10 ms·

I've been taking Ambien on and off for the past 8 years. Stretches where I've taken Ambien for a consecutive year. I've done exactly what the author talks abou

by bxtt 8y ago

I've been taking Ambien on and off for the past 8 years. Stretches where I've taken Ambien for a consecutive year. I've done exactly what the author talks about: write long incoherent but beautifully written poetry, dive deep into studies and journals about the most random subjects, and have auditory hallucinations. But, what she doesn't talk about is the horror stories that come with it. I've destroyed countless relationships. I've had friends that refuse to pick up any of my calls after 12am. I've crashed my car into a tree because of sleep eating. I've withdrawn from the medication, and don't sleep for 3-4 days. I've taken Ambien, then drank an entire bottle of wine, and the next morning to find out that I took 6 more Ambiens. I should be dead. If you haven't taken Ambien in the past, and are interested, I would just avoid it at all costs.

endorphone 8y ago
I took Ambien for four months (the sort of period it should normally be used for...even that pushes the upper limit) after a very loud and public event kicked off by severe sleep deprivation and stress. It worked wonderfully. I'd take it and lie down and quickly fade off to a sort of sleep. I say sort of because apparently it isn't really a sleep, and doesn't have all of the benefits of sleep, but it was far better than the narcolepsy I was experiencing. I looked forward to taking Ambien because it made the sleep process so effortless and nice. I renewed prescriptions and would actually think ahead to the moment when I got to enjoy an Ambien. Then my insurance stopped covering it. The price is quite low, but it was a flag to me that I should probably stop: The system had said that I'd hit the limit of what I should take. So I stopped. That was it. Never had sleep walking. No weird phone calls. No "Walrus". When I took one I always did it with the intention of sleep, and immediately preparing for sleep. So that is my counterpoint, I suppose. Real sleep is far better, but as an actual sleep aid, especially in high stress, it...works. Should anyone abuse it for other purposes? Absolutely not. Should they try to use it for a high? No, of course not.
- gameswithgo 8y ago
  If the drug has a non trivial chance of making you lose your mind, and no way to identify that it will do that without losing your mind, it might not be appropriate to ever use it, even if it works well for some people.
  - nradov 8y ago
    That's why we have doctors, to weigh the risks versus benefits and prescribe treatment in the patient's best interest. I suspect that some of the worst side effects might have genetic risk factors. Hopefully researchers will determine whether people with particular genes are at greater risk of suffering mental problems from Ambien.
    - codewithcheese 8y ago
      I think doctors as a group of individuals have proven they can't be trusted to weigh the risks. Consider the opiods epidemic as an example There must be better alternatives to get a good nights sleep. OP description of " I renewed prescriptions and would actually think ahead to the moment when I got to enjoy an Ambien." sound a lot like early stage addiction.
      - fhood 8y ago
        I am hella addicted to amazon then. Holy shit.
      - nradov 8y ago
        If we can't trust doctors then we have a much bigger problem that can't be solved by banning medicines which the FDA has determined to be safe and effective for treating certain conditions. While there's room for improvement in medical care standards, issues with a handful of drugs aren't sufficient evidence to provoke distrust. Most doctors get it right more often than wrong.
      - boomboomsubban 8y ago
        >Consider the opiods epidemic as an example The one where drug companies actively lied about both how addictive their drugs were and the best way that they should be prescribed? Doctors aren't perfect, and there are some that are truly terrible, but in general their opinion is trustworthy.
      - mikec3010 8y ago
        Doctors did fine prescribing opioids in the 70s and 80s. They're not the cause of this epidemic.
- qubex 8y ago
