My mother has always had trouble sleeping. Once she was diagnosed as having dementia that didn’t necessarily change so much. She took a lot of naps during the day, but she wasn’t sleeping through the night. I tried a lot of things to get her to sleep, but nothing seemed to work. If Mom didn’t sleep, no one slept.


I asked someone about CBD oil, which I’d read about in a dementia group on Facebook, and which at the time locally was only being sold by someone at the local regional market. There were a whole bunch of questions asked, and a brochure was brought home to review. I still wasn’t totally sure about it, so I took a couple of weeks to think about it or trying to do some research online. The problem I had there was it everything I saw talking about how good it could work was by the companies that were trying to sell it; those aren’t reviews, those are sales pitches.

Eventually I bought some from the person who was working at the regional market so I could try it on my mother. I saw the dosage that was recommended, which was a full dropper, and decided I was going to start smaller than that. The first couple of days I tried only one drop, but that didn’t do anything. The third night I decided to try three drops.

That turned out to be a big mistake. Mom did sleep through the night, but the next morning she was like a zombie. I couldn’t get her to move, and she’s not a small woman. It took two of us to get her into the bathroom, and even though I started out by putting her in her lounge chair in the living room, she was so far out of it that she couldn’t eat breakfast, which meant she couldn’t take any of her other medications. Putting her back into bed was the only option available, and she ended up sleeping throughout the entire day and throughout the night; no bathroom, no nothing.

The next day started the same way. She was still out of it and had no energy, although I was able to get her to eat a little bit of cereal but I had to feed it to her. It was a Sunday morning, and I decided it was time to use something that I used on myself in the days when my glucose would be too high (I’m diabetic) and I needed to get some of that out overwhelming feeling of glucose of my system.

I started giving her very cold water, and I kept giving it to her. Luckily she drank it without objection, and it took about four hours but she finally came out of her lethargy. I let her stay in bed for the rest of the day, but I was able to give her dinner and she was able to feed herself. The next morning she woke up as though nothing had ever happened, and I was grateful she was back to herself, especially because it was the day she went to the senior center, but I felt dismayed that the CBD oil didn’t work.

Still, I needed a solution to get her to sleep because without her sleeping through the night it meant I had to keep getting up through the night. I was pretty exhausted during the day because when I had to get up during the night I rarely fell back to sleep.

I wasn’t sure what to do about it until one day when I was at Wegmans, and I saw they had put up a new display. On the display were all these varieties of CBD oil, and one that specifically said it was for sleep. I decided to buy that one because I’ve always trusted Wegmans, and in my mind if I couldn’t trust Wegmans then I couldn’t trust anybody.

Once again I started with very low doses, which she had no visible reactions to. Then I went up to three drops, and that didn’t do anything. So one night I decided to give her 8 drops, and she slept pretty well. She still got up at one point during the night, but it was the most nighttime sleep that she’d had in the longest time. I’d found my solution!

I still don’t give her the amount that the bottle says I can give her, which is a dropper full, to get her to sleep. I give her more than 10 drops on days where she’s going to be in the house all day long. On days where she’s going to the senior center, she only gets 8 or 9 drops, because I don’t mind her getting up earlier on those days. I have to say I’m very happy with the stuff I’m buying, which you can see a picture of in the image above.

My overall thought concerning CBD oil is it can be effective, but it’s safer buying it from someone who you know has done testing on it and isn’t going to risk their reputation causing any harm to consumers. The person at the farmers market was making his own stuff, and there’s no way to regulate the intensity of whatever it is he’s putting into it; that probably goes for many independents, though I can’t confirm that.

If you’re thinking about buying something like this, buy it from someone you trust. Then start with small amounts and move up from there. It probably has the same effect on people without dementia, so if you decide to try it for yourself, start small and move up from there.