Help: I can't give up my medication and it's giving me the strangest dreams
Hello everyone, I'm new around here. I'm faced with a problem and I'd like some opinions from other IBS sufferers. I'll share my experience (as brief as possible):
I started having problems like...3 years ago. I spent an entire summer in hell, with symptons that may resonate with some of you: going to the bathroom up to 10 times a day, extreme bloating, horrible pain... The worse by far were the bouts of fatigue. In a narcolepsia style, I would be extremely tired after eating anything or going to the bathroom, and most of the times I'd fall asleep... only to get up 2, 4, 10 hours later, in the middle of the night or in the morning or whenever, not knowing what day it was. I could sleep 15 hours or more in a day, and the rest of the time I was completely useless, an amoeba trying to get out of bed and get a shower or something. it was absolute hell and I'm terrified of the tiredness coming back.
Fastforward 2 years ago. I was eventually diagnose with IBS. I've had my diet reduced to only 10 items or so and my doctor encouraged that I introduced things while keeping out gluten and lactose. After trying 9835764567 hundred meds, he gave me what, in his words, "works for patients when nothing else is making a difference". It was an antidepresant called Mirtazapine, which apparently changes the way the brain and the digestive system comunicate or something. I was skeptical, but I tried it and, ohh, it DID make a difference! Slowly but stady I recovered and I can make a normal life now. I still have a gluten and lactose free diet, but I can eat everything else, which is unbelievable to me! After eating just potatoes and whatnot, I can eat MEAT! Chocolate! I can use spices! The pain is mostly gone away, even the days when I go to the bathroom more times than normal, I feel fine. The tiredness went away like it never existed and only returns when I'm really stressed.
So... this is the problem I'm facing now: I've recovered my life, I feel fine, BUT I'm suppossed to stop taking the meds at some point. And every single time I try to make the dose smaller, just a little bit, all the symptoms come again. And, well... I read that this pills can mess with your dreams (it says so in the leaflet) and I have been having like THE WEIRDEST DREAMS, I shit you not, I can wake up after having the weirdest dream of my entire life, feeling so confuse. I've had sleep paralisis sometimes, and that's not funny either. And it is very difficult for me to wake up in the mornings.
So... do I really need to choose between being an amoeba and having the most strange dreams ever for the rest of my life? Any idea how I can give up this medication or why my body needs it still (it's supposed to heal, right?).
Wow, that is one tough choice to make! :-I
I used to have very IBS-D-like symptoms but probiotics seemed to help and I always knew that those couldn't be a long-time plan. Dropping them meant the symptoms were back, taking them I was at risk of developing SIBO. And lo and behold: 4 years after discovering them, I have something that is suspciously SIBO-like.
I'd advice you to NOT take that medicine anymore if it makes you feel uncomfortable in a psychiological sense because "rewiring" the brain is almost always not worth the risk. Can't you try another anti-depressant? Science made huge leaps in that department from what I've heard.Mm... maybe I can change the anti-depressant, to be honest I have no idea if all of them work or if it has to be this one in particular. I'll ask my doctor about it (hopefuly on the phone and not paying a full visit). Thanks.
I feel for you. You are stranded between a rock and a hard place. It must all feel so surreal and difficult to live with.
I have never taken Mirtazipine, or any other drug for my IBS, but I do know all drugs come with some kinds of side effects. Some do mess with dreams and REM sleep. I have no idea how physically addictive, or not, Mirtazipine might be.
Have you let your doctor know what's happening in sleep? It's great that the drug helped you but there might possibly be another similar-acting medication that doesn't cause your sleep symptoms? I don't know. That's just a guess on my part.
But for me, even just having IBS has made my dreams different. I used to dream in a certain way, of certain scenarios and feelings.Since IBS I have different-feeling dreams generally, and can often wake up feeling a bit alien to myself if that makes any sense. The sorts of things I hold most dear seem to have disappeared, and all the lovely landscapes I used to explore in dreams have disappeared, and I get super-busy dreams now with lots of people in them, and I feel a million miles from "myself".
I sometimes had lucid dreams and out of body experiences in full consciousness, but the last couple of years or so I seem to have been plunged into "worlds" that don't feel like me, during dreaming. I suppose that's just yet another of life's experiences and the eternal Soul is way above all that, but it still feels weird. Dreaming is just dreaming, and what we truly are is something else much finer.
I blame serotonin imbalances or maybe acetylcholine. Those are simply physical hormones. Our Souls are beyond them. This is just a nuisance. That's the way I look at it.I do hope you can find a way through all this, and hopefully suuport from your doctor and possibly to find another medication, or even something alternative, herbal, homeopathic perhaps...etc??
Wishing you the best, & hope something can help.
