I fully agree, especially on an international forum which has non-native speakers, assume good intent. However, the initial reply was not angry, or hateful, at least not from inakarmacoma.
Anyhow.
My 2 cents, worthful or not.
(Edit for all sorts of weird errors, and added a bit of context)
I'll bite, assuming good intent. (Though one's intended interpretation doesn't invalidate another's unexpected interpretation...) so here we go:
"Slither" can reasonably be associated with snakes, for which allusions are aplenty. The choice of word demonstrates a deliberate creativity that invited 6 the reader to consider whether there's deliberate underlying intent in the creative choice.
The "to life" comment takes an opinioated stance on the essence of what it means to be a living being, a controversial and deeply divisive topic for centuries.
Did you intend to inspire these interpretations? I doubt it. But is it reasonable to conclude you might have? Absolutely
No blame warranted, either way. Communication is flakey. ::shrug::
Communication is far less flakey when the default is a charitable interpretation.
As for your other points, I highly doubt such a simple comment intended to touch on the complexities of what it means to be alive - any interpretation otherwise seems to be reaching hard to find a complex technical fault compared to the alternative of interpreting with hospitality and arriving at the conclusion that it was a simple colloquialism intended to describe the situation.
Also, judging by your comment you seem to believe I'm the one who made the comment that was interpreted as unkind.
Your bizarre use of "malice" explains a lot about why you don't see how "slither" and "come back to life" are plainly uncharitable phraseology to associate with people dealing with tbi. If you can't figure that out, buddy, I don't know what to tell ya.
Indeed, to me the comment in question sounds like a subjective description of what the hyporesponsive might be feeling as their lucidity or initiative are taken away after a brief window of activity.
As the author of the original comment, I feel this is the most accurate comprehension. Other comments seem to have taken a more literal read, but that would be incorrect, as clearly the patients are neither dead nor snakes.
I would debate that slither isn’t a negative connotation when used in reference to senses, for instance: electrical impulses slither through the synapses of the human nervous system, allowing us to perceive a reality.
My initial read was OP specifically chose obtuse phrasing in order to cast a malicious tone on the situation.
There is no positive attribute to describe something as “slithering”. Not only does it carry negative connotations, it also poor fits the patients behavior.
So
Purposeful use of negative phraseology.
Incorrect usage of negative phraseology highlighting the willful choice of such words.
Perhaps the OP is a poor English speaker, if that’s the case, He should not be defended, this negative reaction is a social teaching aid.
> "come back to life" are plainly uncharitable phraseology
There are many meanings to the phrase "come back to life". For example, my car "coughs into life" when I start it, and "comes alive" when I floor it, though nobody would infer it is actually alive. If someone "steps lively" that doesn't mean they are otherwise dead. A "live wire" isn't expected to be living, and also a person can be called a "live wire" meaning they're very engaging.
To "come back to life" in this context appears to mean simply that the person becomes animated and responsive to his surroundings. It's a phrase that would never occur to me to be offended by.
They can be a lifesaver for an informed patient, though. I suffer from occasional insomnia (about once a month -- if working too late, got too emotionally invested in something, or if accidentally drank too much coffee), and Ambien has been incredibly helpful. I wouldn't dare take it on even a weekly basis, though.
Even though I haven't had any side effects, I still hide my car keys before taking it after having read stories of people driving while asleep on Ambien.
Zolpidem, I use this pill to sleep and works fantastic for me. My MD told me that regular use could lead to dementia and the risk for addiction is considerable. I've tried antidepressants to sleep but always wake up with a headache, the feeling of it it's not great either. But with this one, never had an issue.
Ever tried Hydroxyzine for sleep? It's an anti-anxiety med that was prescribed to me for insomnia after zolpidem and the other popular non-benzo hypnotics had the opposite effects on me.
Hydroxyzine works ok for me. Not great. Flexirol + hydrocodone work fantastic for me, but that's not a viable option.
The only one I tried was trazodone, half a pill is enough to induce sleep but falling asleep and waking up doesn't fells nice. 15 minutes after taking the pill I get a sensation that I can only describe as "being poisoned", in the morning I get a long lasting headache for 4+ hours.
Antidepressants are prescribed as a "safer" alternative to zolpidem/dangerous medication but there is some controversy in the medical community about it. Some people developed a zolpidem addiction up to the point where they need it or won't sleep at all.
Trazodone literally poisoned me. My body couldnt break it down, and I ended up with worse than double vision, very impared thinking, no balance, and more. It started getting better the next day but took a few days to really get back to any kind of "normal"
Zolpidem may cause serious or possibly life-threatening sleep behaviors. Some people who took zolpidem got out of bed and drove their cars, prepared and ate food, had sex, made phone calls, sleep-walked, or were involved in other activities while not fully awake. After they woke up, these people were unable to remember what they had done. Tell your doctor if you have ever had an unusual sleep behavior while taking zolpidem. Be sure that your family or caregiver are aware that these symptoms are serious and to call your doctor if they occur. Stop taking zolpidem and call your doctor right away if you find out that you have been driving or doing anything else unusual while you were sleeping.
It’s a crap calculation but dementia years away is better than a life without proper sleep. You might not make it to those dementia years or skip it through some other process-like not triggering it. I’ve accepted similar trade offs with medication for chronic migraine (as in literally every day sometimes multiples per day). Functioning today definitely matters more than decades down the road if that’s what it truly takes.
People making choices of that sort are almost always much more afraid of something else, that "something else" being what happens if they don't treat for X. If they had better options, they would be all over them.
I would be very hesitant about taking antipsychotics (of which Seroquel, quetiapine is one). There is research suggesting they may cause brain atrophy (reduction in brain volumes over time).
Now, if one is dealing with something really serious like psychosis or acute mania, maybe it is a preventing a short-term harm which outweighs the risk of this long-term harm. But if it is just trouble sleeping, considering this risk, I think one should explore other options first.
(I used to take Seroquel for insomnia and anxiety myself. I stopped when I discovered this research. It also contributed to our decision to get our son off risperidone.)
A really fascinating book is just waiting to be written taking into account the brain wave pattern understanding from research that's occurred over the last few years.
My guess is the damage was primarily on the conscious parts of the head, my guess is the sleeping pill (I'd wager canibus may also work) allows the more unconscious "dream-like" side of the brian to temporarily fill-in on executive functions.
So at least some people who have been declared “brain-dead” and had their organs harvested could have been brought back (albeit temporarily) with a shot of Ambien? That’s... disturbing.
