ADHD< nightmares and Nightterrors | ADHD Information

My 7 year old son is always screaming at night.  He also chronically wets the bed twice a night.  I have strange dreams all the time too and my husband says I will sit up and say things to him and abuse him.  I wake in the night and jump out of bed and check the house for no reason and not really awake.  I also have vivid dreams which seem more like visions of faces I have never seen.  No Dave you are not the only one with a strangely confused subconscious.

This one got my attention. At 37 I just figured out how ADD I've been and began Adderral a few months ago. I'm a different person now. Anyway, I've experienced night terrors sporadically throughout my life and have always thought there was "something not right" with the way my brain worked for such experiences to have occurred. I had most of them as a child from about ages 5 to 7, I think. I usually would not remember them at first but my parents would say something the next day and it would come back to me. I remember the experiences as sheer terror. I would run around the house screaming like a little maniac. The physical feeling I had and can still recall vividly to this day was always the same.

I literally felt like I was upside down.

It has only happened once to me as an adult when I was in my early 20's. I jumped out of bed and began running around the bedroom shouting, "OH MY GOD" over and over. Scared the crap out of my wife. And I had the upside down feeling again. At the time I had been dabbling in some recreational drugs, namely ecstasy and have often wondered if that triggered it.

I don't know how, what or why but I truly feel this has something to do with whatever causes ADD.

Dave -  It's really interesting you mentioned this I had never even thought to corolate my derams with ADD... I used to wake up screaming like a horror movie scream, like I was dying. I never remember screaming really I sometimes would remember what I thought was a faint mumble coming out of my mouth. Since I've given this some thought, I have not had one of these dreams since starting Adderall. Many of the nightmares I had were the ones that are very very real and I can still recall nearly every aspect of them.  Hopefully the Adderall is helping those!

NightStar - I think I know what's going on with you when you have that parylysis, I just read an article on that very thing! When you go to sleep your body paralyzes some nervous systems, mostly the voluntary ones like muscles,  so that you don't act out your dreams (therefore saving energy and allowing the body to rest and rejuvinate). When the body wakes this is supposed to be instantly reversed. Maybe yours doesn't reverse right away, leaving you paralyzed for a few moments. I'll see what I can find on that.

Found THE website!!!!! should answer any questions about ADHD and sleep disorders! (I hope)

http://sleepdisorders.about.com/cs/sleepparalysi1/a/adhd.htm

I've had problems with sleep but not nearly as extreme as yours. With me, if I see something scary, it will keep me up for months. Finally, my doctor put me on Lexapro and this has helped tremendously with that. Talk to a therapist/psychiatrist and see what they think.

The No Longer Sleepy, Cheekydeeky

Hey Dave,

I have a son who is now 12, and up until about a year and a half ago he had terrible Night Terrors. He would wake up about an hour after going to sleep screaming like he was being killed. It was a terrible terrible thing for the rest of us, but he never had any memory of this happening to him.

He has been on ritalin all the time this was occuring, and still is. I do not know if this is related to ADD or not. All 3 of my kids talk in their sleep, but he is the only one that had the night terrors.

I hope you can find the answer to your sleep issues. Keep Searching!   Donna

Just Dave,

  I'm recently diagnosed and have always had what I thought where off dreams but, when I started taking Strattera the dreams were much more intense and all of them very bad nightmares.  They seemed to get better after about 4 weeks on the medication.  I started taking Seroquel as weel to help me sleep and the dreams are still "normal".

Hope this is helpful

Hello again,

                 Been looking on the web for stuff about nightmares and ADD and sleep disorders with dreaming.  All I keep finding is references that people who don't get enough sleep or snore may mimic some symptoms of ADHD because they are tired the next day, or at least make thier symptoms worse.

                Kind of a nice to know, but it still misses what I was hoping to find.

                Has anyone ever heard of ADHD people suffer stronger dreams, have a harder time comming out of dreams, and sometimes wake up thinking they are still in them for a few scary seconds.  I think everybody has done this at least once, but I mean on a constant.  Also is it common for ADHD kids to suffer more night terrors than the average child.

                I wonder, because it plagued me all my life.  I am constantly waking up still caught in a dream.  I wonder if it could be related to ADD, though I must admit its gets a little better the older I get, its still and issue. My life was hell as a child, I had night terrors almost every night, though I lived a normal life, and nothing sticks out that might cause problems.

              I remember once my father pulling me aside calmly and explaining that I needed to stop doing this, screaming like someone was pulling my skin off  at two in the morning was scaring my siblings. Ummm  yea, like it was fun for me, or I could possibly control it. I was ten then, and terrified to sleep.

 

Anyone else suffer this? or ever heard of this tied to a ADHD mind?

Just Dave38183.5682523148

Ummm... Maybe its just me, could explain why I didn't find much write up on

it.

This lady has some different stuff going on and relates hers to taking medication... I can tell you I was not on medication all the time that these happened, but if I was to relate it to meds. Mostly then I would say Lithium, and Amytriptiline (sorry for bad spelling).

I would get very much afraid (like death) was calling on me, I could not speak at all, so don't know what she is talking about as far as calling out someone's name.

I would hyperventalate, but not because I could not breath, but because it was my way of telling my partner that I was in trouble and needed him to shake me awake.

It has been well over a year since my last one, and I usually sleep on my side not back... though I do on rare occassion.

Interesting how this disorder has so many twists and turns to how it affects people. And I think she totally down graded it with the comments about ailiens and such... it is not that, it is to point that you REALLY feel like someone is in the room with you!

Hmmm... I suppose that's what I get for just skimming the article. I saw alot of sites relating this disorder to alien abductions... My theory is, whay would an alien abduct you why not the president of the united states? Anyway, I digress. I'm sure you've already done alot of research but in attempts to redeem myself I have found a better site: http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/paralysis.html When I started Straterra I had very unusual and extremely vivid dreams (fortunately not real nightmares).

Sorry Lizzy, haven't been myself lately, was just making observation, not to run down you generosity for linking the site. I tried looking at how to contact that lady, but there was no way from what I could tell.

I am just fortunate to be out of having such side affects at this time, have my hands full as it is with other problems. Knock on wood not to see that problem again, none the less, no matter knowing, it is still a scary experience.

Thanks,

 

[QUOTE=lizzy]Hmmm... I suppose that's what I get for just skimming the article. I saw alot of sites relating this disorder to alien abductions... My theory is, whay would an alien abduct you why not the president of the united states? http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/paralysis.html [/QUOTE]

, probably because aliens are higher beings and dont think much of Bush either.

Hey Dave,

Ya I get that too sometimes... I think that (just opinion not medical fact) it is related to ADD'ers being filled up from the sights/sounds/motions of the day and not being able to "drain" so to speak... so it comes out in a horrific dream.

Speaking of which not to sound scary, but I struggled with frequent visualizing of aweful images that were horrid... ya scary huh... It unnerved me very much as I am a gentle person... turned out that it was my subconscious trying to compensate for lack of stimulant by trying to force adrenal activity. 

Anyway since ADD seems to be an imbalance in frontal lobe activity sometimes your body can make up for it in strange subconscious ways... perhaps night terrors are another method of stimulating adrenaline... your subconcious doesn't have to quit trying to compensate just because you're sleeping.

I have sleep paralysis,

Which when waking up from a dream I find that I am unable to move, my mind is awake but my body is asleep still.

It gets terrifying because you can sometimes feel like there is a presence in the room, and feel impending doom.

There is a bit more to this, and I have read about people having night terrors to, will post back later when I can the links I found here a while back.