does anyone get head shakes? (similar to head shakes males some times get after peeing) not the body shaking, just your head shaking/jerking a little. at most 1.5-2 seconds long.

i get them some times mostly during the day time when i’m relaxed. so, only when i’m conscious, not when i’m asleep. so it’s not a sleeping disorder. but i can get them before falling asleep and maybe conscious enough to wake from a lucid dream, but not during sleep.

it gets triggered when accessing memory, not any particular memory (so it rules out any past traumas), just the act of trying to recall memory.

i’ve done some research online and the closest physical symptom matching my case is from tourette syndrome / tics. but motor tics mainly occur in kids and stop when kids have grown up. but i’m a grown adult. never had it as a child.

i’ve asked my family doctors and a neurologist. all of them are useless.

what could be causing this? (i know i said memories but why)

what can be done to treat/cure this?
i thought about alcohol withdraws too. but as i can remember, head shakes began before my youthful drinking binges. then after i stopped drinking for awhile, head shakes continued. then i started to drink again but moderately just to see if it is alcohol withdraws, but nope, head shakes continue.

if i was, say, trying to remember a horrible past, and then the head shakes occurred, then psychological trauma can be a possibility. but that’s not the case in my case. it occurs when i’m relaxed and just trying to recall any past memories.

can it be a start of alzheimers or something? that would be freaky. and i mostly doubt it because i’m still in my 20s. plus, the shakes is only my head moving, not the entire body or parts of limbs.

any ideas?

and i think this rapid head shaking thing started when i was 18 or 19 yrs old. it occurred only seldomly back then, and when it did happen it happened right before following asleep only. as i’ve gotten older, the frequency of occuring increas
increased. and from just before sleep to any time of day almost. i’m 26 now. and it happens pretty much everyday now.
thanks for the help!!

yes i was diagnosed with depression, around age 18-19. then i did some street drugs which i now regret, because they may have contributed to this physical nuisance of a symptom. i was on and off anti-depressants while drinking alcohol and doing street drugs. this was from 18-early 20s. then i stopped all of that. and began sobering up. i don’t want to admit it but the combination of all of these probably did contribute to this motor tic.

now my skin gets allergic to many random weird things too. dust, certain food i don’t know about, stress, cold, hot, spice, some sea food, grease, …. who knows what else.

i guess my main concern is not really how i got the motor tics but how to treat and cure it. it has been very annoying at times when trying to sleep but be interrupted and awaken from the process of falling asleep by this sudden jerking motion of my head. b/c of so many times of this motion, that now i can hear a crack sound if i move my head to the right.
i don’t take any medications now. (since at least 1.5 yrs ago)

i used to take all sorts of anti-depressants because none of them had side-effects that were minor to me. hmm thinking back it’s kind of hard to recall and list all of the prescription drugs i took in a ~5 year span. effexor probably, xannax, klonopin, the one for adhd, methylphenidate, antidepressants, hmm i know i’m forgetting something here. oh and i also took legal anabolics alternative steroid supplements for a month when i was working out. oh and the neurologist gave me this for-heart-patient prescription, propranolol, to treat my head shakes. i took that for couple months and decided that it’s all BS.

god, i hate drugs….
oh and i don’t drink coffee. caffeine at least from coffee and energy drinks makes my body twitch and i would get jumpy, so i don’t drink those.

i also don’t smoke cigarettes or anything else.

i think you’re right about the tardive dyskinesia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardive_dyskinesia

Like when you’re awake and you can’t move at all. It happened to me last night and when I opened my eyes i saw dark stuff flying around,and i still couldn’t move.It was creepy.How do you wake up from sleep paralysis?