Do sleeping pills keep you from dreaming?

Question

I was just wondering- because ive been having a lot of terrible terrible nightmares and I was wondering if sleeping pills keep you from dreaming, they would keep you from having nightmares too.

Anyone know?- Thanks!

Answer 1

Some can.  The benzodiazepines definitely interfere with REM sleep, and going off them you may catch up with a lot of really vivid dreams.  I suspect the same is true of the related drugs, Ambien and Lunesta.

Answer 2

Heck no.

As a chronic insomniac I've taken and been given everything from Tylenol PM (without the Tylenol) to Ambien, mood stabilizers like Seroquel (which was give for another reason but taken at bedtime and knocked me out), to natural supplements like melatonin.

In my experience, systemic depressants with a primary or secondary function as sleep aids not only did NOT stop me from dreaming, but in many cases made my dreams (already very vivid always and often scary) more vivid, more realistic, and when the bad ones came around, even scarier.

Sorry.

Answer 3

NO...SLEEPING PILL'S DON'T KEEP YOU FROM HAVING NIGHTMARE'S.TRY HAPPY THOUGHT'S.

Answer 4

No. You dreqam many dreams every night, but you don't remember all of them.

Try evaluating what's going on in your life--do you have a lot of stress? Are you deeply afraid of something happening? Are you very angry deep down inside?

Dreams are the way your brain "flushes the toilet", nothing more. All the extra meaningless info and senses taken in need to be thrown back out, so your subconscious does it through dreams.

Answer 5

As you can tell from the previous responses, the answer is a definite maybe.  Most medicines that increase sleep (includes benzos and benzo analogues, antidepressents, neuroleptics, and even the most popular and common - alcohol, do have an impact on dreaming by either delaying or reducing REM (dream) sleep.  In fact, we occasionally will prescribe a hypnotic for short periods to break repetitive nightmare cycles.  But as you can see from other responses, the results are variable and even when we do reduce dreams, there is often a rebound on stopping meds.  Both deep sleep and dream sleep appear to be very important to brain and body health and the brain fights to preserve it.  In fact, if you are very sleep deprived, one of the brains adaptations is to go directly into dreams, sometimes even before you are completely asleep, which can be frightening.

If you are trying to stop nightmares, I suggest you talk to your doctor about prazosin.  It is a blood pressure med (seldom used for that) which has been shown to often reduce or stop nightmares in folks with PTSD with relatively few side effects.  It is not a sleep med, but helps people who are afraid of nightmares sleep better by reducing nightmares.  It may or may not be appropriate for you medically and your doc could help figure that out.  Good luck.

Answer 6

speaking off the top of my head the answer is yes, sleeping pills in general cut down on REM sleep, that phase of sleep associated with dreaming. Suddenly stopping the use of sleeping pills after prolonged use can result in wild dreams.

Some drugs can cause nightmares, like the beta blocker tenormin.

Sleeping pills tend to cause a less restfull sleep, some like those that act like valium (benzodiazepines) tend to cause memory loss. In short sleeping pills cause sleep to be of a lower quality.