Bad enough sending such gobbledygook to my husband, but once I took two Ambien on a red-eye to London and decided that a very beautiful and accomplished actress friend would make the ideal wife for my husband and stepmother for my kids in the event that the plane plummeted into the Atlantic. I texted her a long set of unfortunately too-coherent instructions on how she should go about taking my place.
Worse than making me a late-night idiot, Ambien made me depressed, though I did not recognize this correlation until I finally stopped taking the drug. Only in retrospect did I appreciate how much gloomier I was the day after I’d taken an Ambien. It also played havoc with my memory. This, too, took a while to realize, masked as it was by the fact that since having children I have experienced an overall decline in memory. For years I blamed my failure to remember simple events—whereas once I’d effortlessly memorized long mnemonics for things like the Rules of Evidence—on pregnancy brain, or lactation fuzzies, or on the myriad distractions of a large family, but now I realize that Ambien was at least partially at fault. Short-term memory loss is a recognized side effect of the drug. Even worse, studies show that, though Ambien might actually help in the consolidation of long-term memories, that effect is true only for bad experiences.*1 Ambien, which makes you forget everything else, actually sharpens your recall of unpleasant emotions and events. Like I needed any help with that.
The six years I relied on Ambien were the first six years of my youngest child’s life, and I have heartbreakingly few memories of that time. Worse, those I do have are all too often unhappy. What if that period of my life was characterized not only by the unhappiness and mood swings that I recall, but also by periods of contentment, even joy, that I have lost like digital photos on a crashed computer? What if Ambien has warped my perception of the extent of my unhappiness, causing me to forget happiness and remember only misery? Wouldn’t that almost be sadder than never having been happy at all?
Kicking the Ambien habit was hell. I lay in bed night after night, rolling from side to side, flinging the covers off, pulling them back up, longing for a pill, my Nightly Roll Call of Anxieties studded with entries like “You’ll never sleep again” and “You’re a pathetic drug addict.” I felt like I was trying to break free from an addiction, though my doctor had promised me that Ambien was not habit-forming. Even now, when I search for research on the topic, I am reassured that he was correct—when, that is, the drug is used correctly. But how non-habit-forming can a non-habit-forming drug be if the non-habit-forming drug has you forming a habit where you’re taking enough to form a habit?
Indeed, my experience with Ambien doesn’t rise to the level of the accepted definition of drug dependence. I did not experience a “preoccupation with a desire to obtain and take the drug, and persistent drug-seeking behavior.”*2 But, then, I always had a prescription bottle in my medicine cabinet, refilled automatically through the mail every three months. I ran out of toilet paper more often than I ran out of Ambien. On the rare occasions when my pharmacy failed me, I experienced a pang of concern, but that was immediately remedied by a call to my doctor. A heroin addict with a bucket full of dope on her nightstand wouldn’t need to engage in “persistent drug-seeking behavior,” either.
The problem is that the “correct” way to use Ambien isn’t how most of us use it. Supposedly, Ambien is intended for occasional insomnia. A night here or there, once in a rare while. But when I was taking the drug, it was my every-night companion. My regular midnight snack. I only rarely took more than the recommended dose, but I was less apt to skip a pill than I ever was when I was taking birth control. Though my evidence is only anecdotal, most Ambien devotees I know are like I was, using Ambien regularly, not occasionally, because their insomnia is regular, not occasional.
My campaign to kick the drug was two-pronged. First I substituted medical marijuana as a nighttime medication (though only briefly); then I turned my bedroom into as close an approximation of a sensory deprivation tank as I could achieve without passing my nights in a soundproof pod full of salt water.
I took the concept of “sleep hygiene” to a level of neurosis that only others who spend their nights frantically calculating the mounting hours of their sleep deficits can appreciate. I turned off the heat in our bedroom, chose a fan for its cooling and white-noise properties, and eliminated all sources of light. Tiny squares of black vinyl electrical tape cover every single LED light. All of this has left our bedroom darker and quieter than a womb, and a hell of a lot colder.
In that black, freezing, white-noise-filled room, I generally sleep almost as soon as my head touches my (three) pillows. But what about on the all-too-many nights when I’m out on the road? This is not a neurosis that travels easily. I do my best, turning the heat down and the air conditioning up. I travel with a pack of black Post-its that I stick over all LED and other indicator lights, including the insanely bright strobes that are a feature of hotel smoke detectors. I put a rolled-up towel in front of the door to block the light from the hallway. I wear earplugs. Actually, now that I’m taking stock, everything I do to try to get some sleep in a hotel is also an exact recipe for how to die successfully and obliviously in my room should the hotel I’m staying in catch fire. That’s a thought to help me drift off next time I hit the hay in a Radisson.
I know that the precautions that I have taken against insomnia have only served to acclimate me to an absurd ideal. I’ve made myself soft. If I really wanted to cure my sleeplessness, I would take away all these crutches and teach myself to fall asleep in a hot room, on a hard, lumpy mattress covered in prickly sheets, beneath an unshaded skylight—the exact state, in fact, of my childhood bedroom. Surely, the fact that I’m no longer a discontented preadolescent wearing a padded bra and a huge chip on her shoulder would militate against the discomfort. But, honestly, who really wants to find out?