Restoril Addiction

Restoril is a benzodiazepine medication that’s been proven to slow down specific types of electrical activity inside cells of the brain. That means people who take this medication often feel profoundly sleepy just moments later, and that change in electrical impulse allows them to finally float away into the sleep they’ve been hoping for.

However, this medication has also been associated with strange sleep behaviors, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. People who take this drug have been known to do all sorts of things while they believe that they’re sleeping, including:

• Driving
• Cooking
• Eating
• Making calls
• Having sex

If you go through an episode like this, you might have no memory of anything that’s happened. Others might explain the situation to you, or you might find evidence of the episode when you do wake up.

The thought of doing things you won’t remember might not be pleasant at all, but Restoril can do other things that might be even more serious. For example, the National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that people who abuse benzodiazepines like Restoril can develop serious health problems, including low blood pressure and labored breathing, during an intoxicated episode. You might feel as though you’re just relaxed or a little sedated, but that feeling could expand and expand. And sometimes, it leads to a medical emergency that can only be treated at a hospital.

In addition to causing you to do things you might not approve of, and in addition to possibly harming your health, Restoril can also spark addictive changes in your body.

Each dose of Restoril causes a flood of pleasurable chemicals inside the cells of the brain. In time, brain cells are altered and changed due to the overwhelming amount of data they’re dealing with on a daily basis. They adjust and shift in such dramatic ways that the cells come to depend upon the doses of Restoril. Those modifications can lead to deep cravings, and that can lead to repeated drug use.

While many people who abuse drugs think they can stop at any time and that they have complete control over their drug-using habits, that’s not always the case. For example, in a study in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, about 10 percent of those who used sedatives without a prescription were addicted to those substances. They may have thought they could control their choices, but clinicians suggest that the addiction had real control.

An addiction like this isn’t inevitable, of course. Those who dabble in Restoril abuse may be able to get help before intense damage has been done, and that might allow them to avoid developing behaviors associated with addiction. But some choices people make in the hope of staving off an addiction can make things worse.

For example, in a study in the Journal of Analytical Toxicology, researchers found that those who admitted to benzodiazepine abuse often took multiple drugs in this class at the same time. They took Restoril sometimes, and sometimes they took Valium. Sometimes, too, these people mixed alcohol and painkillers with their benzodiazepine drugs.

Layering multiple drugs like this can augment the damage done to the cells of the brain, and that could speed up the process of addiction. It could also up the risk of serious side effects, as adding a sedating drug to a sedating drug often leads to almost complete paralysis.