People who take prescription sleep medication put themselves and others into even greater danger. I’ve met two people who were on Ambien, which is a horrible, horrible drug.
One of them was my boyfriend. Once, when we were preparing to go to bed, he shared the following story with me.
“I kept noticing,” he said, “that even when I’d fill the tank of my car in the evening, on the next morning it would be half empty. I had no idea what was going on until one night I discovered myself driving down the highway at full speed at 4 am without having the slightest recollection of how I got into the car and where I thought I was going. I’m on Ambien and I hear that people sometimes do things they can’t remember while they are on it.”
As he finished the story, he took out some pills and prepared to take them.
“What are those?” I asked in horror.
“Well, I just told you, it’s my Ambien,” he said.
“OK, now you will drive me home and then take your Ambien,” I said. “There is no way I’m staying here while you are on those. What if you wake up at night and decide to stick a knife in me? You won’t even go to jail for that because you won’t remember anything.”
“I think I’ll still go to jail,” the boyfriend replied judiciously.
I didn’t feel very comforted by that, though.
I also had a friend who would take Ambien and then start calling classmates to invite them over for sex. Since she had no recollection of what happened, she would then be forced to approach people in class to ask them, “I’m sorry, did we have sex last night?”
Since then, I decided that the best remedies for sleep are natural. Take a walk in the fresh air, have some warm milk with honey, take a relaxing bath. And if none of these remedies work and I don’t fall asleep, then I just won’t sleep. I’ll write and schedule posts for the next week (like I’m doing right now, actually), read a book, explore new apps on my Kindle. Anything is better than giving my mind over to these horrible drugs.
Clarissa's Blog 
I used to drink a lot of booze to get to sleep. It works in principle, but I highly recommend against it for every other reason that drinking to excess is bad for you.
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EEK! I’m glad I never had that experience when on Lunesta. I would agree, natural is definitely the way to go.
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My own remedy for wakefulness is to put a podcast on in the background. Listening to something seems to break the cycles of thought that are keeping my mind active and awake. “In Our Time” from BBC radio 4 never fails to put me to sleep, which in some ways is a shame because I only ever get to hear half of what are sometimes very interesting programmes.
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It makes me very happy that nobody said yet that they use my blog to put themselves to sleep. 🙂 🙂
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Sound machines / white-noise machines are pretty awesome too.
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When I was having a particularly severe bout of insomnia, I did some research and found that insomnia can be caused by a copper deficiency in the diet. So I upped by intake of foods with a high copper content (like mushrooms) and I stopped taking zinc because zinc interferes with copper absopbtion (I took a daily zinc at the time because I found it made me catch less colds but I would rather have a cold than insomnia!) At any rate, I found that the increase in copper plus the decrease in zinc helped with my sleeplessness almost instantly! Within a week, I was sleeping like a baby.Just a tip for someone to try. 🙂
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A motovational audio book is the best remedy for me – puts me out in 10 minutes.
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As we both know, what really puts me to sleep is your daughter, Klubnikis. 🙂
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Normally, I use Acetaminophen PM before retiring for arthritis pain that can otherwise keep me awake and to generally to assist my slumbers. I infrequently take Valium, half a 5 mg tablet perhaps once ever couple of months to get to sleep when the non-prescription medication and all else fail. Neither has caused any problems yet.
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Please strike the “to” in front of “generally.” I just took my meds. Whoops.
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How come nobody has mentioned the ultimate sleep aid yet? Masturbation! Or sex, if your partner is up for it as well. That dopamine, oxytocin, and prolactin cocktail knocks me out better than any drug ever could.
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Masturbation is a classic.
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Ha. Sex and masturbation wake me up and make me restless. I’m like, “Okay, now let’s *do something*!” 😀
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Yay to sex! Yay to masturbation!
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But are the stories funny, or what? Nobody is mentioning the stories.
They are completely true, too.
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The stories are scary.
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I laughed out loud when I read your boyfriend’s reply to your concern he’d stab you in his sleep. I read mystery stories just before bed – nothing too good, though, that will make me want to stay up to read it. And when I wake up in the middle of the night, I try to think of the plot in as much detail as possible, so that my mind doesn’t stray to all the other anxiety-producing thoughts that otherwise come to mind.
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The thing that works best for me is making sure that the room I sleep in is absolutely dark. No light visible from outiside, no night lights, no charging cellphones, no modem lights, etc. As dark as a cave.
Any light at all makes it more difficult to fall asleep and to stay asleep.
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I’m on a sleep medication & i hate it!-My parents have me on it & i often times can’t remember things that happened before,-And i have a great memory!-I prefer long walks around the block to tire me out & eating lots of food also makes me sleepy,(I’m not fat)-Natural Remedies are the best & if they don’t work,I can just stay up reading this blog.-Thanks for this post Clarissa. : )
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This is horrible about you having to be on that medication! I hope you get to make your own choice about that soon.
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Thanks,Me Too.
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Ambien is well known for the sleepwalking side effect. It should not be used, ever, in a non-hospital setting.
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The ultimate sleep aid: a cat.
The ultimate early morning alarm: a cat.
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NancyP: I agree with the first part, but not the second. My cat thinks she can wake me up by purring at me. It just puts me into a deeper sleep.
Is Ambien still out there? I thought it was recalled.
One of my anti-depressants used to knock me right out. I had to take it at night. If I took it in the morning I was always snoring away by mid-morning- during my math class.
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My Ambien stories took place about 5-6 years ago, so I don’t know if people still take it. If this junk was recalled, then that’s great news.
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But I really wouldn’t recommend it. Very rough on the body.
I like to play soft music and read before bed. I find having animals around is both a plus and a minus: The plus is they help erase stress (and serve as heaters in cold climates), but they keep trying to take over the bed.
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My google-fu is weak today, so I might not be able to dig up a link. I do remember hearing that it was either recalled or reformulated at some point a few years back. Lunesta is still on market, but it never caused the problems Ambien did, as far as I’ve heard.
And for the record, I’ve never taken a real sedative. I’ve taken some knockout cold meds, but no straight sleep pills. (Yeah, I know, they’re terrible for the body, but so is not being able to breathe.)
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I took half a Valium once after a root canal and it messed my personality up so much that I preferred to suffer through the pain rather than take another pill. It made me very cruel and completely dead emotionally for several hours.
Very intense sex can remove a severe toothache if a dentist is not immediately available, by the way.
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I really don’t think that’s good advice at all. A toothache is an actual physical illness that needs to be treated, not a mild melancholy. ‘Have sex’ is not a cure-all.
There was, a few years back, a kid that died because his tooth got infected, wasn’t treated, and the infection spread and turned terminal. So dental hygiene is, ya know, serious.
I’ve been lucky enough not to need a root canal, but I was pretty grateful for the pain pills I got when I got my wisdom teeth removed. And the laughing gas, when I had to get a tooth pulled.
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Once I had a really severe tooth-ache. I needed a root canal, as I later found out. It started on a Saturday night and the dentist could not see me before Monday morning. I wanted to treat it but what was I supposed to do if no dentist in that tiny town wanted to help me before Monday? Gulp medication? No, thanks. I managed to remove the pain completely until the visit to the dentist through very intense sexual activity.
The whole removal of wisdom teeth thing is a just a ploy by dentists to make more money. I’m categorically opposed to it and have abandoned several dentists who tried to push it on me. Losing even a single tooth is hugely detrimental to one’s entire body. Removing completely healthy teeth is really wrong.
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I also agree that intense sex is a cure for a lot of things, including moderate menstrual cramping and general states of anxiety.
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