You’ve heard of my miracle rescue. I’m here on borrowed time, as it were.
Look, I love living. I wake up in a new world everyday. Well…I wake up if I ever sleep, that is.
Doc sez, “You need to sleep regularly, therefore, here take these Ambien.” Nurse warns me, be close to the pillow when you swallow them.
Druggist asks, “Have you taken sleep aids before?”
Nope.
Never.
I get the obligatory lecture. No alcohol, no driving, allow 8 hrs for actual sleep. Yada, yada, yada. The paper that accompanied the script is 3 pages long. Holy-cow. Is this shit even safe for human consumption.
One brother sez “I have had them for 2 years, yes use them.” Yeah, you’re an idiot & your life is in tatters, I don’t need that crap.
One friend wants to buy them from me. WTF? You can’t really party on them, I don’t think. She’s nutty.
Oldest Sister sez “Take the damn things, the FDA has approved them.” Well now I feel really safe. Jeez, think I take 2 and go on a short road trip.
The first night, I’m not taking them. 1 o’clock rolls by, 2 o’clock is here. No sleepy-time. I watch a movie. Its 4:30am. It was a boring movie, I’m still wide awake. I finally relent and take half a pill (recommended by my conquering hero). Asleep in mere minutes. Wow, no WOW! This stuff rocks.
Next night I take the other half. Go right to sleep. WOW. I’m hooked, not addicted (I hope). Where has this stuff been my whole life?
I’m making early morning plans for the near future. I see sitting on the deck with a cup of coffee listening to the birds waking up.
3rd night. I plop a whole pill down. Go to sleep amazingly fast.
7 hours later I wake up. Oh god. I’m in pain. I don’t want to move and I’m not thinking clearly. My head is full of fluff and evil thoughts. One cat meow and someone’s gonna die.
About noon things start clearing up. Well, that can’t happen again.
I didn’t take one the 4th night. I slept but dreamy and fitfully. Oh crap, in the morning I just feel tired and sore. This shouldn’t be.
Is there a solution?
The 5th night I go back to 1/2 pill. I sleep I think. I’m either dreaming I’m wakeful or I really am awake. I’m not sure which. It was not good. This stuff is for the birds.
I’m not sure what to do tonight. Either way it seems I’m screwed.
Doctors office tomarrow. Maybe he has answers.
Wish me luck.
Beck, I fully empathize with your sleep woes. I was surprised you weren’t on the other night, now I know why and I’m not the least bit envious if those are the side effects.
I sincerely do wish you the best of blessings from Mistress Luck in this.
Have you tried less drastic sleep stuff? I avoid Ambien because it works on the same receptors as benzodiazepines, which I can no longer have. But I’ve had good results with taking magnesium and low dose (0.3 mg) of melatonin an hour before bed time. Plus just general sleep hygiene stuff, like winding down about an hour before bed, only using the bed for sleeping, and getting out of bed if you’ve been laying in for 20 minutes or longer.
Usually the result is one bad night of sleep while adjusting, and then the next day I can sleep. I still always have a lot of dreams, and may wake up a bit, but I’m able to get back to sleep.
For other people, I hear Benadryl helps, but it’s never worked for me. At one point, I was given 100 mg Seroquel which supposedly works the same way as Benadryl, but it actually worked.
Chamomile tea also helped, though it works on the same receptors as benzos, so I don’t use it anymore. Same with Valerian.
Obviously talk with your doctor about it, but there’s more stuff than jumping straight to the Z-drugs, like Ambien.
I hear ya. It takes me eleven hours to sleep seven. I’ve never asked for a sleep aid. I’d be addicted before I could blink.
