Who needs sleep?

Hello again, friends! I know it has been a long time since I've posted. I've been struggling with pretty severe insomnia for the last three weeks and I just haven't felt like myself. Insomnia, as you know if you've ever dealt with an extended run of it, is pretty much mental and physical torture. You feel rotten because you're not getting any sleep, and you get stressed out about trying to sleep because you don't want to feel rotten anymore. And over, and over, and over.

I finally saw the doctor last Thursday and his advice was to take Ambien for the next seven days, which was really not what I was hoping to hear. I've followed his advice because I don't know what else to do and because I was about to lose my mind, but it hasn't gone as well as I had hoped. The last three days, I've taken my Ambien at night but then have woken up in the early morning and spent the hours from then until 7 a.m. drifting fitfully between wakefulness and sleep. This morning, it was 4 a.m. I have no idea why the Ambien has stopped working--I had been taking it off and on in the two weeks before I saw the doctor and it always knocked me out for a good 8-9 hours. Though even when I was actually sleeping until 7 a.m. with it, I never felt good and rested during the day; it was just enough to keep me going. I've noticed that as soon as the sun goes down, my energy levels plummet too.

I truly believe my body has just gotten itself into a really bad sleep habit and that somehow I can break the habit and relearn the good sleep habits I had before the insomnia started. When the insomnia began, I was falling asleep just fine but waking up in the middle of the night for hours. Then it progressed to being unable to fall asleep. When it hit the low point a week ago, I actually spent one entire night without being able to fall asleep for one single minute, which was pure torture.

I'm worried what will happen when my seven days of Ambien stops--tomorrow is supposed to be the last night. The doctor prescribed that hoping that seven days of sleep would 'reboot' my body and things would get back to normal. I am afraid that I don't think he will be correct. I'm trying to think positively because I do believe that's a huge component in beating it. However it's hard to be positive when I'm exhausted but every time my body finally drifts off to sleep, I jerk out of it. For HOURS on end.

I've been kind of a zombie for these past three weeks. Lack of sleep has robbed me of the desire or motivation to do much beyond the very basics to keep my family and my house together. I hate feeling this way, and I just want more than anything to get back to normal and not have sleep be such a big ugly monster looming every single night. I want to get back to doing fun things and crafting and thrifting and all the things that I normally share on my blog. So Friends, if you are the praying or the positive-thinking types, would you mind sending one or both my direction that I can get things straightened out? I would appreciate it so, so much.