  I looked forward to it — yes! Mine was abuse (see my other post further down in the thread if you’re interested) but it was so damned convenient to just flip a figurative switch and have the lights go out.
- erentz 8y ago
  > I took Ambien for four months Every night for four months? Yeah that is stretching it from everything I've read. I started using it off/on when I went through a period of insomnia almost a decade ago. The doctor was very strict that it was for not more than two-four weeks and that I should try to only use it every second night. That insomnia passed, but I since used a half dose (5 mg) on average once every 7 days (that's the average but it's more like 2 or 3 nights every 2 or three weeks). I need it when traveling or during anything stressful going on at work. Nothing else works. In a new hotel room I can just lay there all night long unable to sleep because it's an unfamiliar environment. Or if I know I have to be up by a certain hour and give a presentation or have a possibly conflicting meeting the next day - no sleep. I do wonder what the long term impacts of even this low intermittent usage is though. But the alternative is not working or traveling.
  - DenisM 8y ago
    You seem to have anxiety, that might be a better treatment target.
  - sizzle 8y ago
    Have you tried meditation and mindfulness? Curious if clearing your mind and relaxation techniques would allow you to combat the anxiety of being worried of not falling asleep? If not, why haven't you tried it?
    - erentz 8y ago
      I’ve tried it, I find in general regular exercise and relaxing yoga routines with some meditation before bed works in some situations. But doesn’t work for the new hotel or “big meeting next day” scenarios. I end up just meditating all night forcing the rehearsing thoughts out of my head and still not falling asleep until around 4am. It then becomes a performance thing, I know I want to have slept so I can perform so I go for what I know will 100% work. For the sibling comment: I’ve also tried other general anxiety treatments - but they are all be pretty serious stuff you don’t want to use too much if you don’t have too. Since my anxiety seems limited to certain situations I find it best to use the minimum targeted just at those directly.
- wnissen 8y ago
  I take a half an Ambien to sleep on overnight flights, no side effects that I can discern. It's all about managing risks relative to benefits, and not always in an evenhanded way. 2 grams of Tylenol/paracetamol with a bottle of wine and it's bye bye, liver, yet you can buy it in a vending machine.
  - gnulinux 8y ago
    Ok but that's a very odd comparison. It's well known and studied that _normal_ doses of Ambien can induce unpredictable behavior on humans including sleep walking and/or confusion. But 2 grams of paracetamol is 4 times the normal dose, and paired with a drug it should never ever be taken with.
  - pseingatl 8y ago
    You might want to be careful with Ambien and airplanes. A U.S. intelligence worker on a flight back to the U.S. from an assignment overseas tried to dynamite a plane while on Ambien. Look up "Derek Stansberry": http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/04/28/disruptive.passenger/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/04/28/disruptive.passenge...
- lscore720 8y ago
  Thanks for sharing your experience and articulating this so well. I have been on the same dose of Ambien for nearly 2 years. I'm fortunate that it does its job with zero side effects. The negative experiences and feedback in this thread are overwhelming - if I were unfamiliar with it, I would be freaked out! It's generally accepted that Ambien's benefits outweigh the costs. I don't mean to downplay the negative experiences, but it's not as bad as this article/thread infer. Ultimately, it's something to discuss with a GP or Psychiatrist.
notheguyouthink 8y ago
I'm surprised it's even legal honestly. I see so many horror stories. Worse yet, they're so unpredictable. Not just "it hurt my liver", they're what you described. Zombies in real life. Crazy.
