Helpful resource, Cort!
I didn't see trazodone on the list, did I miss it? It seems to be used a fair bit by doctors who understand ME. IIRC, it's used more as a sleep maintenance drug than a sleep initiation drug.
In the early days of my ME, I had both sleep initiation and sleep maintenance problems. My specialist at the time recommended treating both and trying to drop the initiation meds as I improved. For me, the initiation treatment was easy. OTC pain med and antihistamine. What my specialist suspected, but I didn't realize, was that my ME aches and pains were keeping me awake. The antihistamine was just a mild soporific.
The worst part for me was the sleep maintenance. I woke up every hour or two, all night, every night. Dreadful. No real deep sleep at all, ever. For that he prescribed trazodone. For me it worked like a charm. I slept through the night, and deeply, from the first dose. What a relief! I've seen two other specialists since then, and both of them kept me on the trazodone. I did drop the sleep initiation meds eventually as we got more of my symptoms, including pain, under control.
For me, the Apotex brand works best. The Qualitest is okay. The Pliva/Teva is absolutely horrendous. I'd rather go back to not sleeping than take that brand, it was that bad.
