Can Trazodone cause me to have nightmares or very odd dreams?
Question posted by missmarymarie13 on 29 June 2013
Last updated on 27 November 2022
40 Answers Page 2
I know this post is old but it seems to be ongoing. I have a question in relation to these nightmares obviously brought on by Trazodone: Did any of you find any difference at all in your frequency and/or intensity of nightmares with an increased/decreased dose change? I started 50 mg Trazodone last night before bed for the first time. I began to doze into what felt like a drunken-stupor and then finally went to sleep within about an hour or so- there was no way I could have stayed awake. Immediately after going to sleep, I had the scariest, most vivid and extremely disturbing nightmares I have ever had in my life. Every one of them felt incredibly real while having them and even after waking up from them.
I woke up in a frantic (sometimes yelling out) anywhere from 10-15 times within an hour and ended up sleeping with the light on because I was scared to go back to sleep! The Trazodone makes you so damn sleepy that you can't help but go to sleep- and then have another nightmare. Talk about crazy-making! Then, after the hour or so, the nightmares stopped but I still had quite a few odd and bizarre dreams. The upside is that I feel pretty darn good this morning, albeit was groggy and took a while to come to life. Anyway, anyone find relief or worsening of nightmares with a dose change? I have emailed my doctor, but would also appreciate any help with details from anyone with a similar experience! Please and thank you!
Back in August (2018) I broke my shoulder then needed surgery for it. I'm still in the sling (now October 2018). I've been averaging about 5 hours of sleep a night since August. I couldn't take it anymore, so my p-doc prescribed 50mg Trazodone last week.
I'm very susceptible to sedation, though, so I started out with just 25mg. It didn't help, so last night I took 50mg along with the Benadryl I've taken at bedtime (for allergies) for nearly a year.
My goodness! My dreams were intense!! Which is saying a lot seeing how my dreams have always been very vivid. I kept waking up, then falling back to sleep while sitting up; then waking up and laying down- all night long.
I managed to get 7 hours of sleep but I felt miserable when I woke up. I was very groggy and disoriented. It took about 20 minutes to stabilize.
Benadryl tends to cause crazy dreams, but after being on it for a month or so, my dreams leveled off to my USUAL degree of vivid lol I'm hoping that will be the case with Trazodone too.
Just an update: It's now 11/27/2018. My dreams haven't intensified or worsened. In fact, I went a couple weeks barely remembering any dreams at all.
My sleep is slowly getting better as long as I take all my meds and use my CPAP machine.
I'd encourage everyone to try to tough it out for a couple of weeks. This medication has been a God send <3
Yes, but I personally don’t get them often. It varies from person to person but I am generally happy with trazodone :)
Yes, it can.
During one of my hospital stays in 2016 I was put on Trazodone and I started having strange dreams shortly after I began taking the medication. In addition, when another patient(who also happened to be my roommate in the hospital) mentioned that she had started having weird dreams as well, we realized that we had both been put on Trazodone around the same time. Neither of us experienced particularly bad or scary dreams, just odd dreams. My strange dreams were also bilingual. It came as a surprise because; though I have been studying Japanese for the past 15 years, I am far from fluent in any language other than my first language of English. Sometimes the dreams were in Japanese, sometimes they were in English & sometimes a mix of both languages.
On one night I was having a dream entirely in Japanese. I guess I was in a pretty deep sleep when one of the mental health tech's came to wake me up in morning & ask if I wanted coffee my brain seemed to need a moment to flip the language switch back to English because "do you want coffee?" sounded like jibberish to me(odd since 'coffee' sounds similar in both languages). I just sat up in bed and blankly responded in Japanese, saying "nanda?"(what?). After this happened 2 or 3 times my roommate had woken up and my brain had apparently turned the English switch back on because when she finally repeated the question I understood it.
Since being taken off Trazodone after returning to my regular psychiatrist outside of the inpatient hospital I soon stopped having the strange and sometimes bilingual dreams.
