Sleepwalking on Remeron--what to do (long)?
I don't know too much about sleep disorders, but a couple of antidepressants I can think of that are not SSRI's or SSNI's are wellbutrin (which you listed) and EmSam, an MAOI inhibitor patch, that because of the patch delivery system, at the 6 mg dose, you do not need to avoid certain foods (but the remeron will have to be out of your system for 2 weeks, or something like that). Regular MAOI's (as pills) are a pain, because there is a long list of foods that you have to carefully avoid. Your severe side effects from SSRI's make me think that you could either have bipolar, and not depression, or else, perhaps you are a poor metabolizer (research cytochrome p450 enzymes, the psych drugs including all SSRI's are all metabolized by the cytochrome p450 2d6 enzyme. This is an enzyme in your liver). Perhaps the remeron is also metabolized by the cyp450 2d6 enzyme, and you are on too high of a dose. my psychiatrist says it is more complicated that that - the dose required in the brain also varies very much from person to person. Anyway, if you didn't start the remeron at a low dose, perhaps you can try lowering it & see if this side effect goes away. Other people who get more "normal" side effects, like weight gain, drowsiness, sexual problems etc, use this approach, so I see no reason why you shouldn't. You don't want to wander outside & get hit by a car or freeze to death, that's for sure. PubMed is a good source for information - most or all legitimate journals have abstracts published there. A lot of it is pretty technical. Good luck!
How people who sleepwalk find way to their bed?
As someone else pointed out, we don't always make it back to our beds. I've woken up by the hotel pool before, I've woken up in a bush while camping, when I was in the army I once literally sprinted out of my barracks and across the field next door while the barracks guards chased after me (not sure how I would have made it back to my barracks if they hadn't caught me and returned me to my room lol.I know the stereotype is that sleepwalkers wander around with their eyes closed, but it's almost completely inaccurate. I've had people tell me the next day that they couldn't tell I was sleeping at all and that we had a normal conversation until my mind latched onto something and I started repeating the same phrase over and over or said/did something else that made them realize I was not really there mentally.So the issue isn't really so much FINDING our beds while sleepwalking, it's whether our sleepers minds will actually choose to go back to bed.
Have you ever been caught sleepwalking?
More than a few times. I have, over the course of my life displayed numerous types of sleep-Xing behavior. The earliest was kindergartner. I went to sleep at about 21:00. at about 00:30 my mother told me i got up, went into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, washed my hair, then got dress and made a lunch. I then went out the front door and stood on the porch for almost 30 minutes mumbling, turning, raising my hand etc, then i went back into the house took off my parka hung in in the front closet, went and brushed my teeth, striped down and crawled back into bed. All of this happened on a Saturday night. Mom also told me that i would be sound asleep and would shout something really loudly. But, she could hardly ever understand what it was i was shouting about, only that i was excited in a “oh, this is going to be awesome” kind of way. She did tell me that i stopped shouting at about 12. from then forward i talked in my sleep all the time till to this day. I may have done it last night. who knows, and better yet, who cares;-)>While in the Navy i spent most of my 4 years on shore duty, either going through basic, then 2 different schools, after school i was sent to rota Spain, Weapons Dept. I walked in my sleep at least 6 times over the next 2 years. I was then sent to a ship, and while on the ship, one of the guys in my division was passing through our birthing compartment and saw me get up, get dressed and then walk to the “light-trap” on the port side of the )1 level. It only went to a lookout platform. Because all the main hatches (doors) had “dogs’ on them (dogs are handles that allow a water tight seal and there are usually 6 or 8 of them per hatch, he would dog the lever as soon as i undogged it. As a result i was unable to get out the door. After that they guys kept an eye on me. They told me that i had done this more than a few times in a 10 month period.Later, i had sex while sleeping (this mostly was in my 20s, but did carry into my early 30s). Like many times. I can’t even tell, because my gal, at that time, only told me that i did do it and when a friend of hers stayed with us for a few weeks she told her to NEVER sleep without something on her bottom half.I still do things like walking, but not nearly as often i as used too. I was told by 2 different doctors the most likely reason was i was not getting enough sleep each nigh. I used to sleep on average 5–6 hours per night and about once a week i’d sack-out for a good 7 hours.
