Found Something That Seems to Work for Severe Tinnitus Related Insomnia

I've had severe, very loud and intrusive tinnitus for 15 months. I won't bore you with the details of how this has impacted my life, since you all know how that goes. The worst thing has been near total insomnia, for which I've been hospitalized twice. I've tried all possible herbal remedies which either didn't work or worked a little but caused a hangover; Remeron (caused brown tongue and salivary gland lesions); benzos (they work until they stop working and then you're ten times more anxious than before); antidepressants make the tinnitus much worse; the tinnitus is much too loud for white noise masking at night, but a hypnosis CD I got from a local hypnotist does help me relax and sometimes induces a short nap. Vistaril made me nervous, antihistamines don't work and Ambien only gave me two hours of sleep. The generic Ambien didn't work at all; the non-generic is the one that worked a little but resulted in a depressive type hangover. A few weeks ago I read about a drug called Silenor, which is actually the old antidepressant Doxepin (Sinequan), but in a dose of only 3 to 6 mg. tabs. Usually Doxepin comes in much larger doses, such as 25 mg. They tried Doxepin on me in the hospital and it didn't work, so I scoffed while reading about the prospect that 3 to 6 mg. could do anything. However, since I had a 25 mg capsule in the house one sleepless night, I decided to cut it into four (about 5 mg) and took a fourth of a capsule. To my complete surprise I woke up six hours later feeling totally rested after the first good night's sleep in more than a year. It has to be taken on a completely empty stomach (no food for three hours). My doctor did get me the liquid version of Doxepin for easier measuring, but it didn't work. The brand name drug Silenor is about $200 for a month's supply, but Doxepin costs about $10 for a month's supply. So far I haven't experienced an increased T volume when I take it and there hasn't been much of a hangover. They don't know how Silenor induces sleep, but one theory was that in the very low dose it works as a strong antihistamine, with no anti-depressant activity. Hopefully this will help someone someday.

 

Does it still work?