Is it safe

Is melatonin addictive?

By GyroscopeUpdated November 14, 20265 sources

There’s no sign of it. In trials the effect didn’t wear off with nightly use, and in night shift workers who took it for a week, their own melatonin came back at the same height afterward. If sleep is worse for a few nights after you stop, that’s usually the problem it was covering, so keep your wake time fixed and give it time.

The worry makes sense. You take something every night to sleep, you skip it once and sleep badly, and it feels like your body now needs it. In the trials, melatonin didn’t show the pattern of needing more and more.

You can stop whenever you like. We’d keep the same wake time every day, get outside in the morning, and judge it on a week or two of nights instead of the first one.

It’s like turning off a fan on a hot night. The room feels hotter, but the heat was there all along.

Does your body stop making its own?

Not in the studies that measured it. In a 1997 study, researchers gave 21 night shift workers 0.5 mg or a placebo at bedtime for 7 days, then measured their own melatonin on the eighth day. It was the same height as before. They also followed one blind person who took 50 mg a day for 37 days, and that person’s own melatonin didn’t change either. The authors concluded that melatonin from a tablet can shift the timing of your own, but not how much you make. The myth page has more.

Do you need more over time?

The trials say no. A 2013 analysis of 19 trials found melatonin’s effect on sleep didn’t fade with continued use, and longer trials actually showed bigger effects. In a 1995 trial in older adults with insomnia, two months of nightly slow-release melatonin kept improving their sleep, and the authors wrote that tolerance had not developed.

What happens when you stop

In that same trial, sleep got worse again after the tablets stopped. That’s what you’d expect if melatonin was helping a real sleep problem, and it’s different from withdrawal, which is your body reacting to the drug being gone. A 2019 review of 37 trials found most side effects went away on their own within a few days, or as soon as people stopped.

If you’re nervous about stopping, the morning is where to put the effort. Morning light pulls your body clock earlier, so a fixed wake time and some time outside soon after it help your own melatonin start on time in the evening.

Should you stop?

If you’ve taken it every night for months, find out whether it’s still doing anything. Alternate a week off and a week on, judge it on one measure you pick in advance, and keep it only if the on nights win by more than your normal swing. The two-week test does the math.