Interesting Drug Reaction - Why?

[flashygram]

I have non-alcoholic cirrhosis which is just waiting for the transplant stage even though it could be many years off.  It was discovered that I was suffering from major depression due to a grief issue.  The liver diagnosis come on very quickly and my grief was apparently put on the back burner.  They call it delayed grief syndrome.  I have a wonderful therapist and psyche.  Of course the psyche manages my drugs in conjunction with my liver doc..  I was put on Xanax 1mg along with 100mg of trazadone.  Was told the Xanax is short acting & what causes you to be sleepy and then the Trazadone takes over and helps to sleep longer to get the rest I needed.  Recently had to go on Medicare and it doesn't cover Xanax at all and even denied an exception when my doctor tried.  So he changed me to 10mg Ambien along with the 100mg Trazadone.  No problems.  Then a visit to my PCP for the Orthostatic Hypotension and he told me to go off those two drugs and gave me a script of 3 days with 1 refill of Ambien CR to see how I would react to that.  After the 3 nights I started sleeping 18 to 20 hours of a 24 hr. period plus felt completely out of it.  A call back to him and he said he just didn't know why I was doing that and suggested I should talk to my psyche about it which he was supposed to have done.  The psyche said immediately that the Ambien CR was way to strong for me and to get off it.  I never had the refill done.  But I am wondering why a 10mg Ambien with 100mg Trazadone seems to work well with no side effects and just the Ambien CR alone made so sleepy & tired.  There must be some explanation. Tomorrow will be the sixth day since my last CR dose and I'm just now beginning to feel normal like I did.  I know this is long but hopefully it will help someone else also.

[mammo]

Ambien CR is a longer lasting drug.  But I'd get off of it with what you're experiencing.  Your psych doctor knows best, work with him on this.  I personally have refused Ambien due to all the side effects.  Take care..

[Julie359]

This is just a thought but i have known, both with myself and other people, that when we have taken a drug and then we have changed the company that makes the drug, even though it is in theory the same drug taken it can cause new side effects.  So, this drug that you had this side effect too may of been from a different company than the one you were use to.  

Even though the dose of the med etc are the same, each company can use different bulking agents to fill out the tablet and it is these slight changes that may cause the problem.  In your case it may of been that if there was a slight difference in the bulking agent your liver found it alot harder to metabolise and pass through your system.

Just one theory of what could of happened.