Why I Stopped Taking Sleep Medication

When I was eight, my hair caught on fire in the middle of the night. I'd been illicitly reading far past my bedtime and eventually fell asleep with the lamp on. I woke to the awful smell of smoldering hair and ran downstairs in a panic, bursting into my parents' room. "My hair's on fire!" I shrieked. My mom and dad groaned, rolled over and shooed me away. They weren't neglectful. They were simply the weary parents of a budding insomniac. I've had a hard time sleeping through the night for as long as I can remember. When you have insomnia, exhaustion becomes so oppressive that if you're offered a quick fix, you take it. Instead of examining the reasons why I was up at 3 a.m. imagining my impending doom, I decided to fill an Ambien prescription. My doctor said I'd take it for a week, reset my circadian rhythm and return to my "Best Me." "My nights became stranger. I would wander outside, foggy and disoriented." I imagined Ambien would knock me out regardless of where I was or what I was doing, so the first time I took it I kept my music loud and continued reading for French class. After about 15 minutes, I felt a strange euphoria. Words jumped around on the page. I heard faint friendly voices calling to me from different corners of my dorm room. I had imagined I would slump into my homework like a tranquilized rogue elephant and clock a sound eight hours of sleep. Instead, I found myself trapped in a half-conscious hallucination - my very own Brian Wilson in the sandbox...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news