I could have written this. I can't always say what the night-terror has been, I often don't remember what it was when I finally snap out of it. I do know that I feel overwhelmed with shame and embarrassment.

Mine started about 13 years ago, at age 29. They were mostly the same back then: I would think my condo was on fire and I HAD TO GET OUT NOW AS FAST AS POSSIBLE OR I'M GOING TO DIE.

I learned to keep a clear path between my bed and the door. I learned that locking the door was a bad idea; I would struggle so hard to open it that I'd injure myself. I learned that I would generally snap out of it within a minute or so, but there have been occasions where it must have been longer based on where I woke vs where I went to sleep.

The night terrors I have now involve imminent danger to me or my wife. Sometimes it's sort of normalish. Like I would think the ceiling fan was about to fall on my wife and so I would try to push her out of the way. I would usually wake up in the middle of trying to shove her.

Sometimes it's more bizarre. My God, the ceiling! It's a bunch of junkyard cars smashed together!? How can it stay up!? I freak out at the creaking sound of one of the cars breaking loose, its going to crush us. I wake up trying to push my wife out of the way. I'm very embarrassed and ashamed it has happened again.

Sometimes it's "the house is on fire." And probably a million other things I can't remember.

I've seen a sleep doctor, he's a neurologist. Graduated with honors from stanford. He's a really cool guy, my favorite doctor. We decided that stress was probably creating a favorable environment for a night-terror event, and something disturbing my sleep (noise in the room, etc.) would set it off. Something like ambien would only make it worse as when the terror started, I'd have that much more difficulty snapping out of it.

I tried clonazepam (klonopin). It seemed to help, but we had to titrate to get things under control. It took 2mg a night to essentially stop the terrors. It was a huge relief...I regained confidence and trust that I would be able to sleep through the night. That by itself reduced my stress level.

Night terrors can be worsened by stress, and they are in fact a stressor themselves. Downward spiral into the abyss.

After a couple years at that dose I started noticing memory problems. I'm sure my wife noticed them long before me. It wasn't just forgetting, I believe the memories didn't form in the first place. The worst episode, I was writing some code for work, and went to implement something only to find I had already done it. That's strange, I thought. I looked at the git history, and i had done it about 45 minutes earlier. That was bad.

I take a number of medications, and hadn't really had any issues with the clonazepam, so I didn't associate the two. I told my GP about the memory issues, and she said it was a classic side effect of clonazepam. So over a long period of time, we titrated back down to 1 mg.

Memory issues seem to be resolved, although if I take the clonazepam too late, and it's still in effect when I wake up, I can have memory problems until it's metabolized.

Clonazepam is a relatively benign drug in the short term. Not much studying has been done for long term, so that's iffy. I'm dependent on it now. If I go without, I have incredible difficulty sleeping. I won't necessarily have a night-terror, those are still rare now, but I feel like my brain just won't shut off and go to sleep.