I was so stressed in college that I needed to take Ambien to sleep at night. Doctors should prescribe “drinking too much” for sleep issues because I swear to you that Ambien gave me the same side effects as a bottle of wine (or 2). I am sure you have seen the commercials and heard the list of precautions/complex behavior warnings.
Ambien may prompt:
Sleep-driving. Check. I drove to my parents house in the middle of the night with no memory of it. Yikes.
Visual hallucinations. Check. I asked my roommate Kelli where she got her parrot and why she was dressed like a pirate. That poor girl probably thought I was nuts.
Sleepwalking. Check. I visited friends down the hall and had full conversations. The next day I would have to ask if it was a dream or real life.
Sleep-eating. Check. I walked into someone’s dorm room in the middle of the night and took her skittles and fruit with no memory of it. I woke up in bed with skittles all over me the next morning.
Sleep-sexy time. Not Check. If you and your partner take Ambien before sex, chances are you will both take off your clothes, start something sexy and either pass out or not remember anything that happened. That sounds lame. My opinion is it wouldn’t make things hotter, although you may remember that Tiger Woods was a fan.
So, are there other precautions the commercial doesn’t mention? You bet:
Sleep-dancing. Ambien and the internet worked together to teach me the Carmen Electra booty shake and the Carlton dance (and I am proud to say I am still a pro at both):
Sleep-mooning. If I was in any way well-known on my college campus, it was because I would leave the room and moon people after taking Ambien. I came back from Christmas break to a picture of my butt taped to our dorm room door. Also, one time I fell in the snow whilst mooning and as you can imagine, it gave a whole new meaning to “freezing my ass off.”
Sleep-writing in my journal: Written journal entries trailed slowly down the page into illegible squiggles. I have a whole journal of this!
Lastly, my greatest achievement while taking Ambien…sleep-shopping. The little (big) gem below is my favorite sleep-shopping purchase. It is a life-size cardboard cutout of the hobbits from Lord of the Rings that was delivered one fine afternoon to my parents’ house while I was away at school. My dad called with a number of questions, but I had no recollection of buying it. I still have these guys because, I mean, it’s pretty funny. I could have purchased anything that the internet offers, but I went with life-size hobbits. Maybe Ambien just wanted to release and please my inner geek? Who knows. Whatever, I still love these guys.
tales of a charm city chick 
I can so relate to all of these! My friend Ambien also convinced me to sleep walk my dog, make random phone calls to people that I don’t remember (I am sure the conversation was better than drunk dialing), and make random weird scrap book pages…..huh.
On a side note….My Bubby is also a pro at the Carlton dance and it makes me giggle to see a 6ft 3in guy doing it!
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See, I like to hear about other people doing sleep-weird things on Ambien. Thanks for the idea! I would love to see a 6’3 guy doing the Carlton dance. If you ever catch that on camera, you know where to find me.
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I might have a still shot of his pony tail flinging wildly as he did it for me at Comic Con last year in his Capt. Mal costume….oh wait…did my geekiness just come through as well? Glad I could inspire you for a topic!
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sleep mooning? i knew i recognised you from somewhere
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Hahaha, at least smartphones were only just becoming popular. My butt would be all over the place.
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oh, but it was. did you never check out the faculty notice-board?
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Oh lord. Well, at least it’s a decent looking arse.
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Of course, I was just having a conversation about Ambien behavior. A friend of mine woke up in the morning with her face in a pizza box in the fort she had built. I’m not going to mess with Ambien. There was no Ambien when I was in college but I did drink my face off and wound up with shingles.
You kill me. Did you buy a hobbit or just the cape?
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Hahaha you wound up with shingles. Amazing. I never made a fort, she must have been on a roll that night. You go ahead and let her know that she isn’t alone!
Also… I purchased the life-size cardboard cutout of all 4 hobbits. Yes, I still have it.
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Ohhh man, you are freakin’ hilarious. Are you still a Fambien? That’s a fan of Ambien, good god I’m clever.
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Hells no. If I can’t sleep I rely on Benadryl and it knocks me right out without a single purchase 🙂
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haha a black eye. zoinks.
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Happens to the best of us.
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I’m surprised you haven’t lost a limb, or at the very least, a digit, from all of these scary Ambien moments. It’s really not good when you can’t remember driving…
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True dat. It’s an actual problem that they list. No one should be on such a thing.
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Too funny! On-line shopping while on Ambien – you are lucky you didn’t get any other interesting purchases! I think I may need to stay far, far away from Ambien. 😉
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I tried to bid on a statue. I didn’t get it, thankfully! Yes, stay away.
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I am afraid I would buy a life-size replica of R2D2 or something like that! I will stay far, far away.
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lol…I take Ambien too. I’ve done all sorts of crazy stuff on it. I even started a whole other blog when I was on it and started a bunch of arguments on people’s sites just being a complete asshole….This one makes me laugh!!
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Oh my god, that’s nuts! Thank you for sharing.
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I call my Ambien-antics acts of my Alter-ego. Everything I would never normally do, I’ve done to some degree on that stuff!!
