Anxiety/Sleep problems

[Peteski]

Hello everyone. I'm a 20 year old male. I was doing quite well until about the last two weeks of December 2015. Our fridge started to act up and started making very loud banging noises. The noise started to really bother me at night (not anyone else) because the fridge was right under my room and that's where the noise was the loudest. Every night when I'd go to sleep I started getting pretty anxious because I was worried about how the sound would affect my sleep. I even had to start sleeping with my fan turned on to drown out the noise. However, I was still able to fall asleep and stay asleep. This continued until April 2016. At this point I started studying for finals. Closer to end of April when my last few finals were approaching, when I went to sleep at night I felt intense anxiety and my heart was beating really fast and I was very restless, sweaty and i experienced chest pains because I was stressed out and anxious about the finals as well I was getting more increasingly anxious about the loud sound and how it would affect my sleep for finals. I didn't really make anything of it though, as I thought that when finals would end I would feel more relaxed. Furthermore, I finally convinced my parents to buy a new fridge as it was already affecting my sleep and they were kind of stubborn about buying a new one when I asked them earlier. So we got the new fridge and I finished finals, but I just didn't get a sense of relief. I started feeling extremely anxious especially when I went to sleep. As a result I could barely sleep at night and if I did fall asleep I kept waking up due to intense anxiety and heart pounding (same as described above) and then couldn't fall asleep. After about a week I was completely and utterly exhausted. I wasn't able to function during the day, I started getting head pains/pressures, I wasn't able to focus, I couldn't go to work, I didn't feel like eating anything and when I did I felt nauseous and after standing for some time I started feeling lightheaded and dizzy. So I went to my GP and explained all my symptoms and she explained that it sounded like I was having panic attacks during the night (which I never experienced before and I didn't know that what I was experiencing were panic attacks.) So she prescribed me a weeks worth of 0.5 mg lorazepam. I used it for two nights cause I was so exhausted. Then on the third night I tried going to sleep without the pill and I woke up after 2h experiencing another panic attack so I took another pill. Anyways, I ended up using 6/7 pills over about a week. During this week for some reason though, I just didn't feel like myself during the day. I didn't feel like doing anything, I felt like I didn't really have any interest in doing anything. Everything I planned do to and which I was excited to do after I finished finals just didn't feel the same when I thought about it or attempted to do it. Just getting through the day made me feel anxious. During this time I always talked to my mom a lot as well went with her for quite a few walks cause I felt that talking with her and being around her made me feel better. Anyways after I took the sixth pill I finally started to sleep better and once I started to sleep better I finally started to get back to my life and my daily activities. I was doing pretty ok for about a month and a half, when about a week and a half ago, Thursday, June 30, 2016, I was over at my friend's house when a sudden wave of anxiety hit me and I started going downhill and as of today I'm pretty much back to where I was originally. This time I have even noticed that my weight started to go down. I lost about 5 pounds in the last week. Last night I took the last pill and I'm thinking to go back to the GP tomorrow and talk to her again. I'm really stuck and really suffering right now. I don't know if something is happening with me or I'm just simply over-reacting. I've turned here to ask for people's opinions and give me any advice. Thanks for the help. Really appreciate it.

[Paxiled]

How old are you?  Before giving you a pill did your doctor say anything about seeing a therapist to nip this kind of thinking in the bud?  Taking benzos regularly is difficult to stop doing, so you don't want to make a habit of it, and young people should only take meds that affect the brain as a last resort, not the first.  They also can turn your insomnia problem into a worse problem, as is happening, because you learn incorrectly you can't sleep without them and get something called rebound insomnia.  You need someone to talk to about why you're so nervous right now and get past it, not medicate it, in my opinion.

[TheLightSeeker]

Your prognosis would be far away from hopeful, should you stay on such meds for prolonged time.
Paxiled was right to point this out.
It sounds that you are fairly young, indeed.
My opinion is that your Delta sleep stage and to a lesser degree your REM sleep, were interrupted for an extended time, long enough to cause you most of these unwanted effects.
Lack of Delta sleep may contribute to Depression, OCD, Anxiety, Narcolepsy, ADHD, Diabetes, Schizophrenia etc..
Delta sleep regulates neural activity
by increasing parasympathetic (relaxing) activity and decreasing sympathetic (anxious) activity.
Also Growth Hormone secretion, would be impaired when Delta sleep is inadequate.
Interrupted REM sleep has its own set of negative effects.
It may affect cognitive function and possibly loss of neurotransmitter
sensitivity, since neurotransmitters norepinephrine, serotonin and histamine,  completely shut down during normal REM (this allows for sustained sensitivity).
If I were you, I would look for a Psych. doctor who has experience in Lifestyle Medicine to help you with
normalizing your neurotransmitters &
hormones without medications. Therapy too wouldn't hurt.
Best wishes,
Niko