I’d een having some trouble getting a good night’s sleep lately. There’s nothing worse than laying there in bed, mentally and physically whipped, and yet all the trials of the day are revisited upon your tired mind and you can’t relax to the point where some nice unconscious phase will kick in.
Even though I rise each morning at 5:25 in order to beat the traffic and road raging community, I still was reading or watching TV each night until somewhere around 11:45 to 12:30 before feeling tired enough to go upstairs.
I tried taking Tylenol PM and about 3 hours after taking it I would get sleepy enough but didn’t like the accompanying medicine because it supposedly reacts with the glass or two of wine I usually have to chicken fry my liver. I switched to Benadryl which has the same active ingredient in the same strength and without that pesky ibuprofen but it always left me feeling very groggy and useless throught the next day, I finally found a Tylenol PM product without the Tylenol, Simple Sleep or something like that but it still hadn’t kicked in after over 5 hours and I found myself up and wide awake at 1:30, a scant 4 hours from my alarm’s scheduled admonitions.
Then, I looked in the medicine cabinet and same a sample pack (my wife’s a pharmecutical rep) for Ambien. Oh, forst let me mentiopn something… Remember Hurricane Rita taht was bound for Houston then thankfully veered to a less heavily habitated area? Well, we had four days off to first prepare for a Cat 5 and then get back to town and situated. I sent the wife and kid north and for 6 days did everything in the world that could be done around here… but shave. Walking in the following Wednesday, everyone’s says "Woah, that grew fast and wow, you really look ditterent. My beard came in fast and thick and my wife calls it sexy and now compares me to an older Brad Ausmus. I like it. I plan to keep it. I keep it trimmed and neat and it’s a distigsuished pairing of black and white.
Now, back to my story. I asked my wife about the Ambien and she said it’s powerful and to take it just before going to bed. Last night out upstairs AC had frozen so I drug a mattress downstairs for she and my kid and I was going to sleep next to them on the couch, all in the cool.
After dragging it down I took the Ambien and then went up to take a quick shower in the warm upstairs, thrown on some shorts and a T and go to sleep.
After 20 minutes I’d still not come down so my wife came up to check on me. For the record, I don’t remember any of this. I’d showered and was standing at my sink cutting large patches out of my beard. I was putting on and taking off different clothes and bumpingh into things as I’d walk around, not to mention the apparently bizatrre comments I’d make. Then I’d go back over and cut off more beard until eventually I was clean shven and at 9:45 at night dressed for work.
I got in bed not downstairs in the cool but upstairs where it was uncomfortably warm, woke up shortly thereafter and asked my wife, who was understandably worried and monitoring my condition, who had come into the house and shaved my beard. I liked that beard and had worked to groom it appropriately.
I felt like hell this morning, not at all rested as the commercial advertised. I rerember that the guy in the commercial was clewan shaven and could help but wonder if he’d gone to bed with a beard too.
There wasn’t anything on the packet regarding instructions and I’d just taken the one so I look up their site today in an effort to ascertain side effects. It did say “Individuals who use Ambien® should avoid alcohol when taking this drug, as the combination may cause coma and even death.”