About Ambien

Discussion forum about the side effects of Ambien. Share your experience and opinion about Ambien. What would you tell your best friend about this product? Please remember that we do not give medical advice. That is for your local health care provider, who is familiar with your medical history.

Flu-like symptoms?
Date: 8/19/2009
Can Ambien cause flu like symptons after taking? I just took for two nights but I had a horrible headache, dry heaves and I think a fever (don’t have a thermometer). Did I just coincidently get a flu bug at the same time, or could the symptoms be caused by Ambien?

Doris

AskDocWeb: It is not listed as a side effect but there have been a few reports of flu-like symptoms by those taking Ambien. The small number is not enough to tell if it is just a coincidence or a rare side effect.

Chronic insomnia
Date: 8/20/2009
I’ve been taking Ambien for 10 years and cannot stop. I have chronic insomnia I cannot live with out the drug, however it no longer works for me. I end up mixing it with other drugs to try to get to sleep but end up taking at least two 10mg Ambien per night on top of the other meds. I take one when I go to sleep and wake up twice during the night to take more. Sometimes my second or third dose is 4-5am leaving me useless for most of the day. I have vision problems, shaking and much memory loss. It also seems lately I’m nausious everyday. I’ve been to a sleep specialist who has only prescribed me countless other drugs which didn’t work and cost me hundreds of dollars. I curse the doctor who originally gave me this drug and told me it was non addictive, safe for long term use, no long term effects, no chance for overdose. I’d give anything to get off of this drug, not feel sick everyday, and just get a normal night’s sleep.

Linda

Ambien suicide
Date: 8/21/2009
My brother-in-law just committed suicide after taking Ambien. His wife and daughters are absolutely devasted. There was no warning to his actions. He simply gave everybody a kiss goodnight that evening, went in the bedroom and within 10 minutes, shot himself in the head. This was a man who absolutely adored his wife and two daughters. He was a truly good man, fun to be around, always willing to help out, and he is no longer with us. This just happened within the past few days, and I have just started trying to find some similar stories. I’m not sure what I will find or what we can do with it, but I feel compelled at this point. From what I have read so far, while Ambien does seem to work well for some people, for others it creates, at the very least embarrassing situations. For others still, it’s a death sentence. If this drug is going to continue to be prescribed, there needs to be some sort of screening process developed. The risks are far, far too great.

Jon

Hallucinating and out of control
Date: 8/24/2009
The third time I took it I ended up in the hospital. The police picked me up hallucinating and out of control. Stay away from this stuff. It is bad news. I have hospital records to prove it.

Jim

5 years with no side effects
Date: 8/26/2009
I’ve been on Ambien for 5 years now with no side effects. I did start at 5mg, went to 10mg, went back down to 5mg, and ended back up on 10mg to be able to sleep. Once in a great while I will take 20mg when I know I have to work or it will be a long day, but I don’t abuse this. I did try natural supplements like Melatonin, but natural supplements and Ambien did not mix and only gave me a headache. I did see a sleep doctor who stated I had chronic insomnia. I did try Lunesta and it did not phase me. Insomnia also runs in my family. How much longer I’ll be on this I don’t know, but like others, I would like to fall asleep naturally.

Mary

Hallucinating
Date: 8/26/2009
I used this a couple of years ago, and it was really strange. Once I took it and felt warm and took my clothes off with a friend and my voice changed and sounded like a little kids, and I was really happy. Then, my eyes watered, but I wasn’t sad. I was aware of my surroundings, but the personality wasn’t me at all. I walked into the hallway and said “What fell from the ceiling? Did you see that? A giant black shadow/thing just fell from the ceiling!” Then I scampered back to my room on my bed and I remember looking at the coats hanging on my bedroom door and being completely fascinated by them because there was old man standing in front of them just watching me and my friend. He wasn’t scary, just odd and hooded. I looked at a picture and my friends in it and I were moving and waving (kind of like in those Harry Potter pictures, how the folks in it are still active.) My bedroom was kind of colorful and lightly iridescent like a crystal’s light in the sun. My friend started rubbing my back, which was nice, to settle me down and began scratching it, but it made one of the coat’s (near the old man) which was white and black turn a vivid blue on the white parts when he scratched it. It was really interesting, but weird because I couldn’t feel the scratching sensation, but I could tell there was a pressure change on my back. He and I ended up sleeping together, and I couldn’t feel that either which was really fascinating, so we started talking and I was really chatty and somehow finally fell asleep.

The next day I was sort of spacy, but felt I had a really good sleep, my memory was a bit slow also. Stopped taking it. It isn’t a bad product, I think doctors need to be a bit more informative about it and really focus on the whole “4% of people experience hallucinating” and they need to talk about what they might see, because I can imagine, it would be very scary and perhaps traumatizing for some people. I am really glad my friend was there, because I don’t know how I would have been on my own, he really calmed me down from my strange ambien buzz. Doctors should also recommend that you, if possible, have some one with you or let your neighbors or a friend know you are taking it for the first time and may get (really) weird.

Anna

I could have killed someone!
Date: 8/30/2009
I have taken Ambien about 4 years with little side effects. Night time snaking I didn’t remember. In February my dad was in the hospital, I was staying some with him, came home really tired. Evidently I had eaten, turned my heat on 84 degrees, had had my TV loud with no memory of it. Six months later evidently I drove and hit the side of my house, picked my grandaughter up from daycare, my daughter from work, almost hit two cars, she had to grab the wheel. With no memory of it at all. I would never ever take this again. I could have killed someone!!! It is not worth the risk!!!

