Dani Blum for The New York Times:
A are consuming melatonin and report taking increasing doses of the supplement. Those who try to quit may find that the process is more difficult than anticipated.
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Eric Brost, 33, started taking melatonin when he was in graduate school and had trouble falling asleep. Over the next five years he oscillated between doses, trying to cut back to half a pill per dose before returning to taking one each night or, sometimes, more than one. Every time he tried to get off melatonin, he went back to it.
“I was taking it again just because of anxiety,” he said. He eventually went to a sleep therapist who encouraged him to stop taking the supplement completely. He started doing therapy
cognitive behavior to sleep, which helped him endure the night. “I stopped dead,” she said. Melatonin is not addictive, according to sleep experts and psychologists. There is no evidence that you will become physically dependent and you generally do not develop withdrawal symptoms if you stop taking it. But if you’re convinced that taking melatonin is essential for sleep, experts say, you may have a hard time kicking the habit.
“You can become psychologically dependent on Tic Tacs if you think you need them,” said Philip Gehrman, a clinical psychologist at the Penn Sleep Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
More and more people come to my office consuming melatonin and looking for sleeping pills. One of the first things I do is evaluate and prepare a sleep hygiene plan to help them sleep better without taking medication. Sleep is an important factor in emotional regulation and one of the main topics to address in therapy. It is important that therapists know and know how to address this increasingly growing problem.
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