Nights 1 and 2 on Agomelatine

[stephbg]

Starting: Agomelatine 25mg x1 before bed
Stopping: Stilnox 12.5mg x1 before bed



Night 1 (Mon): Insomnia, of the wandering around the house variety. *Really* severe tension headache. Pulsing eyeballs. Frequent need to pee. Light sensitivity. Light flashes. Some abdominal cramping. Puffy. Dry mouth. Very uncomfortable long night.

Night 2 (Tues): Stayed in bed all night but for 1 pee break. Concentrated hard on relaxing local muscles to reduce urgency to pee. Really severe tension headache returned, but concentrated very hard and repeatedly on relaxing facial muscles. Twitching and muscle jerks all over, but only small muscle groups at any one time. Dry mouth. Puffy. Did fall asleep a couple of times for 1-2 hours each.

Now: No appetite, but no nausea, and no dizziness. Feel surprisingly clear-headed on one hand, but any advantage lost in thumping tension headache/eyestrain. Recall dreams very clearly. No nightmares, no homicide, no psychosis (that I'm aware of). Feel calm, but not excessively so. Feel appropriately tired after a couple of rough nights but no worse. Want to rip off face and top of skull.

Comments

[leecetheartist.livejournal.com]

Gah. Sorry you're having a hard time.

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

Actually I think I'm getting off relatively lightly, but thanks for the thought.

[leecetheartist.livejournal.com]

Okay...still feeling for you though mate.

[ariaflame.livejournal.com]

It's always tricky though. Are the symptoms due to starting the new medication, or withdrawal from the old.

Apparently the reason so many medications indicate 'headache' as a possible side effect is that for drug trials the subjects have to stop taking caffeine in case of complicating factors. So no coffee. Or similar. And thus... caffeine withdrawal.

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. I'm treating all observations as a combination of the two. In the short term I plan to ignore the first 4 days of results at least which is the (recent) minimum write-off time from a change in meds. I think it helps to decrease anxiety/hope as a complicating factor.

I am frankly overjoyed by the absence of nausea at this point :-)

BTW not much caffeine in my life ATM.

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

And for my own reference mainly: the headache kicked in long before Stilnox withdrawal had a chance. On night 2 it started quite distinctly about an hour after taking the agomelatine