Anyone ever taken Ambien for insomnia?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Sometimes I have sleeping problems, sometimes I don’t. Basically I’ve always been an extreme night person and this never bothered me before because I just slept until the afternoon and always worked night shift jobs. But when you have daybreak-rising preschoolers this is not a good schedule to be on. Unfortunately I never can break out of it and sometimes I end up exhausted. So the dr. gave me ambien to take for five nights, claiming that while it won’t cure me it will give me a chance to catch up.

Yet this is night number three and it doesn’t make me sleepy at all! I can feel it when it kicks in, it makes me feel dizzy and sort of drunk, but not tired, and I still end up not sleeping. Anyone else have this reaction to it?

2

I have been taking Ambien every night for insomnia for the last 3 or so years. In my case I have no trouble going to sleep initially. However, later in the night I wake up and can’t get back to sleep. The Ambien helps in this regard, allowing me to sleep through the night. Most of the time it works great for me but occasionally I experience what you describe. I find that if I deliberately stay up through the “sort of drunk” phase, then I become wired and never make it to sleep. Other members of my family also take Ambien with generally good results. I have other people tell me that Ambien doesn’t work for them at all. I guess some drugs work for some and not others.

3

Wow! encinitas can i have your doctor? I have the worst time ever getting my doctor to prescribe the ambien that helps me sleep.

acrossthesea I take it you’ve already cleaned everything non-sleep related out of your room and that you don’t watch tv in bed? You’ve changed when you consume your caffeine, you don’t nap, you’re not exercising close to bed time, and you’ve also experimented with melatonin, or some sort of valerian root/passion flower combination?

When I take ambien I take it as I’m getting into bed, and start thinking sleepy thoughts, and generally let it take effect and wash over me. I have heard of others who have a similar reaction to yours. It makes me sleep soundly, and through the night.

4

I love Ambien. The purpose is to skip through light sleep and put you right through to REM sleep seems like you are kind of waking up in REM or something like that. Yeah I think you are doing something that counter acts the effect. I have been a notorious insomniac for years and the things that help me are getting up early (as hard as that can be) strenuous physical exercise early in the day letting my mind wind down early in the evening, no caffeine (really really hard for me) after about 3PM and then I have my before bed rituals. I put on soft music, burn candles nad incense, and generally spend at least 30 minutes just relaxing and unwinding try that and then take Ambien…see if that doesn’t help it kick in.

5

Yes, White Ink I have a very understanding doctor. I suffer from chronic low grade depression and have had difficulty sleeping through the night all my life. Even on anti-depressants I still can’t get in more than ~3 hours a night without Ambien. What a relief it was when I first went on it.

Now however, I suspect that I am addicted to Ambien, as I cannot sleep without it. Even when I think I have taken my nightly dose (but I actually forgot to) I don’t go to sleep (no placebo effect). My doctor understands this and for the time being she is letting me continue on the medication. She always asks if I have had any memory loss (as that is a reported side-effect of Ambien). I always say I can’t remember. :slight_smile: I don’t know what I’ll do if I every have to change doctors.

7

So were the recipes worth passing on?

8

Ambien doesn’t have any real effect on me either.

9

I’ve never taken it but my mother, a lifelong insomniac, did, years ago when it first came out.

She had a really bad reaction to it - got up in the middle of the night one night, took more pills in her sleep then went outside and played with matches on the front porch. Nothing burned, thank God - a friend came over and took her to the ER. She doesn’t remember ANYTHING about that night except the ER.

10

We’re now putting threads about medical and pharmaceutical experiences and non-professional advice in IMHO, so I’ll move this thither.

twickster, MPSIMS moderator

11

I took Ambien for a brief period (about three months) and it never did anything for me. Still had trouble falling asleep and staying asleep.

12

Ambien just makes me do weird stuff I don’t remember later. It doesn’t make me sleep.

13

Ambien worked very well for me for a couple of months, as long as I took it, went directly to bed, did my pre-sleep routine (read a few pages, put my glasses away, turn out the light, etc.). Unfortunately, after a couple of months, it stopped being effective. It never made me do strange things that I didn’t remember later, and I never hallucinated under its influence, either, as I’ve read of others doing.

These days, Lunesta works well for me, but it leaves such a terrible taste in my mouth the next morning (well into the afternoon) that I only take it when I’m really desperate. Plus, my insurance doesn’t cover Lunesta very well. I end up paying about $1.50 a pill for it! :eek:

I’ve had moderate success with Unisom (the only OTC sleep aid I’ve found that’s not just Benadryl with a different label), valerian root and melatonin.