- bxtt 8y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/health/14sleep.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/health/14sleep.html I binge eat when I'm on Ambien, and have intense food cravings. That night I didn't have food, and there was a McDonalds about 5 minutes away from where I lived. I crashed into a stop sign three blocks into it. Even as an anonymous poster, there are stories that I am too ashamed to even post about. If anyone sees this, and had some inclination to try Ambien recreationally, don't even try it. What's worse is that even after destroying every relationship I've ever had because of Ambien, I still can't quit it.
- endorphone 8y ago
  It is a controlled substance. Further note that the horror stories are seldom, if ever, by people actually using it as intended and as directed. How to benefit from Ambien if having sleep problems: Take Ambien and immediately go lie comfortably in bed. Have no responsibilities and have the ability to sleep for 8 hours uninterrupted. How not to benefit from Ambien: Use it to escape life. Use it recreationally. Take it when you have no intention to go to sleep, or even to try. Use it for chronic issues rather than temporary sleep issues. I certainly don't want to take up the gauntlet of defending Ambien, but in any discussion about it the narrative gets dominated by abusers. And that's an important narrative -- it gets prescribed way more often than it should, and for far longer than it should ever be used -- but there are benefits as well.
  - lhuser123 8y ago
    I disagree with you. I think what you call “abusers” , are just people that react differently than you to the same chemicals in the drug.
    - 8y ago
anchpop 8y ago
> I've crashed my car into a tree because of sleep eating. I'm not very familiar with Ambien, but this seems like a non-sequitur. Do you mean sleep driving?
- okmokmz 8y ago
  I would guess he means he took ambien, passed out/blacked out, and at that point decided he needed to go get something to eat while he was effectively "sleep-walking" and crashed
- pseingatl 8y ago
  Sleep eating and sleep driving are two common behaviors exhibited while using Ambien. In that case, these two were likely combined.
qubex 8y ago
I’d been on Ambien (Stilnox locally) uninterruptedly from 2002 until a few months ago, April 2018. My main aim was to just shut down after days of work at a family business job that I loathed and most of my side-effects were binge eating and little else (to the point that I always ensured my home was entirely devoid of food). I was capable of taking ten, 12 doses a night. In April I quit cold turkey and sought psychiatric help. I also had major depression going. Fifteen days of rehab on Italy’s national health service served wonders. I still have trouble falling asleep, but fuck it. It turns out I have a genetic mutation that makes me fairly immune to withdrawal effects from benzodiazepines and pseudonenzodiazepines such as zolpidem but seriously people don’t go down this route.
- tw04 8y ago
  Out of curiosity, have to tried vigorous exercise? Any time I've had issues sleeping in the past, as soon as I got into a workout regiment, it got me right back to a normal sleep schedule.
  - fossuser 8y ago
    Not OP, but for me while working out helps being unable to sleep is tightly coupled with anxiety and my mind spinning on something. For some people the anxiety is directly related to being worried about being unable to fall asleep. One thing that helped was to recognize that it's okay if you don't fall asleep - taking the pressure off made it less stressful. Another thing was recognizing I've never failed to eventually fall asleep. Sleep is a weird thing though - and the lack of conscious continuity, I think people would be more afraid of it if it wasn't something we were already used to.
    - jfoutz 8y ago
      Me personally, I used to spend a lot of sleepless nights stressing out over something or another. Now I give myself an hour. I get up and work on the problem. I’m miserable the next day. But often my brain decides it wants sleep more than laying in bed worrying. I’d recommend it to anyone, but for sure talk to a doctor.
Fnoord 8y ago
> If you haven't taken Ambien in the past, and are interested, I would just avoid it at all costs. IIRC, correct me if I'm wrong, Ambien is prescribed as sleep aid and also used in the USAF to nap on demand. I've never had narcolepsy AFAIK, with or without Ambien.
- bxtt 8y ago
