Can Dexamphetamine Control RBD

I have no medical training and am not recommending anyone try new treatments or cease existing medical treatments without the full support of their doctor.

This is a continuation of a previous thread:

REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD)

I created this thread because, for me,

Dexamphetamine stops REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder (RBD)

Confession time:

I have been using Dexamphetamine (leftovers from my wife's prescriptions) for decades in small quantities on occasional days to enable me to achieve difficult or demanding tasks and drive safely when extremely tired. For those applications it is very effective.

Many people who visit this forum would relate to the downward spiral of fatigue and confusion and despair associated with sleep disorders like Apnea. I have ADD, RLS, PLMD, very severe Apnea, and RBD. They are, in my view, all connected and they compound on each other in a way that is very hard to manage.

I used to have the view that waking was active and tiring but sleep was shutting down and resting. I think that was wrong. For me, both sleep and wake require time, effort, awareness, energy, motivation, and positivity.  Without those resources, I fail at both and they merge into a fractured state of in-between. Spending my days and nights neither properly asleep nor fully awake.

I considered that the purpose of Dexamphetamine was to wake up the brain and raise the level of awareness and activity as well as improve motivation and positivity. Using Dex for this purpose over the past year or so has enabled me to remain functional through the daytime despite the escalating levels of fatigue and confusion generated by deteriorating sleep patterns which have become barely survivable, leaving me lost and confused through the night and increasingly wrecked each morning.

I had hoped that by using Dex to raise my level of awareness through the day I could use the fatigue it generates to dive deeper into sleep but what I found is that the more tired I became the worse I slept and the more fragmented and disrupted my nights became until, because of all the compounding sleep and movement disorders, I was getting almost no benefit from what little sleep I could achieve.

Several weeks ago, when this degenerative cycle was quite severe, I took a Dex at 4:00 AM as a last resort to enable me to manage the hopelessness and desperation until morning, and to my surprise, I slept really well, even though it was only for 4 or 5 hours, and I woke feeling refreshed and in a state of awareness and functionality that was better than I have seen in a long time.

Since then I have used Dex every night to facilitate better sleep and awakened feeling alert and functional, without the extreme fatigue, fog, and confusion that has haunted my life in recent years. I have gone from having a number of violent RBD dreams every night to none at all in the past several weeks since I began using Dex at bedtime except twice when I forgot and woke up with violent active dreams on both occasions.

Just to be clear, this medication does not suppress movement, which seems to be the aim of standard RBD medication and it doesn't prevent dreaming. Dex keeps dreams in peaceful mode, which is how I play most computer games nowadays.

One person is hardly conclusive and several weeks is not long enough but it is the best several weeks I have had in quite a few years and I believe that it is worth further investigation.

Once again: My role in this forum has largely been rabble-rouser and antagonist. I have no medical training and am not recommending anyone try new treatments or cease existing medical treatments without the full support of their doctor.

I know you have been having issues with RBD for some time. I hope this treatment works for you. On a quick look at the Mayo Clinic site, it certainly seems to have a long list of potential interactions.

I don't expect it to last forever, in fact I am quite prepared to accept that it might be a placebo effect.

All I know for sure is that, for the moment, it works for me.

I have tried to find references to this application of Dex but RBD is so entangled with other sleep disorders, including narcolepsy (which is often treated with Dex) as well as being implicated in various forms of dementia, that this counterintuitive application of Dex is hard to identify especially as, even if it's real, it's likely to be beneficial in very limited circumstances and probably only during a transitional stage of disease progression.

So what you are saying is that Dexamphetamine is helping you sleep near normal, if you take it during the day. Given that this is a habit forming drug (you'd be pretty much addicted to it, if as you say, you've been on it for a year) and that it can cause new or worsening of existing psychosis, especially in people with a history of depression or mental disorders, I'd be very cautious . Remember that habit forming pharma can alleviate a set of symptoms while aggravating others and forming new ones. My recommendation is to have an exit strategy if 'sh^%$it hits the fan and you find yourself in a situation when you must get off of Dexamphetamine because its not like once you are addicted to it, you can just stop taking it without some very serious side-effects.

I took Adderall for years and finally quit. It did keep me from shooting off into 20 different directions and kept me awake and focused. This is before I found out that I had severe sleep apnea. The side effects for me were not worth having the benefits. I think this drug is horrible. Unfortunately a necessary evil for some people..just my opinion. However, research seems to support that. I also developed high blood pressure and tachycardia, probably as a result of the sleep apnea. One day unbeknownst to me when I was at the doc, it was 225/150, HR 146..a walking heart attack/stroke (yes, they called EMS, saved my life). Geez, if I'd been on Adderall, nuff said. I'm happy that it works for you and I will pray for continuing success for you. I also pray that you find a safer alternative.

@RayRBD has posted a link to what looks like a very useful resources site for RBD. They are looking for volunteers for a study, but seem only to be located in the US, and Montreal in Canada.

I have been using Dexamphetamine to pacify the dreams related to REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder for 4 months now (since 4/12/21) and it still works 95% of the time. On rare occasions, when I am under extreme stress, my dreams still translate into actions, but when I forget to take it I almost always have episodes of violent actions.

I am certain that there must be problems caused by this usage of Dex but I can't identify them yet.

If anyone has tried this approach, officially or otherwise, with or without success, it would be good to hear from you.