On another note, I was prescribed a Benzo, Klonopin for a little over two years. I NEVER took more than prescribed, infact I took less. It started creating dependency problems for me, as well as a tough time discontinuing it. So, issues can still develop even when using a medication as prescribed.

I’m glad Ambien has been working out for you.

PLEASE FIND ME A LAWYER (USA) WHO WILL PURSUE AN AMBIEN CASE.
rhs

Please do NOT wait to seek help if you are feeling seriously depressed . It is ok to feel depressed we all feel that way at some point in our lives, it’s just inevitable; however, when it is consistent and you are not sure if it is the Ambien, consult your doctor right away, a good friend, your parents, or anybody in which you feel you can trust and talk to, try your best to stop taking the medication (I know from experience it’s hard to just stop taking it right away, when I run out it’s impossible to sleep), and tell them you don’t feel like yourself, or you’re extremely depressed.

Lastly, trust me it gets better, it may not seem like it now, but it does get better. Please do not harm yourself, it will not make matters any better, or solve any problems, except create new/more problems.

I am willing to talk to anybody who feels they may be seriously depressed, sometimes a neutral person to just type to and vent to and express yourself openly to without any judgement can go a long way: sehtmichan89@gmail.com

Please take care of yourselves!!!! <3 <3 <3

Sent from my HTC on the Now Network from Sprint! them think twice please. I am really so scared about the detox stage and not being able to sleep, but maybe this story will have a good ending. Im praying for it anyway

Sent from my HTC on the Now Network from Sprint! 2 with a red bull or dr pepper. The 4 at night make me sleep. The others during the day keep my mind at peace and stress free all day. Several issues Ive had the past 6 months is a horble pain in my stomach and lower back that is extrememly painful if I dont take ambiem. Within 10 minutes of taking ambien the pain is comepletly gone. Ive had multiple colonoscopys and catscans and drs cant find anything wrong physically. Ive been scared to tell the drs how many ambien Ive taking up until recently I did and was sent to a specialist in drug addictions and was told it was stress related from withdrawal from the ambien if I quit taking it or not take it like I have been. Serious problem and have taken 30 several different times at once with a pint of vodka, but didn’t do it to try and kill myself. Happened just starting of with 4 or 5 and the a few drinks, then a blackouts only to wake up the next day with empty pill a vodka bottles. On one occasion in the hospital. The turning point that has led me to a final decision to go several states away to a ambien rehab facility is the car wreck. I had a week ago. I remember picking up 1 of my many perscriptions of ambien at the parmacy and getting a phone call from a friend as I got in my truck. I took a couple on the phone with him then recieved another phone call and took a few more, still at the pharmacy parking lot. Well 5 turned into the whole bottle somehow and and dont even remember leaving the parking lot as I blacked out. I awoke the next day in a hospital bed really bruised and banged up. I was told I hit a cement construction blockade and flipped my truck 3 times. Had to be cut out of the car with the jaws of life by fire depatrment and careflight to hospital because I was unconcious. I was so very lucky and blessed by God have not been killed or have killed anyone else in that accident and no charges filed against me cause it was just my vehicle involved. No broken bones or anything serios, just lungs brused bad so hard to breath and really bad black eye and few other scrapes and bruses, but nothing major. I went and looked at my truck in the tow yard after I got out of the hospital with my family and was just in tears the way it looked. Totally beyond destroyed. Everyone said I should have been dead very very amazed at only just the minor bruses I came out with. Life changing experience. Needless to say, I will be going to hopefully one of the best rehabs in t the country in 2 days and pray to God they can help me get off this evil ambien stuff. Amnien is nothing to play around with ,I kid you not. I would highly recomend not taking it, but if you do, never mote than one and right before you go. To sleep, but unless you really have to take them think twice please. I am really so scared about the detox stage and not being able to sleep, but maybe this story will have a good ending. Im praying for it anyway

Sent from my HTC on the Now Network from Sprint! ttp://ambienoverdose.org/tell-us-your-story-2/

Sent from my HTC on the Now Network from Sprint!

My husband about a year ago finally got transferred to second shift and was home with me at night to see me on the Ambien CR. He repeatedly told me he hated it and I looked like I was having a heroin overdose when on it. Eyes rolling back in my head, drooling, eating and making food, falling asleep upright in my chair and him having to scream at me 5-6 times to wake me.

I went off it for a long time and recently went back on it to get to sleep. I had tried Benadryl with valerian, flexaril and sleepy time tea to get to sleep and nothing was working. So out of desperation i tried it again.

Two night ago i guess i had a episode that i do not remember. I woke up and stumbled around like drunk, threw food and milk around the kitchen and argued with him. I have no recollection of this at all. Don’t remember a thing after going to bed.

He told me it was the most unattractive that I have ever been to him. He didn’t want to tell me the whole story of what i did. I am crushed. I thought for year this was a wonder drug.

I am not taking this anymore as it will destroy my marriage and life. Thank god all those years that he was not here I never went and drove anywhere or caught the house on fire. I will not take this medication anymore as it turns people into walking zombies that have no idea what they are doing. My husband was missing sleep afraid to fall asleep and what I might do to myself.

