Ambien, temperature and the bald-faced truth

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.”

I’m not sure what happened there, I was just starting to preview and correct all the typos plus finish the story when it suddenly posted. Sorry about that.

So anyway it’s been a weird last 12 hours, I’m back to looking 10 years younger although I really liked the other look, I’ll never take any medicine again without investigating all the possible interactions and, dammit, now I’ve got to reintroduce myself to aqll my coworkers and neighbors again.

I just can’t believe something actually caused me to cut that sucker I’d groomed so patiently off and I feel very strange today, very out of it. I’m thinkin’ Ambien and I will have a very short history together.

Ambien is known to cause memory loss and hallucinations if you don’t GO TO BED right after taking it and then stay there. No sitting on the couch for a bit, no reading until you feel sleepy, no taking showers, no nothing. Take the pill and lie down and shut your eyes. I am fairly sure the directions say this clearly; that’s also why you aren’t supposed to take it if you cannot devote 7-8 hours to sleep.

My mom didn’t cut off her beard (well thankfully she doesn’t have one) but did have some weird-ass hallucinations and acted like a crazy person when she took it and didn’t go to bed right away - and she also had no memory of doing any of it. She still half-thinks we are trying to pull one over on her when we describe her behavior.

If I were you, I would give it another try; or ask your doctor what he thinks. Good luck.

Oh dear! I’m torn between the desire to laugh at the mental image, and wincing in sympathy for the whole situation.

I’ve taken Ambien and though I never had any regrettable side effects (it didn’t even hit me that hard; I’ve heard stories of people taking it in the bathroom and not remembering the short walk to bed) it does leave me feeling hung-over. Needless to say, I don’t use it any more.

I’m probably not the only person who is relieved that your tale didn’t meander into the territory you’re so famous for… :wink:

She could barely handle the beard massacre. If I started on some kind of poo maintenance in a hot bathroom devoid of AC, she’d either have called an ambulance or the cops.

Fortunately though, I wouldn’t have remembered that either.

I have a friend who takes it according to instructions and still has memory loss the morning after–he never remembers anything that happened before noon, although he functions just fine during that time.

It’s weird stuff.

Ambien doesn’t work for Ivylad. He’s on to Lunestra. He’s got such a tolerance for drugs now that Oxycontin is like candy to him now.

I switched from Ambien to Lunestra. I only take the 3 mg pills and they work fine. Ambien was good but I felt a little groggy in the AM. The worst thing is now I want to stay up and watch the Colbert Report and I really shouldn’t even be watching The Daily Show.

For me it’s important to keep the sleep schedule all the time. If it’s Saturday I still go to be by 11:30. I could stay up but it makes it hard to go to bed on Sunday night.

I sometimes think I should live in Japan as my natural clock seems that far off.

My SO is on Ambien at the moment. One night after taking it he rolled over and said, “Let’s talk about our feelings.”
But my favorite memory loss story happened last week. He took the pill, we went to bed and messed around a little. He got up to go to the bathroom, came back and pulled me on top of him. We fell asleep quite satisfied about 45 minutes later.
The next morning I rolled over and told him “Thanks for last night,” and got a stunned “What are you talking about?” in reply.

I was on Sonata for a while, and had to be very careful what I read right before bed., or I would have freaky dreams (I read sci-fi). Apparently it works as a mild hypnotic, and I was giving myself subconscious suggestions.

Oh lieu, my sympathies on the loss of your beard and sanity. I hope it’s temporary on both counts.

After a few nearly sleepless nights with my four year old who had poison ivy, I started to see a possible correlation to the medicated calamine I had started using and his lack of sleeping. He had poison ivy all over so he needed a lot to cover everything and I was really slathering it on to help him feel better. I looked it up and the “medicated” part turned out to be a topical antihistamine I had never heard of and I had basically been overdosing my child on it. There goes the “mother of the year” award - again. I always check anything I put in their mouths and had read the ingredients to this stuff but was in the mindset that “hey, it’s calamine which is safe and it’s on the skin…”

But thanks for the laugh. Up until now, the highlight of my day had been cleaning up doggie diarrhea.

