Zolpidem taken as medically recommended. Multiple experiences.
I am writing a firsthand account of my experiences with Zolpidem, sometimes known as stilnox or ambien. These are legal drugs, medications obtained on prescription and used in the method and at the dosage indicated to my by my physician for insomnia.
This is a post to give a little bit of information about the way in which a particular drug can effect the same person in very different ways at different times, which is why one should always be careful with drugs, even when prescribed.
Background:
For many years I have had insomnia, and for two years now have been prescribed zolpidem by doctors to help me get to sleep the nights before I have class. 10mg tablets that I can take one of, or half of, it's up to me.
Experiences:
All of the first 18 months I would take zolpidem 4 nights a week, 5mg on each of those nights. I would fall asleep within half an hour, sleep soundly for the 6-9 hours until my alarm went off, feel fine.
Crazy Experience 1: This was the least weird of all the unusual experiences I have had. I took 5mg as usual, but was still awake an hour later. Really needing to sleep before school because I had an afternoon test, I took another 5mg, as my doctor said 10mg was a good dose. When I was reaching to turn my light out seconds after taking the second half (so only the first half would have taken effect by this point), I noticed that although the first half hadn't put me to sleep, my movement wasn't very coordinated, and the walls seems to ripple a bit. Everything I focused on would ripple slightly, and everything in my peripheral vision would seem to ripple even more, but when I focused, the rippling would calm down a bit. I had never had any visual disturbances before this point and I was slightly freaked out. I switched my light off and hoped the rest of the zolpidem would kick in and let me sleep so I wouldn't have to worry about my room rippling, but I was also worried that with the second half of the dose, I'd see ever weirder things. I lay in the dark and watched my window glowing in the moonlight, occasionally the window appeared to get closer to me or zoom at me, but I always knew my eyes were just playing tricks on me. I woke up 7 hours later when my alarm went off, was terribly tired, and drowsy all day, but managed to do fine on my test. (I know I never got below a B+ in that subject but I dunno what grade I got on that specific test).
Crazy Experience 2: Maybe a month after my first crazy experience I had another test, and not wanting to have my tolerance for 5mgs prevent my from sleeping like it almost had last time, I decided to take 10mgs at once before bed to ensure I was well rested. Onset was noticed in about 5 minutes instead of about 30, maybe because of an empty stomach, no idea. Not expecting to be effected so soon, I was still on my laptop in bed, and had the lights on, and was just winding up my instant messenger conversations and intending to shut down the computer. That's the last thing I remember, but I figured out what happened later. I woke up 8 hours later, well rested, felt fine all day at school, no indication anything odd had happened. After school I talk to a friend online and check my email. My friend says I was odd last night, I go look for chat logs and read them in horror. I was rambling about "my cupboard melting open at me", about my hands looking like spiders, saying I'd just tried to walk to the bathroom but had fallen over and hit my head, telling my friend all kinds of private things I would never say, not responding to their messages but just rambling on with my own. By this point I was scared I might have said something else to another person, so I checked all my chat logs, sent email and text messages. Nothing besides a 700 word email in 'drafts' of my hotmail. No idea who I would have sent it to, but I was planning on staying up all night, skipping school and planning an interstate holiday. What the hell.
Number 3: Only took 5mg. I joined an online dating site, added about 5 guys to my MSN, had conversations with them, agreed to meet one a few days later at a jazz club to listen to music, gave him my mobile number, got his number, put it in my phone, said goodnight. No recollection of any of this. Some of the guys would talk to me over the next few days on MSN but I just assumed I must have added them all ages ago and forgotten who they were. 3 days later I was scrolling through numbers in my phonebook and came across a number which was named with part of his screen name, put two and two together, and assumed I must have had another zolpidem moment. Had to cancel jazz with the guy, checked over all my conversation logs, one to my best friend was describing how I had come back online again (3am by this point) because after going to sleep at like midnight, I had had a night terror. I described this night terror to her: "these two guys from my uni who i'm kinda friends with had come over and were trying to disassemble my new bed that i put together when i moved house. then there was this cloak of darkness blowing around the room watching me, but i was paralysed and couldn't run from it or stop my friends taking pieces of my bed."
I've had other times where I've taken 10mg and slept normally, taken 10mg and walked around, fallen over and "woken up" and realised what I was doing, taken 5mg and slept normally, 5mg and written weird emails and blogs, 5mg and told secrets to people I wouldn't have mentioned even if drunk... Zolpidem effects me differently almost every time I try it, I am determined to never take more than 10mg, never drink alcohol within 24 beforehand, and always make sure someone else has my car keys when I take zolpidem, it's just crazy and you never know what you'll do...
18-04-2009, 19:29
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