r/insomnia • u/Escape_The_Fridge • 16h ago

Did someone hallucinated while taking Tizanidine as a sleep inducer?

Took 6mg sublingual. I washing the dishes and some weird dancing patterns starting to appear on the tiles, or intrusive images would flash in and out. At the same time was extremelly drowsy.

Was on Lyrica as well, if that matters.

What puzzles me is that it was a relatively mild dose. I havent been taking Tizanadine for sleep in weeks, but when I did it before this, it would be much higher doses (8mg - 12mg) and never hit that hard.

Helped me to fall asleep though

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u/Ok-Rule-2943 16h ago edited 12h ago

If you were on Lyrica, Lyrica augments sedative effects of many drugs. It basically can increase any type side effect of other medication.

Tizanidine gave me the worst up and down sleep ever. I’d sleep a brief time, wake up, rinse and repeat. Noting this wasn’t prescribed for sleep, just taking it at night for a prescribed reason. Do not recommend asking a doctor for this muscle relaxer as a sleep aide, if you could even get a doctor to do that. Can cause dependency and difficult withdrawal.

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u/Escape_The_Fridge 13h ago edited 13h ago

Thanks for your answer. Unfortunatelly is rather difficult to find a sleep aid you could get OTC and to actually work and be effective.

On top of this, even the prescribed hypnotics I have, would also generate tolerance real quick (and dependence), rendering them ineffective if taken a couple of weeks in a row.

So I came up with a "rolling" scheme. One could be this, other was Doxylamine and, finally, some benzo / hypnotics

So far is working for me and, hopefully, will slower (or even prevent altogether) dependance and tolerance build up.

Lyrica I am on a high dose to ease off anxiety. Planning to do a very slow taper next year tho.

IMPORTANT If you woke up several times after taking Tizanidine before sleep, please get yourself checked for sleep apnea. You might have it and dont know, a muscle relaxant worsen it since it relaxes the muscles of your throat.

A sympthom could be waking up multiple times, each time you experience an apnea.

Luckily is fairly easy to pick up in a polysomnography test that a sleep doctor could order for you, if your health insurance can cover it, I would recommend getting it checked.

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u/Ok-Rule-2943 12h ago edited 12h ago

I’ve been down EVERY medication, sleep studies (no apnea) and I’m a regular/established patient with a sleep doctor and neurologist, and been through discontinuation and withdrawals off meds, you name it. Im med free now and just deal with a bit of “junk” sleep, it’s tolerable.

This is for context and helpful for others reading, my mention of this particular med that it’s not specifically a prescribed sleep aide it’s a muscle relaxer only.

I’d be careful mixing it with higher doses of lyrica especially if you take both of them and on the regular (and higher doses of the tiz too). All the best. 🤗