How many of you have slept walked on Ambien

[mdmc]

I have. A couple of years ago I moved back to NY from LV, NV. I was living with my parents.

I woke up and went upstairs for breakfast. My mom asked me if I was okay. I said sure.

She told me that I had been sleep walking during the night, and that I had gotten into my dad's car. She said that she never saw me so out of it.

I have no recollection of this incident at all.

Anyone else have similar experiences?

[varkam]

1. I personally haven't.

But I know that what you're talking about isn't all that uncommon. Ambien (zolpidem) is a Non-benzodiazepine hypnotic that was approved by the FDA in the early 90's. Before that, the defacto treatment for insomnia was either benzos or barbituates. Anyway, the point is that the NBZDs haven't been around that long, so their side effects haven't had a great deal of time to come out. Here recently though, a lot of media stories have been popping up regarding zolpidem possibly causing various parasomnias (from sleep walking to sleep eating to sleep driving).

When we're asleep, various parts of our brain are active while various other parts are inactive. The inactive parts tend to be the ones responsible for active consciousness and memory encoding. Now the NBZDs interact with the GABA receptors in your brain, which tends to promote drowsiness. From what I've leared, certain people can be hypersensitive to GABA modulation (in other words, drugs like zolpidem seem to affect them a lot). I think that this could translate to certain areas of your brain remaining inactive while you engage in these activities while other areas that would normally be inactive during sleep are active (e.g. your frontal lobe). This is sometimes called the carry-over effect or residual sedation.

The business end of it is this: you might actually be conscious while you're performing these actions, but lack the neural activity at the time in certain brain regions (thanks to zolpidem's effects on GABA) to actually encode the memories of these actions.

If you must having sleeping meds, you might try Sonata (zaleplon) which is another NBZD with a half-life of approximately 1 hour (compared with zolpidems 2.5). That basically means it should clear your system almost entirely by morning. Lunesta (eszopiclone) is another NBZD that has a different sort of interaction with GABA complexes, so that might treat you differently as well. Other alternatives include the older benzodiazepine agents, certain melatonin agonistic agents (whose names elude me right now), or OTC remedies such as Tylenol PM or Benadryl.

Just thought the explanation might be useful.

[mdmc]

3. thanks for the explanation

peace!

[undergroundpanther]

2. I just started taking ambien

Haven't sleptwalked yet, but I do take of my cpap mask at night and don't remember doing it..but than again I did that before taking ambien too. Damn it's hard to sleep in scuba gear.

[lady raven]

4. I have

And my incident involved getting my purse, going out to the car in my nightie, and getting in it like I was going to go somewhere. DH heard me go outside and followed, and he found me in the car fumbling for keys that were (thankfully) not there.

I didn't know at the time that it was a likely result of the Ambien, but I stopped taking ALL my medications then because it freaked me out so badly.

[mopinko]

5. no, but

i have taken it, both with a scrip from an internist, and from a sleep doc. the internist prescribed 10mg, but the sleep doc only 5. i found the 5 to be perfectly adequate, and the 10 to zonk me much harder. i suppose big pill wants them to write the 10s, so that it seems so powerful and good. the sleep doc seemed like one of the most propaganda resistant docs ever, and i left the internist, mostly because she had turned into a real corporate whore. fwiw.

[varkam]

6. Big pill

doesn't make a whole lot of extra cash if the dose is increase (I believe on ambien the cost difference is something like 96 dollars as opposed to 89 dollars for 5mg tabs). 10mg is often the most recommended dose for ambien (showing the most efficacy in clinical trials), but some people find that the 10mg has residual sedation and can't tolerate it, which is where the 5mg tabs come in.

The way I understand it, docs are usually supposed to Rx 5mg tabs - but most just don't want to fool with titrating the dose if it's ineffective so they just sign everyone up for 10.

[politicat]

7. No, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Ambien's been a lifesaver for me, but I know that it's too strong in the 12.5 mg dose. a half a tab is just right currently.

I used to sleep walk (as well as being a chronic insomniac) so if Ambien ever triggers it, I'll not be surprised.

Sleepwalking versus death from sleep deprivation induced depression? I'll sleepwalk happily.