If you have any questions feel free to ask them, just please don't suggest I try melatonin or marijuana.
I've seen cases of benzo/z-drug withdrawal (after a short 1-2 years of daily use) requiring 3 months to even notice relief from the side effects of the withdrawal (most notably, horrible insomnia). And then another 6-12 months of abstinence to reach a place where the withdrawal effects are no longer top of mind, or subtly present but not overwhelming.
If you were on benzo/z-drug for very many consecutive years (even with short tolerance breaks), especially if those years were before age 25, it's very possible that your brain has never had a chance to function in the way a "normal" (non-altered) brain functions that hasn't been exposed to long term benzo/z-drug therapy.
The scary part about benzo/z-drugs is that they can, over time, change the structure and chemistry of your brain through upregulation and downregulation of receptors in response to the presence of drugs. With benzos in particular, the amount of time it takes to reverse the drug-induced changes seems to be incredibly long (not weeks, barely months, maybe years -- obviously depending on the length of time of initial exposure).
This is all to say that, if indeed you were on ultra long-term benzo/z-drugs for an extended amount of time (2-5+ years), 1 year of abstinence may not be enough to fully recover back to a normal state.
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And I assume you do all the basic sleep hygiene stuff for insomnia: no caffeine (at all, not even in the morning), no stimulants even if prescribed, intense exercise in the morning but not at night, not eating within 3 hours of sleep, no electronics within 2 hours of sleep.
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If you think the first part of my comment is BS, and if you've already done everything in the 2nd part of the comment, I'd highly recommend trying a dramatic diet change: something like going strict vegan and cutting out all processed sugars (and processed foods in general),
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And if that too fails, think deeply about what triggers anxiety / emotional discord in your life, and try to eliminate the source of that completely. This is the hardest advice to follow through with, since for many people it means quitting jobs, ending marriages, disowning family, moving to another country... you get the point.
I've also never gotten into the habit of drinking caffeine. The only time I'll drink coffee is if my friends who are into that kind of stuff bring back some rare coffee from a trip and invite me to try some. I also don't drink soda or energy drinks.
It's possible that being on the sleep medications for extended periods of time changed my brain chemistry, but I think my condition is different from most people. This was something I was legitimately born with and can remember struggling with even as a very young child (3-4 years old). My parents have similar recollections. No one else in my family has this issue - I just see it as an unlucky mutation.
I'm glad you mentioned diet. I think that is probably something that helps me. I've been on keto for most of my adult life and since graduating college and starting working I've been on one meal a day (lunch) aside from the few month stretches where I tried to gain weight for weightlifting. Thankfully my parents were amazing cooks growing up and were also too poor to avoid keeping snacks in the house so I never got into the habit of eating candy or junk food. I definitely notice that I struggle to sleep even more on occasions where I go out and eat with friends late at night and eat carb heavy meals that I wouldn't eat otherwise.
But they're also the most addictive substances we've got. After a week or so, you now have an addiction that needs tapering to not be dangerous. If you lose access to the drugs, you might die from withdrawal.
The withdrawal can make you feel literally insane. I don't know how to explain it other than it's extremely unpleasant and everything feels moody and irrational, and sometimes you don't even realize the extent to which you're being irrational until you take more drugs and feel "normal" again.
The potential for addiction is also high because these drugs feel the best out of all drugs. You're going to want to use it again. Imagine if alcohol never made you sick or dizzy, and you could have as much of it as you wanted, and you'd just keep feeling more relaxed until you pass out. Then you wake up feeling relaxed and don't have a hangover. That's what benzos feel like.
Also many doctors don't realize just how possible it is to have a seizure during withdrawal, and some doctors will refuse patients asking for benzos because they see them as drug-seekers.
Any time I see one of these threads about benzos, I try to share my experience, because they're just so misunderstood by the general public. And it's probably not great that there's so much talk about xanax in hiphop right now.
But I haven't been able to find quaaludes anywhere, so maybe I am missing something ;)
The end result is the same, too. Current medical advice is a mix of sleep hygiene and meditation strategies (some insomniacs feel extremely anxious when they can't sleep, which makes things worse) and medication.
I'm currently not taking medication, but for many years it was a pretty constant cycle 6-9 months on medication, and then a few months tapering off because my body would quickly build tolerance to them. Medication was pretty critical when I was in college, but in the decade since I've graduated I think I've just come to see the cycle as unsustainable and ultimately kind of pointless which is why I haven't taken them for about a year now.
I've tried pretty much everything. Of course Melatonin and Benadryl don't work much. Klonopin and Ambien both work well, but I try not to use it more than 1x a week to avoid a tolerance.
No pills ever worked for my insomnia but hydroxyzine made me much more comfortable while trying to sleep.
Only drawback is that you need to stay vigilant once you get it sorted out.
I went for 4-5 hours of sleep for a year; while resting blood pressure was normal, I found it would spike high easily.
This is because, for me, "sleepiness" is not the same as "tiredness." I can be extremely exhausted, both mentally and physically, but I'll still never feel sleepy.
I would say one of the most frustrating aspects of being an insomniac is that is makes activities like weightlifting much more difficult. I'll never be able to achieve my weightlifting goals because I simply don't sleep enough hours to let my body fully recover. I've found I still have a strong stamina for aerobic sports, but building raw strength and muscle has been really hard.