I’ve been an insomniac most of my life. Sometimes were worse that others. But mostly I’ve struggled through it. I quit fighting it a couple of years ago. I don’t work away from home so my time is my own. I thought I was doing okay. I just slept at weird times for short lengths. Apparently it’s not a good way to be. I really hate fighting it. It wears me out. I need a nap.
ive heard melatonin is the same way … it helps you get on a sleep schedule but you feel like you woke up after an operation for the rest of the day
Have you seen a sleep specialist? I did it finally a couple of years ago, and it totally changed my life. After doing a really long (as in 90 minutes) intake and having me keep a sleep diary for a few weeks, he told me something quite counterintuitive; go to sleep later, but wake up at the same time, because you’re getting 8 - 9 hours of crappy sleep when you would be much better off with 6 hours of really good sleep. He was absolutely right.
YMMV but I had tried all kinds of other things; Benadryl, melatonin, a brief attempt at Ambien which was a disaster, etc. My primary doc is REALLY not a fan of Ambien. It screws up normal sleep patterns even if you don’t get the nasty side effects (which I did; after sleeping 11 hours I was so groggy that I couldn’t even make it across the hallway to the bathroom and had to call in sick to work).
I’m gonna ask my Doc about that tomarrow. I have questions written out. I just know they hate me there.
well at least you didn’t get on a plane meet a girl on the plane and move in with her and stay a week before the effects wore off and have no clue who she was
I have never figured out how Ambien got an FDA approval. That stuff is evil.
This, this and this. What made it worse was working graveyard shift with very noisy daytimes for several years. Now, it’s short sleeps, whenever.
Graveyard shift people are tough. I tried it for awhile but after 3-4 months I quit. Couldn’t hang.
I could tell my long convoluted story of no-sleep, how I first got Ambien, how I actually LIKED Ambien…
I think 15 minutes after I turned 60, my daughter sat me down and said, “Talk to your doctor. Ambien gives heart attacks to women your age, and they die.”
Well, golly!
My doctor gave me a prescription for Halcion. It works for me. And since I admit to being 66 these days, that means I’ve been taking it for six years. If I screw up and don’t take it, I do NOT sleep. At all.
I guess they’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
I find I LIKE sleeping.
~VOW
Don’t know why (well yes I do) I didn’t think of it earlier when I posted, but kayaker suggested trying aroma therapy, lavender specifically. Said it worked pretty well for his gf. I’m gonna give a try. Worst case, the house smells nice. Something for you to think about maybe.
Good luck, Beck. Irregular sleep is difficult, and I know from experience. Never tried any sleep aids, not even over-the-counter ones (too afraid of them). Regardless, when you do sleep, I hope that you have pleasant dreams.
Make sure you don’t go posting a bunch of antisemitic rants on Twitter, girl. 
I sympathize with you, but you fucked up at the start. Take the prescribed quantity at the recommended time.
Don’t value anecdotal advice from laypersons. They aren’t beholden to corporate interests, but they aren’t objective and are beholden to confabulation and rationalization to protect their self esteem.
You can party on Ambien. There’s likely to be amnesia, but the same is true for blackout drinkers of alcohol. People “party” on sterno and datura and duster.
Edit: fixed quoting.
Wow, I can’t believe that it’s a recreational drug. That would be an awful boring party. A real snore (tee hee).
You are absolutely correct. I started out wrong. Hmmm? I trust my friends over what a pill bottle says.
Notice the time stamp, I’ve been awake since 5am. After sleeping no more than 2hrs.
I have taken it every night for almost two years. I cannot get to sleep otherwise.
Sorry to disagree, bro, but old time dopers (note the small ‘d’ as in ‘former drug abuser’) know that everybody reacts differently to every drug and it’s best to ease into something as nasty as Ambien. ‘Take one pill at bedtime’ fits on a label better than ‘This is a powerful drug. Take half a pill and see what happens. Take the other half if needed.’ In Beck’s case and as she related half a pill was all she needed.
Ambien is a sleep aid, not an antibiotic, and underdosing won’t lead to the rise of a super no-sleep bug. I like the suggestion that I’m one of those anti-Big-Pharma nuts that you made to dismiss me, as well as that I have self esteem issues that lead me to ‘confabulation and rationalization.’ Where did you dig up that tripe? Do you know me? Do you even know what confabulation means?