Ok, so I’ve been taking Ambien for the last few months to help me get “real” sleep. Apparently I was getting sleep, but no REM sleep which just makes pain worse – blah blah blah. So my doc gives me Ambien 10mg; take one at night. For the first few days it’s wonderful! No side effects! No drowsiness or hangover the next day, just sleep. Then it started.
I got up one morning same as every morning, about 4am, get ready and head out the door. I rarely if ever eat breakfast so I usually never go in the kitchen before I leave.
So, I get to work, and Tree, who lives with me, looks at me and asks if I did something with the strawberries before I went to work. I said no, why? She said that she and Jr saw that I left them out so Jr put them in the refrigerator before they went to bed. But, when Tree got up, she saw that container of strawberries on the counter again….empty. Stems littered all over the counter and floor. Then it hit me. What I thought was a dream about endless strawberries, was reality. I suddenly remembered, just standing by the fridge, eating strawberry after strawberry, apparently until they were gone. Then sleep walked back to bed. Whoa. I had heard about people sleep walking, or even driving on Ambien, in the middle of the night, but thought it wouldn’t happen to me.
Well, I laughed and laughed about it, and thought it would be just a one time thing, since it was the first time to happen after 2 weeks of taking it. Then it started happening more often.
I always go to bed before T & J since I work at 5. But sometimes I don’t really want to go bed because they may be watching something funny or good on TV or listening to music or whatever. But I take my Ambien and go to sleep. However my subconscience still wants to hang out I guess, ’cause I’ll get back up, and stumble out in the living room acting all funny and laughing, and making jokes and hang out for a while…then just go back to bed with little or no memory of it in the morning. Tree will always ask, do you remember…(fill in the blank)? I usually don’t, but might have a slightly hazy memory of it.
So I thought maybe I need more to keep me asleep? Well, I tried that, and it made it worse! So, after some tweaking of the dosage I realized I should be taking about half, and it has slowed down the episodes. Notice I said slowed down, and not stopped.
I have been waking up the last couple days, and my bedside light is on. I always turn it off when I start feeling sleepy so I can go to sleep. So what am I turning the light on for, in the middle of the night? Well I think I might be reading (if you can believe it) in my sleep. When I open my book up sometimes, I have the page marked in one place, but have to flip back a page or two before I find the last paragraph I actually remember. So, this is interesting.
I think I am going to ask to switch to Lunesta. I haven’t heard of sleep walking, eating, or smoking (oh ya I’ve been doing that too – luckily I still go outside), etc. on that drug. Or maybe I’ll try that one that has the cool commercial with the Astronaut and the Beaver….
my mercury 