We, too, have warned about Ambien

I spotted this article from the NYT in my reading about Heath Ledger this past week, and it caught my eye:   “Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night, I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going. He said he took two Ambien pills, which worked for only an hour.”

Then I saw this yesterday on Fox News about how Jack Nicholson had warned Heath Ledger about Ambien:

The 70-year-old Oscar winner was dining at the Wolseley restaurant in London when a photographer told him about Ledger’s death.

After saying, “That’s awful,” Jack added “I warned him,” and refused to elaborate.

Later, at the premiere of his new film “The Bucket List,” Nicholson reportedly said he “warns people about Ambien.”

“I almost drove off a cliff once. I don’t take sleeping pills but somebody said ‘take this, it’s mild.’

So these two things really hit home with me.  When Marshall was in the hospital recovering from MRSA, and after he got home, he was not able to sleep at night.  His sleep patterns were completely reversed.  They had him taking Ambien a little at the hospital and then sent him home with a prescription.  It was a very strange drug.  It would help him sleep for an hour or so, but then he would wake up - I don’t know - a little disoriented and crazy.  He tried taking a larger dose, but the same problem.  It didn’t help him get any more sleep, but just made his behavior a little more odd.  Marshall doesn’t react that well to some drugs - Morphine REALLY makes him crazy - so we sort of wrote it off, but got him a prescription for Lunestra instead.  Mucho better.  Since then, I have told several people to stay away, there is something most odd about what Ambien does to you, and I’ve heard similar stories from others. 

There is another interesting testimonial at Yahoo! Answers telling a similar tale.  And you can do a little Googling for plenty more stories like ours.  I guess the moral of the story is that even when you are prescribed something that is seemingly *safe* - check it out.  Learn more about it.  You would think that with our stringent FDA, that takes decades to release *safe* drugs, that things like this wouldn’t get through, but they do.  Politics, I’m guessing.