Remeron

[flower]

Has anybody had any diverse ( or good responses) to Remeron.My specialist prescribed these yesterday to help my poor sleep and appetite. i took quarter of a 30 mg tab last night to build up slowly but this morning was a nightmare even at that small dose. will it improve...!

 

[gu3vara]

I know it very well, took it for years and now I'm off it. The first 2-3 days, it felt extremely sedating, lasting all day. It passes fairly quickly and it did help a lot with my sleep, I never could tolerate more than 7.5 mg, I would feel weird on higher doses. I can now sleep without it, so it's possible to wean off it, unlike benzos that can be a hell to stop.

 

[flower]

i hope i can stick it out the next few days then..today is unreal. feel so spaced out more than usual so it must be last nights dose lingering. he wanted me to take 15 mg to start. thank goodness i had the sense to take a quarter!

 

[*GG*]

I take it for sleep, and have been on it for a couple of years now. I think I needed more than 7.5mgs to start, taking about 30mg/day now. I tried Doxepin before that and it did nothing for me.

So if it makes you feel worse the next day, ask to try something else, I think there are many other choices, so if it doesn't work for you, let the doc know!

GG

 

[xrayspex]

I took it for a summer about 9 years ago. I literally broke off a crumb like size of tiny salt or dust and within half hour of taking it I was knocked out deep sleep and sometimes I couldnt wake up next morning, sleep like 10 hours or more. I also put on 20 pounds with it even though was watching calories. It did work for sleep. With psychoactive meds I often would take just a tiny piece and get an effect, the tricyclics were the same way. I have a friend who is small female too with similar issues and she had same experiece with meds, you could try taking a teeny piece and see if side effects less. the doc said tho with remeron that less is more sedating and sometimes more is less sedating, altho I dont think he understood just how small of a dose I was taking. docs don't understand that, but most of them don't get mcs and cfs etc

I stopped taking it tho because of how sedating and weight gain.

 

[5150]

weight gain is the big enemy with Remeron. the weight goes on so easily, but it's a really tough job to lose it. The sleep is certainly welcome, even though the drugged hangover never went away for me. it's better than the desperation of not sleeping... but the battle with weight gain isn't worth it at all.

 

[flower]

thanks for all the suggestions. After another `hangover` this morning i have decided not to take this horrible stuff again and am going to ask for something else. I have thought about asking for clonazepam.Any one had any experiences with that?

 

[Marg]

Have you tried melatonin? I was told take 3 mg 1/2 hour before bed and then 3mg more if I wake up. I was told it would regulate sleep in time, we will see. I wake up in 2-3 hours. I had never heard of taking that much before. The other choice was Remeron. It seems to be helping so far!

 

[drex13]

I've been taking Remeron for about 3 years. I can't tolerate SSRI's like Lexapro, etc... Remeron is great for sleep. It has antihistamninic properties, so there is a bit of a hangover in the morning, like taking Benadryl. It does increase your appetite in the beginning, and can cause you to crave carbs, which does lead to some weight gain. This went away over time for me also. The other thing it did when I first started taking it, was to increase dreaming. It was like dreaming in Hi-Def. I like Remeron, it's been good for me. Melatonin never did much for me. With Melatonin I would sleep for exactly 4 hours and then be wide awake. With Remeron, I sleep all night. After I take it, I usually have about a 1 - 1/2 hour window before it kicks in. But, even after 3 years, there is still a bit of a hangover in the mornings. I find that I wake up without waking up if that makes sense. I'm awake, but my eyes don't open for about an hour. If I stay in bed, the hangover hangs around , but if I get up and get moving, it goes away pretty quickly. Also, there are no sexual side effects like with many of the SSRI's.

 

[5150]

if you manage to use Remeron w/o long term weight gain,you have won . because no doubt it is a sleeper. but the weight issue stopped me. taking off 30 pounds was tough.

 

[SquidProQuo]

Just wanted to add a note here for people researching this drug:

Sleeping and improved appetite were good, and side effects were minimal (I couldn't tolerate SSRIs).

BUT... keep an eye on your Cortisol, becasue it does lower it‚ and in CFS your Cortisol may already be low.

I was getting low Cortisol symptoms to the point where they were throwing around an Addisons Dx, and NO ONE, not my PCP, naturopath or 8 or so ER visit Drs put the two together.

I had a body intuition moment where I felt I needed to get off it and started tapering against all advice.