I've been taking this medication for a few months now, I started at a half a pill, and it had absolutely no effect on my insomnia, I gradually increased it up to now, where I'm taking 150mg of it, and I can tell you, I'm having dreams like I'm a kid again. Super vivid, and like someone said before, scary in the moment, but it's like watching a movie. Dreaming I'm other people doing insane things. I'm going to continue with this dosage until I start experiencing these night terrors people here are describing.
I can't tell you how many comments I've seen on this page similar to yours! My physician started me out at 50 mg. of trazodone and eventually increased the dose to 200 mg. As for helping me to sleep at night, it really didn't. I would get a bit drowsy for a few minutes but then that would wear off before I even went to bed. The side effects of the medication (severe digestive issues and extreme and vivid nightmares) made this medication a true nightmare for me. With the help of a new physician, I was eventually able to wean from the trazodone but even afterwards, digestive problems continued for several more months. I know the trazodone is helpful to some people but it sure had a terrible adverse affect for me. Don't know if this will help you but a nutritionist/dietician I work with suggested chamomile (you can get it in capsule form if you don't like tea) and a supplement called Insomnitol. The combination of these two supplements have helped tremendously with my insomnia - more so than any prescription I've ever been on.
I take trazadone only when I have trouble sleeping, but it has the same effect on me. I always have very strange dreams. I'm on a few other meds but last night I decided to only take my trazadone and the dreams started, so I'm starting to think it does have this effect on me
My doctor took me off Ambien and put me on 100 mg Trazadone, which I took for the first time last night. I had a dream so disturbing that my dog woke me up. I had two strange but not scary dreams after that. I remember all three in detail. I'm going to try 50 mg tonight.
I have been taking 50mg. for a while now. The Dr. said if I wake up a few hours later (due to my extreme pain) to take another 1/2 tablet. The nightmares were awful. I would wake up gasping for air. Always about something horrible happening to my grandchildren. I have stopped taking that other 1/2 tablet but the nightmares continue. When I see the prescribing Dr. on the 14th of August I intend to ask him for something else. My pain has gotten worse anyway due to fall on 6/20. Now I'm really a mess and only getting about 2 hours sleep at night.
I will be praying for you that things change for the better soon.
I have been weaning from trazodone the last 3 months. While still on it, I had terrible nightmares almost every single night. As I slowly came off the trazodone and the levels became less and less in my system, the nightmares became less and less frequent. Now that I'm completely off the trazodone, I rarely have bad dreams. I also just feel better in general and I'm very glad to be done with this medication.
Im glad im not the only one! I have crazy vivid dreams everytime i fall asleep. Ill wake up and purposely fall back asleep to have another dream. Most of them are nightmares but i like them as they're interesting and i know they're just dreams. Im prescribed at 75mg i took 2 for the first time tonight as i couldn't sleep so i wonder if the nightmares will worsen or not but excited to find out!
So happy I decided to look this up because I thought something was wrong with me. I feel like I am in the matrix while taking this medicine, I cannot tell if it really happened or if I was only dreaming about it. I will definitely talk to my Doc. about this because I am going crazy trying to decipher what actually take place the day before.
I have been taking trazodone every night for about a month. I wasn't sure if this medication was the cause of my nightmares, so I stopped taking it for about a couple weeks. I have been taking it every other off day now for a couple of weeks and everytime I take this medication I wake up in a sweat and very exhausted from horrible nightmares. It would be so horrible that I would wake up crying my eyes out just out of instinct following up to the dream I just woke up from this terrified me .so now I know that the Trazodone is the problem. Because of this I thought it would be smart to try to break it in half and see if that helps any, so far so good nightmare free. I did not understand why or how a certain medication will affect your dreams. This is very real and very common, so as my primary care physician had told me.
