Insomnia or Anxiety

Hi, I am new here and after reading many of the posts I thought maybe someone could help me. For as long as I can remember I have had difficulty falling asleep. I sleep with the TV on as if I don't, I can't turn my mind off. Even with the tv on, I do not fall asleep until 3-4 am. On many nights I am so exhausted I think I am going to go straight to sleep and when I start to doze off it feels as if I have a rush of adrenaline and then again can't sleep until 3-4 am. It is as though my body fights sleep. My physician has diagnosed chronic insomnia and I have tried everything from behavior mod, OTC drugs as well as prescrption meds. Has anyone experienced this?

Hey,

I have only experienced it on some nights, and therefore know how terrible you must be feeling right now. Prescription meds reacted very badly with my body, and made my problem worse. If you eat before bedtime, this might interfer with your sleep; or if you drink coffee - even hours before bed - this will also interfe with it. What do you do each night in the run-up to bed? Is your life quite stressful?

Kevin

I think I went/am going through a similar situation. I have been battling with sleep for as long as I can remember. I started seeing a psychiatrist in January, and initially he thought my sleep disturbances were derived from my anxiety issues, such as my constant ruminating. At that time I started taking an anti-depressant.
Fast foward a few months and my anxiety is under control, but my sleep is still so messed up. I had a sleep study done and the results showed I only slept for 72 minutes out of the nine hours I was there, and that none of it was REM. My psych then realized my sleep was completely separate from my anxiety.
I trialed the following drugs with little to no benefit:
clonazepam
lorazepam
trazadone
Seroquel

Now I take Ambien. It works for me.
The only downside is I'm 20 and will probably be on sleep meds for the rest of my life :/