Less than 24 hours after my last entry my almost 17-year old cat appeared near-death. It was one of the most upsetting experiences of my adult life. It also wasn’t an especially good time for me to deal with such a stressful event, since I’m in the grips of withdrawal from a shockingly addictive OTC medication that’s fried my already delicate nervous system.
I’ll cut to the chase and reveal that my cat is still very much alive. I have now acquired a phenomenal holistic vet who has given her some traditional Chinese medicine remedies that seem to have turned things around significantly.
Not to stray too far off topic, but during our first appointment with him he looked at her most recent blood work results and said, “She doesn’t even have cancer! Every pet who comes to me has cancer. So this will be easy.” From now on when anyone complains about an ailment I want to say, “You don’t even have cancer!” without any further context.
But back to it. Two Wednesdays ago, in the moment, it very much seemed that she was on the brink of death. It was the type of situation where I was calling around trying to find out where I could take her, trying to figure out which urgent cares and emergency rooms would have the lowest wait times. Trying to decipher whether she would even be able to survive the stress of being shuttled to a noisy vet’s office or if things had already gone past the point of no return and it would be more peaceful for her to pass away at home.
The whole experience made me recall a fun thing that psychedelics taught me several years ago:
Don’t be scared of death. There are things so much worse than death. For example, the slow, uncertain, excruciating, torturous moments leading up to death.
If she had just passed, of course I’d be shattered and devastated, but there would be nothing left to witness or do. It’s the primal, gruesome crawl towards death that is the most unsettling thing to witness, especially with someone you love dearly. And I didn’t handle it well at all. It took everything in me to move forward with finding her help when it felt like my entire body was collapsing.
So, why was my body collapsing? Other than the normal reasons. Great question…
I’ve mentioned I recently figured out that I’ve likely always had nervous system dysfunction. But part of my deep dive into learning about the nervous system included coming to learn about a class of medications known as “anticholinergics.” These are medications that block the body for absorbing acetylcholine, a key nutrient and neurotransmitter that the nervous system and brain need to operate. There are reasons why blocking this might be beneficial for a short period of time, but spending a very long time on them can be dangerous.
In 2021 when the world had gone fully off its rocker and I’d been laid off from my job, I was having serious trouble sleeping. At first, I started increasing the dose of melatonin I was taking. When that didn’t work, I added a bunch of other herbs for sleep. But when that all stopped working I went fully insane and desperately turned to Unisom. When that worked, I kept taking it. Eventually it stopped working, but when I tried to go off of it, everything got 10x worse. So I just stayed on it.
After 8 months of being on Unisom daily I started wheezing and having asthmatic symptoms. Worst of all, I had trouble breathing when I was laying down. Basically sleep apnea, where my airway just sort of collapses. It was so severe that I couldn’t find any position to lay in where I could breathe, so I started taking an albuterol rescue inhaler every night and often multiple times throughout the night. This made my sleep even worse because rescue inhalers blast you with adrenaline.
For the last two years I’ve gone to doctors in Mexico and the US searching for answers about what’s going on. I’ve gone to everyone from emergency room doctors to urgent care doctors, family doctors to specialists, homeopaths and holistic doctors to medical intuitives. And they all agree, “It’s super dangerous for you to be on a rescue inhaler every night for years!” but had no solutions to help with that. Also, none of them gave a single shit that I’d taken Unisom nightly for years.
Would you believe that the only person who told me that my breathing issues were related to long-term Unisom use was the medical intuitive? Of course. Because that kind of thing is the story of my life.
Initially, when the medical intuitive told me to go off it, I was fully on board. But then I tried halving my dose and was instantly transported into a hellish world of withdrawal. The side effects were so severe that I couldn’t sleep at all, my breathing got much worse, my whole body felt like it was on fire, and I was so anxious I felt like I was coming out of my skin. I tried to stick it out for a week until I hit my breaking point and basically told myself, “Maybe the medical intuitive was wrong and I need to stay on this!”