I've been taking 200mg of trazodone I do have dreams but I don't remember much but I can say I actually can feel everything in my dreams it feels so real
I'm glad I looked here. I've been on Trazodone for a week treating insomnia. I had one or two questionable dreams and didn't worry. An odd family in DC is the constant, yet I live in Baltimore, Md and hardly go there or know who these people are. I was just awakened from my sleep just as I was ready to be attacked with a knife. This is getting creepy.
Yes ! I don't generally have nightmares. Rather, I have dreams that have small snippets of distressing moments but are overall pleasantly and exhilaratingly strange... often including intimate moments with people I would have NEVER thought of about in that way in real life. I remember a lot of the dreams I have. And for a lot of them... I wish they could be real.
I'm glad I came across ur post bc just this morning as my husband woke me I was having a nightmare about being involved with someone else... I told my husband right away, just glad to see I'm not alone in these crazy nightmares
So glad to hear these comments. I have taken Trazodone for over a year, at 100 mg., without issue. Last night I took the dose too early and I wasn't getting the effect I was looking for, so at 1:30 am, I took another. I had dreams all night - some that I would call nightmares, some hallucinogenic. I was also experiencing, visual and auditory hallucinations when I opened my eyes. Most bizarre was one where it seemed that I had a laptop on my thighs, and that I could "Facetime" with friends and family. They would ask me a question, and would actually wait for my response. Two other things: 1) they were very long and involved dreams, and 2) I can still remember every one!!
The nightmare I had was vivid and full of anxiety after taking one pill. However, I will NOT allow a nightmare to keep me from having insomnia, I have not slept well in months, I will look at it as a Fright Movie, and continue to take my pill. Before going to bed I will fill my brain with affirmations
of peace, love, and tranquility!
I have been on trazadone for a few mths and have increased to 150mg at night and my night mares dreams and thoughts have increased in suicidal thoughts anxiety and paranoid episodes not sure what to do it is also causing very bad flu episodes please let me know any thoughts or similarities
I have the dreams also but I love them. I actually dream in color which is awesome. Now when I take vistaril it gives me horrifying nightmares but sometimes I still have to take it. I think we all have dreams or nightmares on Trazodone. Pepper
I have experimented with it a few weeks, on then off, on then off as Rx for sleep to deal with array of other meds, rather than, use something like Ambien which causes dependency. Direct correlation. Horrific nightmares far worse than any Clive Barker book I have ever read, which, are worse than any silly horror movie. Things that are profoundly psychologically terrifying, cannot describe. I remember them. Involved my wife and children being tortured and unable to do anything. The other thing is that these are waking dreams that occur periodically over the night, perpetual intense REM and can't hit long wave. Every time hallucination coming out of sleep paralysis of intruders. Wake up screaming. Awake for 15 to 30 minutes, go back to sleep, they start up at full intensity again. I am an artist - I feel like this just hoped up my natural ability to rapidly conceptualize with hooks into base regions of brain, the nasty fight or flight patterns.
I have an 11 yr old daughter who has a terminal illness. She has so many issues sleeping. She has been on this medicine now for a couple of months. She has been telling us she can hear people talking at night and when she wakes up she can't move. Would this be the sleep paralysis you are talking about. She's been crying at bedtime. She actually afraid to go to sleep. She doesn't watch horror movies so it's nothing that would be scaring her. It all comes back to this medicine.
RE: Astone409
“She has been telling us she can hear people talking at night and when she wakes up she can't move. Would this be the sleep paralysis you are talking about. She's been crying at bedtime. She actually afraid to go to sleep.”
Yes, it sounds like sleep paralysis that is causing lucid dreams(nightmares). These dreams can be vivid dreams where you’re mind imagines you elsewhere, but it can also be as simple as a nightmare about going to sleep and not being able to move. I don’t have a simple answer, but one thing that has helped me is focusing on it being a dream and telling wake up and move over and over until I do. It doesn’t always happen for me on trazodone but certainly notice a correlation.
Related topics
Further information
- Trazodone uses and safety info
- Trazodone prescribing info & package insert (for Health Professionals)
- Side effects of Trazodone (detailed)
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