  It is. You’re right. I never take Ambien recreationally. Here’s the path I went down: It quickly becomes this cyclical pattern where if you don’t take it, then you don’t sleep for days, so you’re forced to use it. And when I mean forced, I can’t go to work sleep deprived, especially in my line of work. You’ll build a tolerance quickly, then you begin ramping up your dosage, and this helps for awhile. But like a lot of long term ambien users know, you don’t fall asleep as easily anymore. Then the side effects really begin hitting you because you’re awake with a 30-60 mg of Ambien in you. And if you have a history of drug abuse like I do, you do the dumbest thing possible and drink wine with ambien. This will knock you out for sure, but before that happens, you’ll begin doing extremely destructive things. I’ve taken a considerable amount of drugs in my life, but Ambien is something else. It’s not a black and white drug as people say to just take and fall asleep. That’s how my first 6 months were like, but after 7 1/2 more years, it becomes something entirely different.
  - selectodude 8y ago
    As a counterpoint, I've taken Ambien for like four years now, have never taken more than 20mg, and have never done anything destructive or hallucinated.
    - gnulinux 8y ago
      It's possible there is some genetic factor.
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  The USAF also gives amphetamines to its pilots to help them fly missions for over 24 hours without sleep. I don't think that it's recommended for the general population though.
jdpigeon 8y ago
It's absurd how easy it is to take ambien then forget that you took it 15 minutes later and redose. Fortunately, I think most Americans manage to stay in their houses when they do it. I wonder how many people are carrying around deeply weird fucked up memories of their family members high on ambien.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
gnulinux 8y ago
I took Ambien 3 times, started after not being able to sleep for ~3 days (not directly after (I was able to naturally sleep after that day)). First 2 times were ok, didn't seem like I had any side-effects like sleep walking etc. The 3rd time I took, it gave me what I would describe as a psychotic breakdown. From an outer observer, I was sleeping (this was college and all my roomies were in the room, studying, I was "sleeping") but it felt very much like I was awake and there. I was completely dissociated from my own self and felt as if I was a "shoe seller in Venice". Never been in Venice in my life. When I was finally able to control my body after 2 hours of silently screaming, I started muttering about stuff and asked for help. I had no recollection of who I was. When my roomies brought me some water/food everything slowly became normal. I just felt what I would describe very drunk. I didn't feel intoxicated -- as in I could walk etc just fine -- but my mind was very "drunk". Not like a weed "high". After about half an hour, I was feeling alright and went back to sleep because I had an 8am the next day. Never touched Ambien again. The rest of my prescription was used by my roomie who was very into drugs. He never had any problems with it.
- alex_hitchins 8y ago
  It sounds to me like it's a hyper-real dream in a way.
  - gnulinux 8y ago
    Meh, maybe, but I don't think so because all that 2 hours I never lost consciousness. There was no point in which my memory was "black". I was talking to my roommates, told them I'm going to bed, took Ambien, lied on my bed and suddenly started to feel very confused, forgetful and it "felt" like I'm somewhere else. It wasn't a very visual experience (like psychedelics) but it felt like I was so confused that I wasn't able to comprehend where I am.
Nasrudith 8y ago
Given what I have heard about Ambien I half-wonder why they don't include an option to tether yourself to your bed with a timer - perhaps with an emergency release to trigger some sort of alarm in case - since either you are sleep wandering and possibly going to do something dangerous or there was a real emergency and you need to get out. Maybe something combined with Life-Alert or On-Star to be sure that they are coherent if it is released to cancel an alert?
PhasmaFelis 8y ago
Do other sleep aids not work for you? Trazodone has helped me a lot.