My husband is a sleep talker and snoars a lot. Will this get worse with time?
My husband does this too! Besides regular snoring, does he snort also? Does he fall asleep whenever he gets comfortable and it is quiet? Does he seem confused or still asleep for a while whenever you wake him up from sleeping? If so he probably has sleep apnea and you need to go to a doctor with him to witness to these symptoms. The person who has this never knows about these things and may deny it. We just found out my husband has sleep apnea. It is caused by either being overweight (blocking air to lungs) or if your brain doesn't send a signal out to breathe when asleep.This is when he stops getting air to his lungs (many times per night) and it causes him to snort suddenly (and snore most of the rest of the time) to try and get air while he sleeps. It makes the affected person wake up just enough that it interrupts their sleep. Having this happen every night makes them overly tired during the day because their body never gets a good quality of sleep. THIS can also cause them to not completely wake up from sleep (like when you talk to him) sleep walk, talk etc because their body is trying to refuse to wake up from being so exhausted. Hope that helps!
I saw my 4 year old son sleepwalking. It was very unsettling, almost scary because he looked right at me, acknowledged me then continued to sleepwalk. Should I be concerned about this?
I’ve a sleep walker most of my life. When I'm not sleep walking, I'm sleep talking.It's not scary. I don't leave the house or turn the stove on or do anything dangerous. I've never been upset or frightened.Apparently I just wander around, or on occasion have a surreal conversation with whoever is there. Or with nobody. Or narrate a nonsensical story. Sometimes I just mumble or mutter.It's a lasting source of amusement for my family who love regaling people with stories about it. On a few occasions when they had dinner parties I entertained the group with stories of the kind that children make up.As an adult, various partners have had a good laugh at my expense.Apparently I can sometimes respond to questions or hold a vague conversation.If people just lead me back to bed I usually go back to sleep. If I'm talking I can be told that it's bedtime and to go back to bed and I'll go on my own.A few times I've woken up and wondered why I'm in the lounge room or whatever but I've never felt anything worse than momentary confusion.When people didn't know it has sometimes freaked them out but now everyone who knows me knows about it. I tell people now, so they don't get worried.I'm told that a few weeks ago I was telling my partner that there were “too many apples” but I wasn't forthcoming on where or why.Other answers give links to research or so on. I'm just writing this to illustrate that for me, it's not harmful or indicative of a problem. This is borne out by the few others I've met who sleep walk as well.
R&S, what is the funniest thing that has happened to you?
I can tell you about the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life. A year after my husband and I married, we moved to a little farm house in the midst of corn fields and cow pastures. Our nearest neighbor was about a mile away. Shortly after we moved in, a developer came out and began clearing fields about a mile or two away from us to begin a new subdivision developement. Well, every field mouse within that entire area was sent scrambling and headed our way. How did we discover that they were in our midst? It was early one Saturday morning and my husband had just gotten out of bed. I was in the kitchen making coffe and he was only in his whitey tighty Fruit of the Looms. My husband is not a small man, by any means, so that image is funny enough in itself. As I brought him a cup of coffe into the living room, he asked me if I heard a scratching sound. I did and pointed in the direction that it was coming from. He walked over to check it out and out ran a little field mouse. My husband screamed like a little girl, jumped onto the coffee table, which then broke in half, but before the coffe table hit the ground, he had jumped again and made it onto the couch. You may have had to have been there, but that was the funniest thing I have seen in my life! Here's another one...my mother-in-law called me the other to day to tell me about this one. She had a terrible headache in the middle of the night and went to the bathroom to get some Advil. Not wanting to wake her husband, she felt around by the light of the moon and found the pill bottle. She took two little, round, brownish looking pills and then went back to bed. Her headache never eased up at all, and she couldn't understand why. The next morning, she woke up with pretty severe stomach cramps and didn't know why, until she went into the bathroom ans saw the pill bottle. She had taken two Senekot tablets (a laxative) by mistake. But wait, it gets better. She is a church secretary and that day, the pastor decided to take his staff to lunch at a rather nice restaurant, which, of course, is when it hit her. She broke out in a sweat and went to the bathroom 8 times during their lunch hour causing everyone concern. Being too embarassed to say what happened, she just told everyone that she was fine. So, ALWAYS turn on the light when you need to take a pill!!!!