The temptation is enormous. You have not been able to sleep for a couple of nights and you’re so exhausted you can’t even think. Tonight appears similar, the dream is not for the work of visiting you. It is then that you think about how pleasant it would be to be able to close your eyes and notice how you gradually relax until you fall asleep. That’s when you go to the medicine cabinet and take a sleeping pill. But be careful, because sleeping pills are not a treatment for insomnia.
Immediate remedy but no treatment
- Indeed, we cannot ask a person who has not slept for days not to resort to pills and take an infusion of valerian, for example. Nor is it our intention to start a crusade against sleeping pills, but the ease with which doctors prescribe benzodiazepines when a person comes to their office with a sleep disorder does not cease to alarm us.
- Sleeping pills are an immediate and effective remedy for sleeping, but not for sleeping well, much less are they a treatment for insomnia. To treat sleep problems we must go to their origin, to the cause of insomnia and, from there, look for the most appropriate treatment that can range from psychological therapy to changing our sleep habits through relaxation techniques.
- It is worth remembering the high risk of dependency presented by sleeping pills. That is why we cannot base a treatment for insomnia on pills that we will be linked to for a long time. In addition, it must be taken into account that, after a few weeks, the pills lose their effectiveness and we will need increasingly higher doses.
When to take sleeping pills
- Since we do not want our rest to depend on sleeping pills, it is better to use them only when strictly necessary, at specific times and trying not to take them many days in a row. At the end of the day, what it is about is achieving a restful sleep and that is something that we are not going to achieve with the pills.
- Specific moments that may require a sleeping pill can be, for example, when we have not slept for several days, when something has happened around us that is beyond us, such as the death of a family member, bad news or a breakup, or when The next day we have an important event and we need to sleep no matter what.
- But in all these cases, we must bear in mind that sleeping pills can help us sleep that night, but the next day we may wake up with swollen eyes, headaches, and fatigue. So you have to be careful if we are going to use them before a work meeting or the presentation of an important project.
