Kind of a nightmare...

Hi all,

I haven't been sleeping at all lately, like at all. I've tried valerian, melatonin, kava kava, and valium to sleep and they don't even touch the insomnia. The insomnia has slowly gotten worse since I started biaxin/plaquenil 2 months ago. At first, I thought the insomnia was some kind of herx. But it just kept getting worse and worse to the point where now I sleep about an hour a day, and it is only very light sleep. I've been taking days off of different supplements and meds to determine which medication has been causing this.

After taking several days off of each medication and supplement that I'm on, I still have this awful insomnia. I couldn't figure it out for the life of me. I started researching my meds and found the issue. The half life of plaquenil is 32 DAYS!!! So I've slowly been getting less and less sleep because it apparently takes 6 months to reach 100% steady state in the body.

Now that I figured it out, I still can't do anything about it except not take it and wait until it gets out of my system enough to where I can sleep. It will take at least a month to reach the half life, so its safe to say I won't be sleeping much for the next month or so. This will be a frustrating month and my immune system will be absolutely shot after this major lack of sleep. Very depressed and tired. Sorry for rant.

Pete

I wasn't sleeping well for years also and my muscles were so tensed up and hard, doctor finally put me on Flexiril which helped. Not sure if you want to go to a muscle relaxer but sleep is important.