14

Ambien works very well. However, there is one thing you MUST do. Before you take the pill, make sure that you are ready for bed. And promise yourself that you will never, ever say “Well, I’m not really that sleepy, I’ll just…” : run to the store/cook something on the stove/or anything else where falling asleep in the middle of it would be very bad.

15

I’ve taken Ambien, but only once or twice.

FWIW, here are my suggestions on how to deal with insomnia.

I’ve had several people say they work well. Suggestion #5 has worked really, really well for me in the past.

16

I take it. It does knock me out and I’ll tell a story about that in a minute.

I asked my doc to give me a lesser dosage because it always made me feel “hungover” the next day. The new dosage seems to be a good one. I sleep most of the night and don’t feel too bad the next day.

When I first started taking it, I took it for a few months and then decided to stop when it ran out. I thought I hadn’t refilled it. It looked just like one of my other meds - one to fight fatigue.

I work out of my home office and when my business partner from the UK is in, he comes over. One day while working I reached down to take the fatigue med. I usually look closely, but I didn’t think I had any Ambien and didn’t look.

He found me literally drooling into my keyboard. He made me do several things to test for a stroke.

He finally convinced me to go and sleep it off. My dog sat by my side all day, only going out to pee. She wouldn’t even play ball - just peed and then went and sat staring at the door until he let her in. There she lay, just staring at me, waiting for me to get up.

Worse, I had been on the phone before I started drooling into my keyboard. Worse than that, I had a *vague *recollection of dreaming about my old girlfriend and oral sex. Dear OG, please don’t let me have called someone and start asking them for oral sex! (PLEASE!)

As it turned out, I had babbled, but I hadn’t asked my (male) friend to perform any sexual favors.

I slept all that day, my coworker left around 6:30 after checking to see if I was still alive.

I was horrified. I am usually so good with my drugs, but this time I was so sure I had no ambien in that drawer! You can bet that now I check everything, even if I’m sure.

I thought my doc would give me hell - but she just laughed and told me to be more careful.

17

I am a life long insomniac.

I take 5 mg regularly, usually at about 9:30 for an 11 pm bedtime. How rapidly it works depends on how empty my stomach is. Sometimes it really knocks me out, sometimes I drift off slowly, barely even feelng it at bedtime. I generally stay asleep and am not bothered by noise during the night. I have no trouble waking up in the morning.

When I was taking 10 mg it was, of course, more dramatic and there were times I’d find the after effects of something I didn’t remember - all very mild stuff, like looking up The Joy Luck Club on Wikipedia. One time my husband came to bed to find that I had left the TV on an HD channel on our non-HD TV. Another time I gave him one too and we had some really wild and unexpected sex, the details of which remain hazy.

Oh, and before I decreased my Ambien and increased my Lexapro the looked identical. I was terrified of switching them.

18

Good advice in this thread. After you take it go to bed or you can miss the window. I’ve ‘sleep cooked’ a couple of times, once making glazed carrots in the middle of the night. I’ve also sent some emails that I probably shouldn’t have.

19

It was offered to me by my Dr. a couple of weeks ago. She told me that it can be quite addictive but she was more than willing to prescribe. I turned it down because my sleeping problems have not reached a crucial point, yet. Reading your posts will help with making a decision in the future.

20

I’ve been on it for over a year. Started with 10mg but over time it lost its effectiveness. My doctor then put me on 20mg. Has anyone else been on 20mg?

It works wonders for me. I would not be able to sleep without it. Although I probably am “dependent” on it.

I do have some slight memory loss sometimes, and forget the last couple of things I did before falling asleep. I have also sleep-eaten.

21

I have a scrip for Ambien and have used it only a handful of times, “this time” - I tried it in 2001 on the advice of a sleep specialist, to see whether it helped with my insomnia due to RLS (as an alternative to other medications). I’ve never had the problem acrossthesea describes, with it simply not putting me to sleep.

Nor, fortunately, have I had any problems with unusual activities while asleep.

What I did have was an unusually quick rebound effect, as in if I took it one night, I’d have trouble sleeping the following night. Plus I was a zombie during the day after having taken it the night before.

I used it again very briefly last summer - as in, 3 tablets total - while getting used to a CPAP machine. Less problem with the rebound this time, for some reason.

I’d suggest that maybe the OP might want to consider a different medication - Sonata, Lunesta or other medication might perhaps work differently enough that they’d succeed where the Ambien failed.

There are also some behavioral steps you can take, to try to get your sleep schedule more in line with where it needs to be. Google “delayed sleep phase syndrome”.