Ambien, anyone?

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Like lots of us on the spectrum, I have a sleeping disorder. Recently I found that taking one half of a 1 mg. tablet of Ativan plus 1 mg of melatonin, gives me a good nights sleep and I wake feeling refreshed. But fearing a dependency on Ativan, I approached my doc about something else. He prescribed Ambien. The medication comes in 10 mg tablets. Unwisely, I took a whole 10 mg tablet, ignoring my usual practice of only taking one quarter of any new drug. I was so drugged that I had to take a 2 hour nap the next day, during which I had vivid bad dreams. I also had hallucinations before falling asleep the night before, and found myself to be doing a form of sleepwalking in the middle of the night.

Has anyone else tried Ambien? If so, what were your experiences with it?

I have been prescribed ambien several times in the past, once in place of ativan post-op shoulder surgery since the ativan was doing nothing for me.

From my experience, theres a few things:

1) For me, when I found the right dose (i'm 200lbs or so, so 1 tablet was perfect for me for sleeping) stick with it, don't up your dose, and don't use this drug EVER for recreational purposes.

2) Ambien for me doesn't make me tired, sleepy, or give me nightmares, its really odd in the fact that when I was taking it, if I layed down to sleep, I'd fall asleep quickly and easily, and wake up feeling refreshed. On a couple of occasions, I took my bedtime pill and then in fact needed to stay up for a bit afterwards. Wasn't tired though it did make me feel a bit detached, but overall it wasn't unpleasant, I just felt like I was constantly zoned out and staring at the bright lights ( I do this normally, but not to that extent).

I have read a few accounts of people with a prescription or illegally obtained pills of Ambien taking larger doses, and hands down from every single person, it is not a good idea. It will make you blackout bigtime, so this is definitely one of those things that should not be abused. Some of the stories in particular were rather scarey, so please anyone reading this take this into account.

As for my own dosing, I did try a double dose (2 pills) a couple times, and it was more like what you described, groggy feeling, odd thoughts and dreams, and fuzzy memory were what stood out for me, the right on dosing (for me 1 pill) was perfect, and I never felt like when the prescription was done, that I needed it to get that good nights sleep.

Definitely in the future if there was/is a need, I'd ask for Ambien in particular over other sedatives/sleep aids as they make me ultra confused, dependant on them to get to sleep, and the groggy factor is unacceptable.

Hope that helps and makes sense,
Mahlon

The biggest problem I had with Ambien (Zolpidem) was mental confusion (also known as "brain fog") when I woke up the next day. I quickly reduced the dose to half a tablet, but then it was less effective at putting me to sleep, so I combined it with a small dose of melatonin. (If you have not already done so, read the list of side effects that came with your prescription and/ or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambien .)

These days I mostly take melatonin because I can get that without a prescription. I have tried various herbal medicines, but I am doubtful about their effectiveness. (Perhaps I used too low a dose?) The following article describes some of them:
"To Sleep: Perchance To Take Lots of Pills. Testing over-the-counter sleep aids, herbal and non."
By Seth Stevenson
http://www.slate.com/id/2062791/

If possible, you might want to try using different drugs on different nights so as to try to reduce the risk of dependency and tolerance.

Edit: Here is a list of sleep meds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnotic

I took a generic of Ambien, not sure what it was called, but I remember my doctor told me what it was.

My experiences were that it didn't work well for me. What the Ambien generic did for me was make me feel "warped", like my mind just wasn't "there", it didn't make me tired, but it had this pulling me down effect that would make me want to lay down and close my eyes. I took the pill for awhile until I got tired of feeling warped, not able to sleep multiple times after taking it and remaining in that warped zone, as well as waking up feeling very exhausted and cloudy minded. Most prescription sleeping pills from my experience tend to make you feel a little sleepy for awhile after getting up.

Ambien's a strange drug. There are many reports of people having auditory hallucinations and visual hallucinations, sleepwalking to their kitchen and sleepeating all of their food, or just doing some other strange senseless things while on it. The dosages can even be for medical use, not just recreational.

I love it. I take 10 milligrams every night with 25 milligrams of serequel I sleep great. Only issue I've run into is that It causes me to both over sleep and over eat