Over the past few months I've increasingly noticed that as I'm falling asleep I wake up sharply, inhaling deeply and feeling a little shocked. After this I feel as though I have to consciously control my breathing. This can happen a few times before I actually fully fall asleep. My ex-girlfriend has also said that she'd noticed me stop breathing while asleep though this never wakes me. I also believe that I generally snore.

I don't know if this helps but I have recently been on Seroxat for 2 1/2 years and Olanzapine & dothiepin(?)* for 1 year though I stopped taking all medication roughly 3 months ago.  


*I'm not 100% sure it was dothiepin

Thanks for any help before I go bother my GP  

I don't know about the meds, but your sleep symptoms are exactly what I had, and when I had a sleep study I was determined to have obstructive apnea, and given a cpap machine yesterday! I used it for the first time (not including my sleep study) last night, with apparent success, having awakened before my alarm went off, and feeling refreshed, and not too sleepy today, in spite of only getting about 5 hours sleep. I have recently required a nap during the day to stave off falling asleep at the wheel, since I'm a driver of large trucks.

Tonight I will get more (hopefully) to see what happens. I think you should bother your gp, get a referral and have a study, hopefully a split one, where you start with just sensors, but after some time they put the cpap machine to determine if it will work. Worked for me!

It sounds a lot like apnea - certainly enough to warrant going to your doctor and asking him/her about it.

For as long as I can remember I thought I was a bit of an insomniac, because it seemed to take me forever to fall asleep.  Like you, I'd be just about asleep and suddenly I'd "catch my breath" and be wide awake.  Now that I'm on a CPAP machine, I fall asleep within minutes.

In retrospect, I think I'd just be falling asleep and have an apneic event.  Since I wasn't completely out yet, they'd wake me up much more fully than the middle-of-the-night events.


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--Frank (FJC)