by bxtt 8y ago

endorphone 8y ago

I took Ambien for four months (the sort of period it should normally be used for...even that pushes the upper limit) after a very loud and public event kicked off by severe sleep deprivation and stress. It worked wonderfully. I'd take it and lie down and quickly fade off to a sort of sleep. I say sort of because apparently it isn't really a sleep, and doesn't have all of the benefits of sleep, but it was far better than the narcolepsy I was experiencing. I looked forward to taking Ambien because it made the sleep process so effortless and nice. I renewed prescriptions and would actually think ahead to the moment when I got to enjoy an Ambien. Then my insurance stopped covering it. The price is quite low, but it was a flag to me that I should probably stop: The system had said that I'd hit the limit of what I should take. So I stopped. That was it. Never had sleep walking. No weird phone calls. No "Walrus". When I took one I always did it with the intention of sleep, and immediately preparing for sleep. So that is my counterpoint, I suppose. Real sleep is far better, but as an actual sleep aid, especially in high stress, it...works. Should anyone abuse it for other purposes? Absolutely not. Should they try to use it for a high? No, of course not.

gameswithgo 8y ago
If the drug has a non trivial chance of making you lose your mind, and no way to identify that it will do that without losing your mind, it might not be appropriate to ever use it, even if it works well for some people.
- nradov 8y ago
  That's why we have doctors, to weigh the risks versus benefits and prescribe treatment in the patient's best interest. I suspect that some of the worst side effects might have genetic risk factors. Hopefully researchers will determine whether people with particular genes are at greater risk of suffering mental problems from Ambien.
  - codewithcheese 8y ago
    I think doctors as a group of individuals have proven they can't be trusted to weigh the risks. Consider the opiods epidemic as an example There must be better alternatives to get a good nights sleep. OP description of " I renewed prescriptions and would actually think ahead to the moment when I got to enjoy an Ambien." sound a lot like early stage addiction.
    - fhood 8y ago
      I am hella addicted to amazon then. Holy shit.
    - nradov 8y ago
      If we can't trust doctors then we have a much bigger problem that can't be solved by banning medicines which the FDA has determined to be safe and effective for treating certain conditions. While there's room for improvement in medical care standards, issues with a handful of drugs aren't sufficient evidence to provoke distrust. Most doctors get it right more often than wrong.
    - boomboomsubban 8y ago
      >Consider the opiods epidemic as an example The one where drug companies actively lied about both how addictive their drugs were and the best way that they should be prescribed? Doctors aren't perfect, and there are some that are truly terrible, but in general their opinion is trustworthy.
    - mikec3010 8y ago
      Doctors did fine prescribing opioids in the 70s and 80s. They're not the cause of this epidemic.
qubex 8y ago
I looked forward to it — yes! Mine was abuse (see my other post further down in the thread if you’re interested) but it was so damned convenient to just flip a figurative switch and have the lights go out.
erentz 8y ago
> I took Ambien for four months Every night for four months? Yeah that is stretching it from everything I've read. I started using it off/on when I went through a period of insomnia almost a decade ago. The doctor was very strict that it was for not more than two-four weeks and that I should try to only use it every second night. That insomnia passed, but I since used a half dose (5 mg) on average once every 7 days (that's the average but it's more like 2 or 3 nights every 2 or three weeks). I need it when traveling or during anything stressful going on at work. Nothing else works. In a new hotel room I can just lay there all night long unable to sleep because it's an unfamiliar environment. Or if I know I have to be up by a certain hour and give a presentation or have a possibly conflicting meeting the next day - no sleep. I do wonder what the long term impacts of even this low intermittent usage is though. But the alternative is not working or traveling.
- DenisM 8y ago
  You seem to have anxiety, that might be a better treatment target.
- sizzle 8y ago
  Have you tried meditation and mindfulness? Curious if clearing your mind and relaxation techniques would allow you to combat the anxiety of being worried of not falling asleep? If not, why haven't you tried it?
  - erentz 8y ago
    I’ve tried it, I find in general regular exercise and relaxing yoga routines with some meditation before bed works in some situations. But doesn’t work for the new hotel or “big meeting next day” scenarios. I end up just meditating all night forcing the rehearsing thoughts out of my head and still not falling asleep until around 4am. It then becomes a performance thing, I know I want to have slept so I can perform so I go for what I know will 100% work. For the sibling comment: I’ve also tried other general anxiety treatments - but they are all be pretty serious stuff you don’t want to use too much if you don’t have too. Since my anxiety seems limited to certain situations I find it best to use the minimum targeted just at those directly.
wnissen 8y ago
I take a half an Ambien to sleep on overnight flights, no side effects that I can discern. It's all about managing risks relative to benefits, and not always in an evenhanded way. 2 grams of Tylenol/paracetamol with a bottle of wine and it's bye bye, liver, yet you can buy it in a vending machine.
- gnulinux 8y ago
  Ok but that's a very odd comparison. It's well known and studied that _normal_ doses of Ambien can induce unpredictable behavior on humans including sleep walking and/or confusion. But 2 grams of paracetamol is 4 times the normal dose, and paired with a drug it should never ever be taken with.
- pseingatl 8y ago
  You might want to be careful with Ambien and airplanes. A U.S. intelligence worker on a flight back to the U.S. from an assignment overseas tried to dynamite a plane while on Ambien. Look up "Derek Stansberry": http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/04/28/disruptive.passenger/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/04/28/disruptive.passenge...
lscore720 8y ago
Thanks for sharing your experience and articulating this so well. I have been on the same dose of Ambien for nearly 2 years. I'm fortunate that it does its job with zero side effects. The negative experiences and feedback in this thread are overwhelming - if I were unfamiliar with it, I would be freaked out! It's generally accepted that Ambien's benefits outweigh the costs. I don't mean to downplay the negative experiences, but it's not as bad as this article/thread infer. Ultimately, it's something to discuss with a GP or Psychiatrist.