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That’s so perfect!!
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Convenient excuse, too! 🙂
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I know what to blame stuff on now…Ambien! Why do you kill the neighbor’s cat? Ambien! Why did you streak through the quad? Ambien! Why do you eat all the ice cream? Because it was there! And Ambien!
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Ha, aww, you and Tiger Woods–best pals.
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“I woke up in bed with skittles all over me.” hilarious! All of these are so funny! I’ve never taken it, but I do sleep walk when I drink too much. It’s not good.
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Thank you. 🙂 I could swear it’s the same thing but in pill form and I’m happy not to be on it anymore. Hopefully you never have sleeping troubles, my friend.
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I do have sleep problems, but I use Benadryl too. But my dreams are never as funny on that either!
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Sounds like something a little stronger than a glass of wine or too. 😉 At least from what I can remember from my drinking days … and I have some years on you so it’s been a while. I’ve heard of these symptoms before, but my husband takes Ambien and it doesn’t happen to him. However, the house could burn down when he takes it and he’d never wake up.
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I meant bottle of wine, haha. It does what it’s supposed to for him, then.
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A glass of wine or too … I mean two. Rolling my eyeballs at myself. Yes, a bottle of wine sounds more like it. Ever wonder what else you might’ve done that you don’t remember? 😉
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All the time, Lori, all the time.
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Almost choked laughing watching “the Carlton dance!”
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If you’re ever having a bad day you should watch and just laugh. It works EVERY time.
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La La, I’ve sleep walked and talked all my life sans Ambien. One time I attacked my mother with paper towels and Windex demanding to clean her room at 3 am. It was pretty funny given that I’m the anti-cleaner. I love your online shopping purchases. 🙂
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Funny post. Found you via my friend http://kourtneyheintz.wordpress.com/.
Love the life-sized cutouts. Would totally work with ANY decor!
I haven’t “done” Ambien, but did have a bit, okay, most of a bowl, of cereal go down my front side after popping a couple of xanax AND a couple of glasses of wine. Your welcome flying anxiety!
Where’s your “Cool Dudes” list of blogs? Ask Kourtney, I should be on it. Okay maybe that’s an overstatement. hehehe
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LOL! My ex had an ambien Rx…and a couple of times I’d take one after drinking…it’s such a crazy ‘out-of-body’ experience….I remember looking up at him while we were having sex, and believing that it was his dad…haha…and I always thought there were people in the room that weren’t really there….who I would have conversations with…the craziest part is remembering it all the next day….
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There we go! Someone gets it for real! haha. At the same time I am pleased that happened to you, I am also glad to see you too are alive after the Ambien sex haze. We could have ended up anywhere and it wouldn’t have been a surprise.
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Hilarious!
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Just telling it like it is. Thanks!
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Hi Lauren, my name is Rebecca and I work on Katie Couric’s daytime talk show–Katie! Please email me back, I would love to chat with you more about this post.
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I wanted my doctor to put me on Ambien for all of the “added benefits” but she wouldn’t do it. Instead she prescribed a low dose of Trazodone that helped me sleep deeper and boy does it work. When I was taking it I was out like a light…
If someone contacted me in the middle of the night I’d wake up in a fog and would say things that didn’t make sense. On the other other I did start actually having dreams again AND slept really good. 😉
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So THAT’S how you ended up with the hobbits.
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….and proud
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Sleep eating! Haha so good! And skittles could not be a better choice. I could see myself eating rice crispey treats in my sleep too.
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Funny – or not – this sounds a lot like extreme sleep deprivation…
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ftoe is Definite and a very enforced set of rules regarding the ingestion of Ambien in my house (all mine)
1) do not speak to.me or otherwise engage me in conversations that have the slightest bit of importance, I will Not remember.
.2) do not engage me in conversation for your own amusement, this is not cool and I will not remember.
3) do not, under any circumstances bring up any conversation that I was forced to have and use any.part of it to make fun of me or hold me accountable for any insane thing I may had said (or sung).
4) I may cry, be prepared.
5) do not let me eat. I will eat in bed, on your side of the bed and I eat weird things like waffles or soup and I don’t sit up. It is gross.
6) as soon as you hear the “crazy pills” song, walk away. tuck me in if you must, but walk away.
7) no recording devices of any type are allowed near me for a full 8 hours after said ingestion.
8) do not let me type In blogs or comment on anything for a full 8 hours after ingestion. My typing skills are those of a baboon and my reasoning skills are just as bad
9) I see things wiggle and move and bounce, this may just end up being you.
10) count 8 hours from moment I took said Ambien. That is the time you can not talk to me unless the house is on fire. After the 8 hours is up, it is still questionable territory. God speed.
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This made me laugh–the typing skills and food part are especially spot on. Also, if I wasn’t laying down within 6 minutes of taking the pill, I would go on an adventure I didn’t even know happened, and this VERY OFTEN included eating something weird in bed. Glad I’m not alone there. Thank you so much for this comment!!
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