Drug Induced Sleepwalking

If you're regularly using sleeping medication and experiencing weird occurances and apparent amnesia, this thread is probably exactly what you're looking for:

Ambien®, the most popular drugs in the sector has been linked to extensive sleepwalking

..News reports began to surface last week concerning a rather bizarre phenomenon referred to as “Ambien sleepwalking” in which people find themselves in a virtual “Twilight Zone” caused by overdoses of the sleep medication Ambien (zolbidem).

..

According to Liddicoat, drivers under the influence of unusually high doses of Ambien have crashed their cars and then had absolutely no memory of the accident. The sleeping pill apparently continued to impair drivers even after they have attempted to sleep off the effects.


The pattern involves taking the drug and not sleeping, or taking more than the recommended dose. Some drivers, for example, got up and drove in the middle of the night, while others, who planned to go to sleep as soon as they got home, took the drug before driving.

Furthermore, some victims develop a sleep eating disorder, eating strangely composed sandwhiches in the middle of the night while retaining no memory whatsoever:

sleepdisorders.about.com...

The Ambien Driver

The officer pulls the driver over for erratic driving (or there may even have been an accident) and when he or she steps from the car, the person acts like he's drunk, staggering and disoriented. He stares vacantly at the officer, like he doesn't know what's going on.
And he doesn't know what's going on. When his blood is tested, it contains, not alcohol, but ambien. He may be arrested, tested for alcohol and drug use, spend the night in jail - and, upon awakening, not remember a thing about the entire episode.


Sleepwalk to the Kitchen

..
A second disorder being linked to ambien is sleepwalking with the added problem of sleep eating. A recent study, reported in the Journal of Sleep Medicine reports on an evaluation of patients with underlying sleep disorders who were prescribed ambien. The study suggested that use of ambien in these people may lead to frequent arousals and could cause or augment sleep eating disorder.
Several course cases have been brought to court linked to ambien use and sleep eating disorder and dozens of people have reported involvement in traffic accidents, sleepwalking, hallucinations and bizarre behavior while taking the drug.
..

more links

sleepdisorders.about.com...

www.washingtonpost.com...

i just had to include this (see link above):

The most prescribed sleep medication in the United States may be linked to episodes of sleepwalking and related strange and dangerous behaviors, experts say -- including incidents of nocturnal eating, phone conversations, shoplifting and even driving -- of which the subject has no memory.
..

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edit: fixed last tag



[edit on 24-3-2006 by Long Lance]

truly scarry if i ever need to take one i am locking my self in...b/c i cant walk and chew gum at the same time let alone walk and sleep.....now if they made a drug so i could sleep while i work now there is science for the people!



way above

I saw on the news that people even ate while they were on Ambien. Weird.

I took Ambien on a regular basis and it can cause all kinds of problems. I was warned by my Dr. that "You just need to take it and go to bed." Well sometimes I like to stay up and watch the news or whatever. One night I took one 10mg and before I was finished with dinner, I was playing in my mashed potatoes like a 2 year old....funny thing is, I didn't remember any of it. Had a lot of apologizing to do to my gf the next morning after she told me what happened.

Warning, it's not for everybody and certainly not to be taken unless you are going right to bed...too bad I didn't take it on those nights I would LIKE to forget!

Ambien works great as a sleeping pill. I've never suffered any ill effects from it.

I took it prior to my first surgery because I could not sleep was to scare and anxious.

To tell you the truth I would wake up in the night and would not go back to sleep again.

So it didn't work for me.

Now is another side effect of it, is when the person have sex and don't remember.

My Doc gave me a few sleeping aids to try.

ambien CR
Lunesta
And something called Rozerem, from a Japanese company.

The best results for me were with Lunesta, as far a the sleeping part goes.
I had one side effect, a bad taste in my mouth..I likened the taste to a grilled-cheese and styrofoam sandwich. But I slept well..

Second was Ambien CR, I had trouble getting over the edge, if you know what I mean..I was really tired, and felt sleepy, but I sometimes found it hard to fall completely asleep..Thats probably when the weird things happen!

The Rozerem, for me, at least, had some sort of rebound effect, the following afternoon, I would get REALLY sleepy, around 4 in the afternoon, and I;ve never been a napper.. It also works differently..It turns off your awakeness, rather than turning on your sleepiness (my Doc's description of how it works)

I don't know about Ambien, but when I was little and took extra strength pain relievers like Tylenol, I used to sleepwalk. Even go down a flight of stairs and across the house. I think sleep inducing meds can cause confusion between the astral and physical bodies, that may be just me.

huh.... :-\ I had an arch-uncle, who died in the hospital.. from walking out the window in his sleep....


