The Insomnia Returns...

Listening to: Less than Jake, "Mostly Memories"

Well, I guess I won't be taking Ambien anymore. My doc only prescribed it last month, after a long bout of insomnia left me frazzled and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I thought it was a freakin' godsend, and I really loved that I could fall asleep without laying awake for five hours. Yeah...that was nice.

It got me into a nice sleep schedule after about a week, and I started falling asleep quickly without even taking it. Good stuff! I took it again Monday night after laying awake for an hour, fretting over family stuff.

Then I read that it carries a risk of, of all damn things, sleep-driving. Now, I wouldn't be terribly concerned if I didn't have a history of sleepwalking. I probably haven't done it (that I'm aware of) since I was about thirteen. One of my favorite sleepwalking stories involves my mom, drawn by the sound of running water in the bathroom at some ungodly hour of the night, discovering me just about to climb into a very hot shower. In my pajamas. Asleep.

I used to worry that I would sleepwalk my way into traffic or something, but I never imagined that sleep-driving was a worry. That and, according to the article, sleep-sex, sleep-food-preparation-and-consumption, and sleep-dialing*. Imagine those phone calls....

I can certainly live without sleep drugs, although I'm sure my time spent laying awake in bed, elbowing The Husband in the ribs to stop his snoring, will once again increase.

Yeah, I'll take that over hittin' the highway in my sleep, any day.



*My freshman year of college, I had a conversation with a friend, on the phone, while asleep. I had fallen asleep watching Liar, Liar, and I proceeded to tell her that I was--I'm not joking, here--a lawyer who couldn't tell lies. In that case, however, she called me and I answered the phone in my sleep. I have no memory of the conversation, but she called me the next day and told me all about it--she'd spent the intervening time worrying that I'd developed some grievous mental illness that caused hallucinations.