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Dangerous Reaction
Trazodone
Citation:   DPatient. "Dangerous Reaction: An Experience with Trazodone (exp108161)". Erowid.org. Apr 21, 2016. erowid.org/exp/108161

 
DOSE:
50 mg oral Pharms - Trazodone  
      Pharms - Lamotrigine (daily)
BODY WEIGHT: 140 lb
I take lamictal for depression. It's a new drug for me something I have only been on for 3 months. Everything has actually been great with one caveat. I cannot sleep. When I do sleep my dreams are extremely disturbing and vivid. This is new for me as I usually don't even fully remember my dreams upon waking.

Anyways My psych prescribed me Xanax to help me. 2mg. It was and does work great no problems. Except I don't want an addiction/habit with using it. And I can unfortunately admit I enjoy the drug a bit too much. So my therapist suggested Trazodone. My psych agreed that it would be helpful just as a sleep aid and not an antidepressant. So I was prescribed 50mg's. One pill to take before bed.

The name sounded familiar. I happened to find in my house an old expired bottle of the stuff, same dosage. This should have been a warning. I couldn't remember why I stopped taking it the first time. It must have been because I didn't like the feeling of it. It's not at all like Xanax where I get comfortable and go to sleep naturally. No, this feels like someone whacked me over the head with a frying pan. Except without pain of course.

So before I continue I would like to explain that at least three years have passed since I first tried this drug. And what I am about to describe I surely would have remembered had it occurred the first time.

I took the pill at 9:30pm. Got sleepy. Everything is fine.

The last time I saw the clock before going to sleep was 10:30pm.

I awoke at 11:30pm feeling off. I was suddenly wide awake, and I noticed that I couldn't feel my toes. They had gone completely numb. I had no idea what was happening and became very agitated. My stress shot through the roof and every hour I kept checking my toes to see if they were blue. They weren't.

I laid in bed for hours and hours and my body got more and more numb. By midnight my entire feet were numb as were my fingers. Somehow around 3am I finally began to get tired and figured whatever was happening would pass. Nothing numb was blue so I wasn't oxygen deprived.

The last time I looked at the clock was 3:08am. I fell into that limbo state between being awake and asleep where I was dreaming. All of a sudden and instantaneously the dream was replaced with black and white flashing. Extremely rapid. With a tone in the background at around I'd say the 13000hz range. Extremely loud. I could feel my entire body thrashing. Shaking extremely quickly and intensely in place. In my head I was screaming. In the black and white flashing I could see myself. My face was distorted, disturbing looking.

I tried desperately to move, to jerk myself out of it. I could feel myself straining really trying to move my right arm. It barely moved, my body shaking too intensely. In my mind I was screaming for help and in reality I could hear myself attempting to do the same, but all that I could hear was a weak moan like that of a wounded animal.

Then it stopped. My body still shaking a bit, my sides and muscles hurting from the intensity I looked at the clock. It was 3:12am. Right as I had finally begun to fall asleep I had had a non epileptic seizure.

I did not return to sleep.

The numbness did not subside until around 3-4pm the next day.

I surmised that the reason this happened now and not then was because now I have high blood pressure. That explains the numbness sort of. My doctor and psych agree I had some sort of allergic reaction to this drug. This is a 1 out of 50,000 occurrence in people who take Trazodone HCL so it's not exactly common. But I wanted to document that this happened, that this can happen. And that it happened to me. I have seen a lot of things. Things that terrified me to my core, but nothing so much as that four minutes of complete and utter helplessness. I have had a grand mal seizure before and by comparison and wish I could have had it this time too. At least then I wouldn't have been conscious and completely aware of everything that was happening.

Exp Year: 2016ExpID: 108161
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 22
Published: Apr 21, 2016Views: 6,350
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Pharms - Trazodone (294) : Difficult Experiences (5), Medical Use (47), Alone (16)

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