A few months ago when I realized Unisom was the source of my issues, I knew I’d have to MacGyver my own way off of it. I’ve done extra slow tapers by dissolving pills in distilled water and using an oral syringe to slowly lower my dose. But typically I was still following some stranger from the internet’s instructions on a dosage and a taper schedule. Not this time. I’ve not seen one other person on the internet talk about doing this.
So I went totally rogue and dreamed up my own Unisom taper schedule. I listed it below, if for some reason that interests you. I’m mostly adding it because when I look up “Unisom withdrawal,” I see a bunch of people asking how to go off it but no one with real answers. I figure maybe this post will surface for someone who needs it one day.
After three months of tapering, I’m just now at the halfway mark of being off it. The whole thing will take 6 months. I know it sounds insanely slow, but this is the fastest I can possibly go off it while still feeling normal enough to work and take care of myself. It’s absolutely bonkers that doxylamine succinate (aka Unisom) is an OTC medicine that anyone can buy. It’s so much more powerful than I ever imagined.
The good news is that I’m headed in the right direction. The good news is that the nervous system can heal and I have ever reason to think I will get better. The bad news is that going through this withdrawal process is extra destabilizing to the nervous system. I have days where I feel like I’m getting some choline into my system again and my autonomic nervous system functions are regulating, and other days where my nervous system feels like it’s melting down.
Basically, if anything stressful is happening in my life, it feels 20x more stressful than it should because I’m going through this destabilizing detox process.
During my cat’s death march, the most bizarre thing was that I couldn’t stop shaking. My heart rate was through the roof and I couldn’t catch my breath, but really, it was the uncontrollable shaking that most concerned me. It felt like my entire body had been hijacked by an uncontrollable force.
Of course, the experience was difficult, but the way my body was reacting to it felt highly unusual for me. Lest we forget, I’m no stranger to painful or difficult circumstances. This is not my first or even twentieth trauma rodeo. I’ve been through much worse and never had an hours-long full-body shaking episode. I can only deduce that this is because of the prolonged stress my nervous system has been under while taking Unisom.
So, heads down. Forge ahead. Hope for the best. Yada yada.
Currently, in the last few days, it’s felt like my autonomic functions were extra stressed. It feels like something wacky is going on in there so I’ve been focusing on doing more somatic practices every day. Though I’m not seeing anything close to immediate results. Maybe I’m coming down from the death march though.
It seems like there’s a theme that immediately after I post something here, something completely wild happens the next day. Like the universe is trying to give me more material to write about. Here’s hoping that something good and not devastating happens tomorrow. 🤞
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Here’s my Unisom taper schedule, should anyone else ever need help navigating this hell.
Unisom taper schedule
(aka Doxylamine succinate taper schedule)
My starting dose: 12.5mg (I only ever took one half of a tablet)
Dissolve one-half tablet in 2ml (or 27 drops) of distilled water, measured with an oral syringe.
Once the pill has dissolved, you’ll have a total of 28 drops of liquid. Each drop will contain .45mg of doxylamine succinate.
Go down one drop or .45mg every 6 nights.
To do this: Once the pill is dissolved, fill syringe with entire dissolved contents. Release any air from the syringe to ensure that a complete drop is expelled. Then release one drop into the trash. Shoot the rest into your mouth. You may want to fill the syringe with clean water and inject that into your mouth as well to make sure any pill residue isn’t stuck inside the syringe.
Every 6 days release one more drop.
Days 1-6 - minus one drop (i.e. 27 out of 28 drops consumed)
Days 7-12 - minus two drops (i.e. 26 out of 28 drops consumed)
Days 13-18 - minus three drops (i.e. 25 out of 28 drops consumed)
And so on.
At this rate, it will take 168 days to completely taper off, which is approximately 6 months.
If you took a full 25mg pill, I’d suggest doing 4ml of water and adjusting the total drops to 56. At this pace, it would take a year to get off, but in my experience, going off any faster than this leads to not sleeping, anxiety, trouble breathing, full-body rashes, and other allergic reactions.