notheguyouthink 8y ago

I'm surprised it's even legal honestly. I see so many horror stories. Worse yet, they're so unpredictable. Not just "it hurt my liver", they're what you described. Zombies in real life. Crazy.

bxtt 8y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/health/14sleep.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/health/14sleep.html I binge eat when I'm on Ambien, and have intense food cravings. That night I didn't have food, and there was a McDonalds about 5 minutes away from where I lived. I crashed into a stop sign three blocks into it. Even as an anonymous poster, there are stories that I am too ashamed to even post about. If anyone sees this, and had some inclination to try Ambien recreationally, don't even try it. What's worse is that even after destroying every relationship I've ever had because of Ambien, I still can't quit it.
endorphone 8y ago
It is a controlled substance. Further note that the horror stories are seldom, if ever, by people actually using it as intended and as directed. How to benefit from Ambien if having sleep problems: Take Ambien and immediately go lie comfortably in bed. Have no responsibilities and have the ability to sleep for 8 hours uninterrupted. How not to benefit from Ambien: Use it to escape life. Use it recreationally. Take it when you have no intention to go to sleep, or even to try. Use it for chronic issues rather than temporary sleep issues. I certainly don't want to take up the gauntlet of defending Ambien, but in any discussion about it the narrative gets dominated by abusers. And that's an important narrative -- it gets prescribed way more often than it should, and for far longer than it should ever be used -- but there are benefits as well.
- lhuser123 8y ago
  I disagree with you. I think what you call “abusers” , are just people that react differently than you to the same chemicals in the drug.
  - 8y ago

anchpop 8y ago

> I've crashed my car into a tree because of sleep eating. I'm not very familiar with Ambien, but this seems like a non-sequitur. Do you mean sleep driving?

okmokmz 8y ago
I would guess he means he took ambien, passed out/blacked out, and at that point decided he needed to go get something to eat while he was effectively "sleep-walking" and crashed
pseingatl 8y ago
Sleep eating and sleep driving are two common behaviors exhibited while using Ambien. In that case, these two were likely combined.

qubex 8y ago

I’d been on Ambien (Stilnox locally) uninterruptedly from 2002 until a few months ago, April 2018. My main aim was to just shut down after days of work at a family business job that I loathed and most of my side-effects were binge eating and little else (to the point that I always ensured my home was entirely devoid of food). I was capable of taking ten, 12 doses a night. In April I quit cold turkey and sought psychiatric help. I also had major depression going. Fifteen days of rehab on Italy’s national health service served wonders. I still have trouble falling asleep, but fuck it. It turns out I have a genetic mutation that makes me fairly immune to withdrawal effects from benzodiazepines and pseudonenzodiazepines such as zolpidem but seriously people don’t go down this route.

tw04 8y ago
Out of curiosity, have to tried vigorous exercise? Any time I've had issues sleeping in the past, as soon as I got into a workout regiment, it got me right back to a normal sleep schedule.
- fossuser 8y ago
  Not OP, but for me while working out helps being unable to sleep is tightly coupled with anxiety and my mind spinning on something. For some people the anxiety is directly related to being worried about being unable to fall asleep. One thing that helped was to recognize that it's okay if you don't fall asleep - taking the pressure off made it less stressful. Another thing was recognizing I've never failed to eventually fall asleep. Sleep is a weird thing though - and the lack of conscious continuity, I think people would be more afraid of it if it wasn't something we were already used to.
  - jfoutz 8y ago
    Me personally, I used to spend a lot of sleepless nights stressing out over something or another. Now I give myself an hour. I get up and work on the problem. I’m miserable the next day. But often my brain decides it wants sleep more than laying in bed worrying. I’d recommend it to anyone, but for sure talk to a doctor.