I am not saying this is a bad medication as it helped me for years. (I thought). But for some like me that sleep walk and such i will not take it anymore.

Also my best friend said that I have changed since on it again. More aggressive and memory is terrible.

Good luck to all of you.

I thought this was bad, but the worst was truly yet to come. I don’t really remember many other incidents because the “fire” one until about 3 months later. It was around the time of my 28th birthday and late August. I was having an off week much like I do most years around my birthday. I had around 2 glasses of wine that were on the smaller side the night of my birthday. About 1.5 hours later, I wanted to go to bed but feared I couldn’t sleep. So, I took my 10mg. This is when my life forever changed. At about 2AM (so I pieced together from my taxi receipt…and THANK GOODNESS I for some reason decided to not to drive) I took a cab a few miles down the road to a local gay bath house. Prior to this, I have never had any homosexual inclinations. I had only been with women and never even was the slightest bit turned on by a man. What happened between 2AM and 8AM when I woke up, I don’t remember. At about 8:05AM the next day (I remember the time because I remember immediately searching for my cell phone to see what was going on) I awoke on a very uncomfortable, single bed in a small, mildew smelling room. I had NO clue where I was or what I had done. I looked off to the side and there was a stand with a bowl of condoms. I immediately knew something was wrong. The I realized there was an intense, throbbing pain coming from my anus. I jumped up off the bed and noticed a brownish/red stain all over the white sheets. My anus was bleeding and sexual fluid was leaking from him. I immediately found my clothes and got dressed and opened the door not really realizing where I was. As I was trying to find the exit, I realized where I was and sprinted for the door. Realizing I didn’t have my car, I hailed a cab and went home humiliated and horrified.

I was scared to death after this. A few months later I finally found the courage to get an HIV test. The results were not good. Ambien cause this horrible reaction. It caused me to go do this that ended up giving me a disease that I can never get rid of. My life will never been the same. All because I wanted to get a good night’s sleep.

Beware of this horrid drug.

These are just things that have helped me use this drug better this go round. I have struggled with depression before and it really can get better. Take time to wok on yourself. You really can fix your problems. After embracing the utter absurdity of existence and deconstructing first order principals I was taught defined meaning I feel better. Als not drinking to excess or doing street drugs.
Good luck. I know that you can get through it. each person has something to offer the world. Everyone matters to someone. We make the world around us. Now get some sleep and do something delightful when you get up!

I don’t have suicidel thoughts…
I don’t have night terrors…
I have some anxiety, but was a pre existing condition…

I have never increased or doubled my dose. I am hoping I can go to 5mg for a couple weeks then stop cold turkey.

Anyhow, my addiction started little over a year ago around this time when I was first introduced to ambien. Like most, I had been an insomniac for years and I wanted some relief! I knew my mother had some in the cabinet, she had been prescribed to use them for a long while and has done just fine on them. She was, however, adamant that I don’t take them from her because she needed them as she was a bad insomniac herself. I figured she wouldn’t notice if just one was gone since she never took them on the weekends. So, I took it. About thirty minutes in, there was no fatigue, but there was this… wave of utter… euphoria, I guess? And it was almost like I was having a mini acid trip. I recall talking to my girlfriend on the phone and telling her that I was on a pirate ship and these pirates were walking by me asking me to plunder with them, but I told them I couldn’t. It seemed very, VERY real to me at the time. A few weeks passed and I realized I had liked that feeling a lot and that I wanted to experience it again. So, I took another.

This continued on and off through out January until my mom approached me and told me to take her xanax if I needed to sleep. Having already dabbled in xanax during the time I started stealing her ambien, I knew it wasn’t going to affect me in the way she had hoped, but I took it as an open invitation to have as much as I liked. Still, I was careful, I didn’t really use it as much as I wanted to.

Skip to about February. I had started a highly stressful job and was trying to balance that, a social life, and school. I was beginning to have trouble sleeping again, so much so that I could go two days without it and be just fine. Finally, I took it upon myself to go to my doctor and tell him of my troubles. He prescribed me Ambien and it was an utter downward spiral from them. The first few weeks were fine, I took them as prescribed, I slept like a baby, school was good.

But then… I don’t know what happened. I couldn’t sleep, no matter how much I took. So, I began taking a xanax on the side and if in two hours I wasn’t asleep, I took another ambien. This led to a lot of times where I would be up after three weeks of having it and have to wait for a week before it could get refilled. It was utter hellish. I couldn’t sleep, all I could think was about when I got the ambien, when I could sleep again and not feel anything. Not care. I liked that when I took the ambien I felt more open and more lively, as compared to when I was sober. When I was sober I felt like I was boring and that no one was at all interested in me. I had nothing to talk about. Little did I know this was my depression that had been setting in. I hadn’t realized the signs and maybe if I had I would have stopped taking the ambien.