Julie

It doesn’t make any sense
Date: 9/1/2009
Sunday Aug. 31, 2009 @ 7:00 in the morning (I found out later what time it was when the incident occured) I found myself in the middle of a county road with a stalled vehicle. A man came from somewhere ( I found out later that it was the man that owned the home that I had ran over his mailbox) and started talking to me about a wreck. I got out of my truck and saw that the side of my truck had been side swipped and he commenced to telling me that I had run down the side of an embankment and took out his mailbox. As I stood looking at my truck I realized that I was in the middle of the road and couldn’t remember why, how or when I had left my home, gotten in my truck and wound up in the middle of someone’s yard and stalled in the road. I was told that I left the truck while the man stayed with it.

As I look back on it and tried figuring out what was going on and how I had gotten there, I now realize that the man that was at my truck lived at the house where I ended up. HE could have called for help. Obviously he did because I was picked up on the road by the police and given a breathalizer test, which I passed because I hadn’t and don’t drink. They took me down town to do a urine analysis. Because I had not been drinking they didn’t book me into custody but called my ex-wife to pick me up because my truck had been hauled to the salvege yard. I am now waiting for tickets that they told me that they were going to issue too me.

It doesn’t make any sense at all, I was also told by the officer that I had left the scene of an accident. I got home and couldn’t remember any of it. My bottle of ambien had the lid off of it and I went to replace the lid and saw that I was missing an enormous amount of pills. I had just had them filled the day before. I am waiting to see what the out come is over this extremely strange unaccountable chain of events. I’m too scared to take any more of these pills and will count my blessings that neither myself or anyone else was hurt. I would not recommend this medicine to anyone and will not be taking them again. After going over the events with family and friends everyone agrees that this is not the medicine for me!! I felt odd to think that I could be capable of such strangeness until I found this link from looking up information and side effects of Ambiean. Now I know I’m not alone and that I must have been Hypnotised to have this kind of behavior. NO MORE AMBIEAN for me!

Steven

Violent headaches from Temazepam
Date: 9/3/2009
I have been taking Ambien for about 4 months. I was having weird dreams and asked for another kind of sleeping pill. They gave me Temazepam. I took it 2 times, got violent headaches and refused to try it again. I went back to Ambien but feel I am pretty dependent on it now to get to sleep. I asked about the long term effects but 2 doctors said don’t worry about it if it works stick with it. I still don’t think it’s good to take any sleeping pill every night.

Diane

Anthem insurance refused to cover
Date: 9/4/2009
I have been using the Ambien CR for about 2 weeks now and it helps to me to stay asleep. The regular Ambien was just not working for me. Unfortunately my Anthem insurance refused to cover it so I had to pay $145 out of pocket. Mostly because I did not try Lunesta or the cheaper meds. I did experience one episode of brief amnesia where I was talking on the phone one minute and the next thing I realized I was waking up from my sleep in my bed, several hours later.

Sam

Severe body pain
Date: 9/7/2009
I would like to know if anyone who has been taking Ambien long-term suffers from severe body pain. I have the worst pain in my body, mostly in my muscles and none seems to know what it is. I’m wondering if it could be the Ambien that I have been taking for ten years. I am so dependent on it and don’t know how I would function without it. Please let me know if you have the pain.

Rosemarinus

Sleeping pills
Date: 9/8/2009
With everything I’ve read, the sheer consistency of these unimaginably horrible side effects, I can’t believe Ambien is still on the market. Must be the “m” word itself–MARKET–that keeps it alive. That’ll do it. I’ve taken it for the last 4 nights, 10 mg of the generic (30 for $50.), not the CR. It put me to sleep for 5-6 hours the first night, lucky me. The next 3 nights, I’ve been able to grab just under 4 hours a night, exactly the “life” of the pill I took. Yesterday, I was exhausted by 2 in the afternoon and went to bed in the daytime, where I tossed around for 5 hours but did get some delicious normal sleep out of it. That was because it was my second day with less than 4 hours’ sleep because of the Ambien.

Today, I was up at a little past 4 a.m. after turning it at 12:40 a.m. last night. What’s weird is how rested I feel. Tonight, I’ll get another 3-4 hours, and tomorrow, I will be exhausted by 2 in the afternoon, because it will be my second day on only 3-4 hours of sleep. But it might be all in my head that I can’t get by on so little sleep. Maybe I CAN, easily.

Lunesta was worse. Created anxiety and constant tiredness. I wanted to sleep 10 hours or more a night, far into the day. And LUNESTA is not available in generic. 30 pills are $200. Had I known, I’da skipped it, and given $200 to the Humane Society. I’m sick about it. But tell me, AskDocWeb, is it possible I could be OK on 3-4 hours of sleep a night? If I “feel alert” does that mean I am alert? I was really just trying to get my days and nights turned around properly, short term use, had tried everything BUT pills to no avail. I plan to try strict sleep-time restriction as my next mechanism, once I get back to sleeping nights and staying up days. Could this work safely? Or am I gonna crash on this Ambien before it can do its “work”? I’m 59, post-menopausal, single and delighted to be, but youngest child is on second tour in Iraq, my mother died a year ago, family is squabbling over the substantial estate. I am healthy overall and very fortunate but have never slept well in my life. Wanted to nod off all through school, esp. in teens and 20s. Thanks.

Therese

AskDocWeb: Very few people can get by on just 3-4 hours of sleep a night. If you have never slept well in your life then it is likely that you are not one of them. Maybe it is time to find out what a sleep clinic can do for you. Read more Ambien Feedback.

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