Fnoord 8y ago

> If you haven't taken Ambien in the past, and are interested, I would just avoid it at all costs. IIRC, correct me if I'm wrong, Ambien is prescribed as sleep aid and also used in the USAF to nap on demand. I've never had narcolepsy AFAIK, with or without Ambien.

bxtt 8y ago
It is. You’re right. I never take Ambien recreationally. Here’s the path I went down: It quickly becomes this cyclical pattern where if you don’t take it, then you don’t sleep for days, so you’re forced to use it. And when I mean forced, I can’t go to work sleep deprived, especially in my line of work. You’ll build a tolerance quickly, then you begin ramping up your dosage, and this helps for awhile. But like a lot of long term ambien users know, you don’t fall asleep as easily anymore. Then the side effects really begin hitting you because you’re awake with a 30-60 mg of Ambien in you. And if you have a history of drug abuse like I do, you do the dumbest thing possible and drink wine with ambien. This will knock you out for sure, but before that happens, you’ll begin doing extremely destructive things. I’ve taken a considerable amount of drugs in my life, but Ambien is something else. It’s not a black and white drug as people say to just take and fall asleep. That’s how my first 6 months were like, but after 7 1/2 more years, it becomes something entirely different.
- selectodude 8y ago
  As a counterpoint, I've taken Ambien for like four years now, have never taken more than 20mg, and have never done anything destructive or hallucinated.
  - gnulinux 8y ago
    It's possible there is some genetic factor.
toomanybeersies 8y ago
The USAF also gives amphetamines to its pilots to help them fly missions for over 24 hours without sleep. I don't think that it's recommended for the general population though.

jdpigeon 8y ago

It's absurd how easy it is to take ambien then forget that you took it 15 minutes later and redose. Fortunately, I think most Americans manage to stay in their houses when they do it. I wonder how many people are carrying around deeply weird fucked up memories of their family members high on ambien.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

gnulinux 8y ago

I took Ambien 3 times, started after not being able to sleep for ~3 days (not directly after (I was able to naturally sleep after that day)). First 2 times were ok, didn't seem like I had any side-effects like sleep walking etc. The 3rd time I took, it gave me what I would describe as a psychotic breakdown. From an outer observer, I was sleeping (this was college and all my roomies were in the room, studying, I was "sleeping") but it felt very much like I was awake and there. I was completely dissociated from my own self and felt as if I was a "shoe seller in Venice". Never been in Venice in my life. When I was finally able to control my body after 2 hours of silently screaming, I started muttering about stuff and asked for help. I had no recollection of who I was. When my roomies brought me some water/food everything slowly became normal. I just felt what I would describe very drunk. I didn't feel intoxicated -- as in I could walk etc just fine -- but my mind was very "drunk". Not like a weed "high". After about half an hour, I was feeling alright and went back to sleep because I had an 8am the next day. Never touched Ambien again. The rest of my prescription was used by my roomie who was very into drugs. He never had any problems with it.

alex_hitchins 8y ago
It sounds to me like it's a hyper-real dream in a way.
- gnulinux 8y ago
  Meh, maybe, but I don't think so because all that 2 hours I never lost consciousness. There was no point in which my memory was "black". I was talking to my roommates, told them I'm going to bed, took Ambien, lied on my bed and suddenly started to feel very confused, forgetful and it "felt" like I'm somewhere else. It wasn't a very visual experience (like psychedelics) but it felt like I was so confused that I wasn't able to comprehend where I am.

Nasrudith 8y ago

Given what I have heard about Ambien I half-wonder why they don't include an option to tether yourself to your bed with a timer - perhaps with an emergency release to trigger some sort of alarm in case - since either you are sleep wandering and possibly going to do something dangerous or there was a real emergency and you need to get out. Maybe something combined with Life-Alert or On-Star to be sure that they are coherent if it is released to cancel an alert?

PhasmaFelis 8y ago

Do other sleep aids not work for you? Trazodone has helped me a lot.