I had been told "Not to Google", but finally just typed in "Remeron", "cortisol" and there it was (and that was the end of my blind faith in my doctor!). It was pretty great to withdraw from, but I did that slowly. I have felt much better since, but Remeron is still a good drug and served its purpose too! It's Great for sleep, and if you ONLY need it for sleep, consider taking a very low dose, much lower than your doctor likely prescribed. I can use it to induce sleep at 3.5mg!

Remeron/Mirtazapine did get me through rough Benzodiazapine withdrawal (thanks, doc, for putting my on benzos for YEARS)

 

[Valentijn]

I had been told "Not to Google", but finally just typed in "Remeron", "cortisol" and there it was (and that was the end of my blind faith in my doctor!).

A doctor telling you "not to google" either wants to hide his incompetence or thinks you're hypochondriac or psychosomatic. Either way, that's not a doctor you should be seeing.

 

[SquidProQuo]

A doctor telling you "not to google" either wants to hide his incompetence or thinks you're hypochondriac or psychosomatic. Either way, that's not a doctor you should be seeing.

No kidding! Next time I'm just going to say, "Ok, I promise not to "Google" as long as YOU do." I'm just such a research person. Having worked in libraries in my youth, and now in education, it just makes so much sense to me to "look things up" becasue I don't expect people to know all the the things all the time. The more we practice researching things, the better we get at it (evaluating sources, etc.).

It just blew me away that I had a cortisol issue, was on ONE medication (which I always disclosed) and it the correlation was missed again and again. I'm still open to the idea that up to 75% my symptoms/situation was psych-med induced!

EDIT: but you know what, high cortisol can be a huge problem for some people—maybe not us— and so this drug has merit. It's not a "bad" drug at all!

 

[GypsyGirl]

Just wanted to add a note here for people researching this drug:

Sleeping and improved appetite were good, and side effects were minimal (I couldn't tolerate SSRIs).

BUT... keep an eye on your Cortisol, becasue it does lower it‚ and in CFS your Cortisol may already be low.

I was getting low Cortisol symptoms to the point where they were throwing around an Addisons Dx, and NO ONE, not my PCP, naturopath or 8 or so ER visit Drs put the two together.

I had a body intuition moment where I felt I needed to get off it and started tapering against all advice.

I had been told "Not to Google", but finally just typed in "Remeron", "cortisol" and there it was (and that was the end of my blind faith in my doctor!). It was pretty great to withdraw from, but I did that slowly. I have felt much better since, but Remeron is still a good drug and served its purpose too! It's Great for sleep, and if you ONLY need it for sleep, consider taking a very low dose, much lower than your doctor likely prescribed. I can use it to induce sleep at 3.5mg!

Remeron/Mirtazapine did get me through rough Benzodiazapine withdrawal (thanks, doc, for putting my on benzos for YEARS)

@SquidProQuo - do you have links to info concerning mirtazapine causing low cortisol? My PCP recently prescribed mirtazapine for sleep. However, I'm being treated for late stage adrenal fatigue (by a different doctor) and concerned of mirtazapine's effects on cortisol.

I found a few studies from reputable sources, but they were very small studies (8-12 people). No side effects websites mentioned cortisol specifically in the fine print.

So far, this vet's website has the best explanation, under "side effects": http://www.marvistavet.com/html/mirtazapine.html

But I'm looking for people, not animal side effects.

Does anyone have good links I could show my doc?

Thanks!

 

[SquidProQuo]

This is probably the little study you found: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12606843

My experience was pretty anecdotal — my own test results and experiments. And reading other people's stories.

Know, though, that whatever you do chose to do (with Remeron)—the reversibility of the effects are high when you get off AND getting off is painless compared to something like Benzos or SSRIs.

So I'd say trying it isn't a big risk is you go into it with the knowledge that this could happen. My problem was that I didn't and dealing with mass amounts of stress from weird episodes, ER visits and thinking I may have Addisons Disease was extra trauma I did not need.

I mentioned this in my last post but you do not need a lot of this stuff to get the soporific effects and fix your sleep. 15mg is where you start and then they up you to 30mg. But 7.5mg or even 3 will send you to bed (in my experience).

I've also somehow managed to recover a TON from what I was. Although I do have MTHFR, crappy circulation, and some other genetic quirks, I think that fear and medications caused a significant portion of my suffering so stoping said meds changed my life. While you have way more stuff going on than I ever did.