I don’t think it’s fair. Really. I got Ambien, and it doesn’t really do a damn thing for me. My problem isn’t getting to sleep, oh no. I get to sleep just fine. It’s staying asleep. Bah. I hardly ever take it, because I generally need to have nothing going on the next day, just to make sure I can sleep until I’m finished sleeping, though.

Hallucinations and memory loss, indeed. I wish. That might actually be a little fun. Heh.

I’m sorry you can’t sleep, though, lieu. What a bitch it is to be tired all the time. I feel for you.

I’ve taken Ambien for years now. I can take a pill, not go to bed immediately and I am pretty much ok. I know from experience, never, ever talk to anyone after taking an Ambien (I live alone, so this is easy for me).

No phone calls. Restrain yourself from typing replies in the SDMB. It’s still a miracle pill for me. When I was married, I would tell my husband exactly when I was taking the pill (I would take it later on weekends). Our agreement was no discussions after that point in the night. I have no groggy feelings in the morning.

You seem sensitive to the medicine. If you took a 10mg dose, maybe try half and go directly to bed after swallowing. Doctors write this prescription in either 5mg or 10mg doses. Of course, you know you shouldn’t be taking the pill without talking to a doctor first. There are many other alternatives to help you sleep, just talk to your doctor about it.

Welcome to the weird world of memory-loss drugs. I don’t use Ambien any more because the side effects are too annoying, and about 1 time in 3 the damn thing doesn’t work on me. :frowning:

I find that most of the time when I take an Ambien, I have about 3 to 10 minutes of functionality left. I’ve fallen asleep with a book on my lap and the light still on, and when I check the pages I have zero recollection of the story at that point. Sometimes I have to skip back ten pages.

I also find that if, for whatever reason, I wake up before that magical 8 hour mark after I fall asleep, I’m clumsy as a drunk wearing oven mitts and galoshes four sizes too big for the next 4 to 8 hours.

I had sex on Ambien once. We both took it after having several glasses of wine each and staying up quite late talking. I have a very vivid memory of having sex but as if I was doing it within a different body than my own. My girlfriend at the time was fully aroused and feeling very much the same way. We would stop for periods of time mid coitus and then start again. We may have both fallen asleep for brief periods of time but I think it was more a hallucination. It was very weird and we both gave up because a climax was just not going to happen that night.

It was interesting. Never took it again since.

I have a friend with a lot of health problems, and Ambien is on the large list of drugs she takes. She is the most hilarious person to talk to at night after she’s taken an Ambien and not went to bed. She always forgets the weird things she says too.

I’m with you on all this. I have half a dozen different sleep problems and always have, since infancy. All through childhood I remember long sleepless nights, and struggling with my pillow for hours to get it just right. I never would take any med that say “only when you can devote 8 hours to sleep” - mainly because I’ve had enough earthquakes shake me out of sleep and into the hallway, and also live where wildfires tend to whip up in the night. I’d never take it if my kids were staying with me and I was responsible for them, either.

I follow all the good advice: use bed only for sleeping, reading, or hot sex; no tv in the bedroom; no exercise in the evenings, same bedtime and rise time most days. Still, my circadian rhythms go through reversed phases (like the Japan comment above), cycles of bad insomnia, used to have trouble staying asleep (ask your doctor for doxepin, it works and it’s not a sleeping pill) and other variations where my body is exhausted and my brain won’t press the “off button”.

One thing that often works to get me out of a bad cycle is a Chinese herb called Anmien Pien, which I get from my accupuncturist, a Doctor of Oriental Medicine. Another thing, when I remember to do it, is meditation. If I try watch my thoughts drift past, instead of being pulled along by them, I sometimes fall asleep.

My heart goes out to all of you. Good luck.

I’m sorry about your unpleasant experience, but your story is giving me a strong “What were you thinking?” reaction.

You take a prescription only medication without consulting a physician. Then you compound this problem by not even having the information sheet to read the precautions for yourself. Apparently pharmaceutical reps are not required to be thoroughly conversant with possible side effects and contraindications for the drugs they represent – I suppose that’s OK, though I’ve heard they are a major source of info for physicians, which doesn’t seem entirely reassuring.

i started taking ambian for jet lag. it’s a godsend for me. miracle as there is no jet lag

Have you tried melatonin? I use it sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep, and for me at least there is no hangover. It’s a cheap OTC supplement you can buy practically anywhere.