Also, interesting thing about sleep, I stayed up all night tonight, just to do computer stuff, and it was really tough, but then about noon, I just completely woke up again. now it's half past 8 in the evening, and i'm not tired at all! I haven't slept in 30 hours. It's like a "sink" of sleep-drugs, that you can pull the plug and drain while being awake, if you let it seep out a little at the time, so that you are half-asleep, but conscious and doing whatever you have to. Also, physical activity REALLY helps. Get up and do some pushups, go for a run, and soon the sleep-drugs made by your brain factory, will be thinned out or totally gone.

Allow me to share my similar experience with Clozapine. For the past 4 years I have been taking 300-400 mg Clozapine daily before bed. A couple months ago I stopped taking them for a couple weeks to see what would happen. The physical withdrawal symptoms were so bad I decided to take 300 mg one night so that I could recharge.

After taking the dose and falling asleep I woke up several hours later rather thirsty so I reached for my glass of water. I searched for the glass for what seemed like an eternity the whole time wondering why my eyes weren't adjusting to the dark and why I was so tired. Eventually I knocked the glass on the floor.

For some reason I decided that I needed to pick the glass up or else my mom might enter my room in the morning and see it laying on the ground and think I was on drugs. I failed to realize my mom usually doesn't enter my room in the morning anymore. Nor would she probably care if it was on the ground.

I was too tired to stand so I began to crawl towards where I heard the cup fall. But every time I finally reached the cup I would either knock it further and further away from me or it would slip out of my hands when I began to pick it up. My eyes never adjusted to the dark, I forgot that there was such a thing as a light-switch, and besides I was too tired to stand. Every now and then I would black-out and then come back still on my hands and knees. This must have lasted for about 30 minutes. Eventually I decided I was too tired to continue and that I would just sleep on the floor where I was.

I thought I had fallen asleep and even thought I was dreaming. The next thing I knew was that I was standing in my room in total darkness desperately looking for a way back to my bed or even a light-switch. I forgot what wall it was on or even where the walls were. I kept searching the wall closest to me up and down with no luck. My eyes still never adjusted. Getting back to my bed before I wandered into traffic became my priority.

I thought I was dreaming again but the next thing I know I am standing in my bathroom frantically searching for a light-switch while knocking things over. I moved the bar of soap from one side of the bathtub to the other for some reason.

The next thing I know is that I am in my brother's room frantically searching through his drawers and cabinets. Every time I come back to reality it is only for a couple of seconds. By this time I am starting to think I must have died or something. My priority is still to get back into bed but for some reason I keep getting farther and farther away from it.

My brother later told me that when he woke up and asked me what I was doing I would leave his room and enter it again 10 seconds later over and over again. The whole time I was muttering gibberish to myself.

I also remember that every time I snapped back into reality it was extremely painful to stand and I would start falling before I blacked-out again. As I mentioned before, I started thinking that I had died or gone insane.

I gave my friend 600 mg and he tripped as well with no history of mental disease unlike me. He tripped for a whole day. I remember seeing him the next day and thinking that he was OK but he later told me he couldn't tell if I was real or not. He said he kept talking to people he knew but they would keep suddenly disappearing.

Although Ambien is getting the attention this time, this effect is common to many other sedatives, including alcohol. Many sedating drugs can cause a person to function on "autopilot", allowing them to go places and do things with absolutely no memory of it. Valium, Librium, Ativan, Klonopin (pretty much any of the benzodiazepines, actually); barbiturates, and as I said, alcohol. When it happens with alcohol, it is often called a "blackout".

From what I've seen (and experienced), these drugs seem to turn off the brain, but don't always turn off the body as well. More accurately, they turn off the rational part of the brain, but appear to allow you to function more or less normally. Affected people may not show any evidence of intoxication with these newer medications (unlike alcohol, when you can usually tell a person is drunk). They may seem clear and awake, but there's no one home. Chances are they'll say or do strange things, but if you're not paying close attention you might not even notice.

reply to post by nightmarehalo


Holy cow that is one hard core trip!
Glad your ok. My wife used to take Ambien and would hallucenate at times. I dont know if she was hallucenating or talking to dead people, she kept talking to people, bizarre!

Same has happened to me and as another poster pointed out, much like an alcoholic 'blackout' as in the body carries on whilst the mind is well and truely absent.

After many years of not sleeping much-which I thought was normal, I crashed and burnt.

Got scripted 3.75mg zopliclone which did f*** all-got upped to 15 which was better but never good enough!. Imagine my reaction whilst clearing mother in laws house finding hundereds (literally) of mogadon, librium and lorazapam................I cried as I took them to the chemist for disposal(tho I kept a few back, just in case)

Apparently last night I got up, made a coffee and chatted. I have no memory of it, don't recall what I'd taken.

Probably a good job that ambien isn't on the market in UK.

I used to take ambien for reasons not approved by the FDA. It worked as a stimulant for me. It been known to treat anxiety in daytime use, wake people out of commas and treat parkinsons disease.