Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) Discussion Board

My husband is on methadone, which has helped the severity of his symptoms, but the RLS still causes a fair amount of sleeplessness, and on nights when he doesn't have the restlessness, he has insomnia from the Methadone. Would kratom help him to sleep on those nights? Where do you get it?

Kratom mostly functions like a mild opioid. In that way it is unlikely to help much for a person already on methadone. That said, the ground Kratom Leaf has many psychoactive compounds and it is conceivable that it could help somebody with restless leg syndrome already on methadone get sleep. My personal experience is the thing that seems to help sleeping the most is controlling urge to move symptoms which Kratom helps me with that, edible THC ( medical marijuana) and gabapentin.

Some people on methadone have alerting problems directly from the methadone, making sleep more difficult. I'm sure some of the other members will chime in here as I don't really have much experience with that.

There is also the study of Richard P. Allen Ph.D which shows that those of us with RLS seem to have abnormally higher Glutamate than non RLS folks. The higher the glutamate the worse the sleep.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/me ... ery_solved

I was on methadone for over 2 years until I developed a side effect that caused me to switch to a different opioid. When I first started methadone I experienced the alerting effect of it. I was taking it at bedtime per my doctors instructions, so I simply decided to move it to an earlier time in the day so that the alerting effect would be gone by bedtime. I started taking it at lunchtime and didn't have any further problems from the methadone. I should add that I also take gabapentin, pramipexole and an edible marijuana product at bedtime and these help with my sleep.

Thank you all for your responses. He's had a terrible week - an hour of sleep here and there, no more than 3 hours/night. Mostly due to RLS symptoms, but several nights due to insomnia. I will try the Methadone earlier in the day, and perhaps increase the dose. He's been taking 20 mg, but his dr has prescribed up to 30 mg. We've been afraid to increase it due to the insomnia.

You might try melatonin. That, with a little L-theanine and Magnesium, really help me. The only thing I take for my RLS is kratom, but it doesn't seem to help me sleep.

I really sympathise with your husband. Opioid induced insomnia was a real problem for me when I was using oxycontin to treat my legs and it was definitely dose sensitive - ie the more opioid I took the worse the insomnia. Unfortunately, I have found that kratom can also induce insomnia. Some reports I saw on the internet suggested that in higher doses kratom was soporific in effect but I no matter how much I took it always seemed to cause alerting. I found cannabis was about the only substance that was any use in counteracting this insomnia and even cannabis does not work reliably. It was one of the reasons I reduced my opioid intake.

I found that taking the methadone earlier helped a lot. If I want to sleep by midnight, say, I take the first methadone at 4-5 PM - say 1/4 of it. Then again at 8 PM - 1/2 of it. Then the remaining 1/4 just as I go to sleep. But that was a LOT of trial and error on my part to get to something that worked for me. The worst alerting starts about 40 minutes to an hour after I take it and lasts 2-3 hours. I have to take at least 3/4 of it at least 3.5 to 4 hours before I want to sleep.

I used Kratom regularly while transitioning
off of Subutex that I used to get off
methadone. In my experience, although
Kratom was a literal life saver for me,
and helped me kick opiates- it was NOT
very good for fighting any insomnia issues
when used in conjunction with another
partial agonist, or full agonist like
methadone. The only thing Kratom was good for was in the transitioning off of opiates
altogether.