Cheney on Klonopin: stage 4 sleep disruption

[Guest guest]

I asked Cheney about the concern I often heard - that benzodiazapines like

Klonopin disrupt stage 4 sleep.

I told him this always puzzled me, because I had terrible sleep problems before

starting Klonopin/Doxepin/magnesium, but none after. I've had 7 to 9 hours of

uninterrupted sleep almost every night for the 4 1/2 years I've been on the

afore mentioned. So I didn't know what to say when folks expressed concern that

Klonopin would disrupt their sleep.

Cheney said that he honestly doesn't understand the concern. He did say that

Klonopin may disrupt the sleep of people who take it for conditions other than

the " threshold potential aberration " that CFIDS patients have. (And in those

cases it may be inappropriately prescribed.) But since we have a brain injury

that has shifted us somewhat toward seizure (on a continuum from seizure toward

coma), and Klonopin shifts us back toward normal, it facilitates our sleep.

Cheney acknowledged that if you're looking just for sleep drugs, Klonopin is

certainly not the first one to come to mind, or that it should be used to

facilitate sleep in " ordinary " patients. It is not a sleep drug, per se. But a

large part of the sleep disorder of CFIDS is the brain injury/excitatory

neurotoxicity/ threshold potential aberration/ shift toward seizure. And if you

treat that with Klonopin, then you've treated a large part of the sleep problem.

Most importantly, he simply doesn't see stage 4 sleep disruption in his patients

on Klonopin. He said you might see it in a more normal population - but we all

know we're far from normal! :-)

My guess is that if you tell a doc who doesn't understand the brain injury of

CFIDS that you want a prescription for Klonopin to help you sleep, they'll say

no way. But for us, Klonopin is a sleep medication only indirectly - it shifts

us away from the seizure end of the continuum toward the middle, which addresses

a large part of our underlying sleep problem.

Take care. Carol