Finally, it just came to the point where I felt void of emotion, where I felt numb. I dropped out of school, I slept the day away, and at night, when I was awake, I couldn’t wait to take the ambien so I could sleep again. From April through August feels like an utter… grey, foggy area. I can’t remember nearly anything that had went on through those few months except that I was growing more numb, more empty, and that i just wanted something to relieve that feeling. I was abusing xanax, ambien, and darvocet. I occasionally smoked weed with my friends, I got drunk when I could. But the weed, the alcohol, it couldn’t compare to the chemical high I got from the pills. I wanted more, I need more. I began asking a close friend if there would be any way I could buy xanax or darvocet on the street and, luckily!, he said he had no idea.

I was spiraling into this empty abyss and I had no idea how to help myself, how to get out. I tried dropping hints to my mother, but she never understood and that is my fault, I realize. I should have been more open and more trusting, but it was embarrassing realizing that I was a pill addict. I was so ashamed of my behavior. I didn’t want anyone to know.

I remember there was a time where I could not feel anything. Anything at all. Not when I bumped into something or anything of that nature. As a former and recovering self harmer, there was a night where, feeling so hopeless and empty, I began cutting on my leg while on ambien. I had felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. And it frightened me. I didn’t do it again, thankfully.

I went to the doctor to ask for some antidepressants, hoping this would help. And it did, for the first month, but because my insurance wouldn’t cover the kind I had taken, my doctor completely took me off that one and switched me to another without trying to ween me off. That’s when things got bad. I couldn’t sleep at all, I was irritable and moody… I was even more numb than before.

Finally, I had hit bottom on one night in… august, I believe. I cannot remember the date, but I have the hospital bracelet saved in a box somewhere. Anyhow, my prescription had been filled for more than a week and I had taken two at the beginning of the night. Two hours later, I took two more and I was on the phone with my girlfriend (now ex) and chatting online with a close friend of mine. After the last two, everything became blurry. I remember hearing a girl crying and I realized, later, it was my ex, who was so worried about me. All in all, I ended up taking about somewhere from 19-22 pills. But not all at once, just over an extended period of time. About four hours after I finally passed out, my girlfriend had called me to woke me up. She said that I was crying on the phone with her and I was hysterical and apologizing. She asked me to call my mother and I did.

I don’t remember what happened next, but my whole family had gathered at the house while we were waiting for my mother to come home from work. I remember nothing except my cousin, who was so quiet. Now that I look back on it, I feel really ashamed. I’m a very private person and to have my family /know/ that I was a pill addict and then for them to think I had been trying to kill myself when I hadn’t been…?

I cannot stress that enough. Suicide has never entered my mind. But, both my mother and my doctor insist that I had tried, despite my efforts to tell them otherwise.

I was taken to the hospital where I confessed everything to my mother. The doctors at the ER said that a high amount of darvocet had also appeared in my system. It seems that, at one point, I had taken four or five darvocet during that night. I was mortified. I remembered nothing.

The next day, my mother took me to the doctors. I hadn’t slept at all that night. I was crying a lot, and I hurt, and I was just… so very ashamed in myself. At how weak I had become and how I had let my entire family down. I remember my doctor asking me if I remembered the past week at all and I told him no. And it was the truth. I was starting to have memory problems, everything was just so vague. It was like walking through a grey fog. Anyhow, he completely stopped my ambien prescription and switched me back to my regular antidepressant, Pristiq. Our insurance company, after both my mother and my PCP had contacted them, okayed me using Pristiq. A very big blessing, for this antidepressant has helped me loads!

Quitting cold turkey was rough, but not as rough as I thought it would be. For the first two days afterwards, I felt high, which was embarrassing. The next couple of days were hellish. I was cold all the time, I suffered from extreme nightmares (i usually never have them!), my sleeping pattern was all off. The terrible part was I had signed up to go back to school for the fall semester, but this all happened a week before school started! The first day I went back, I was still going through withdrawal symptoms. I couldn’t even go the full day. I ended up having a full blow panic attack. I sat in my car, hunched over and sobbing to myself, feeling useless and stupid for being so worried over having to face people. I had become so antisocial and awkward in the year that I had started ambien…!

I had texted a few old friends right before I went to bed the night of my overdose. One of them happened to me an old, super close friend of mine, who texted me back the day of. I told her I had an overdose and it’d be fine.

Finally, after a week, I had the balls to text her back and tell her all that had happened. We had our problems in the past which led to us no longer being friends, but I had told her that I missed her so much and we apologized and now we are closer than ever! A very small blessing. She is one of my few sober friends who knows how to handle things, which is exactly what I needed.

Two months later, I look back and feel as if a year has passed since my accident. While I am still having emotional problems, they are not as severe as they were while on pills. I am happy to say that I am content with my life and that, while I still do miss the xanax and the ambien, I know I will never touch them again. I am so lucky to have such supportive friends and family in my life. I felt like I hadn’t had that but my overdose made me realize how wrong I was.

My overdose woke me up to reality.

So, while people may say that ambien is not addictive, do not listen! It can be for some people and be very cautious if you ever choose to try it out! I wish everyone the best of luck with their endeavors, especially if you are an addict or a recovering addict like I am. Just know, you are never, ever alone.