Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Let me try something out of the ordinary...
...out of the ordinary and immediately you see news of the perils. Ordinarily I'm anti-drug. I try to tough out many conditions before resorting to drugs. My most commonly used drugs are Tylenol Allergy/Sinus (now Complete) and Tylenol. I'm paranoid to use prescription drugs because I fear addiction. Although I will say the Darvocet after the C-section was a godsend.

Anyway...I've been having difficulty falling asleep on Sunday nights. My mind races and won't let go and I'll lay there and toss and turn for hours. Then I wake up and begin the new week with a sleep deficit from which I never seem to recover. Once, many years ago, I broke down and bought a box of Sominex. I remember that it actually worked pretty well for me. So Saturday when I went to Target I couldn't find Sominex but I found Tylenol's Simply Sleep. Basically Diphenhydromine. Sunday night I took it. And fell asleep very quickly.

So today what do I see in the news?
Record Sales of Sleeping Pills Are Causing Worries

Great. Now I'm part of a big national problem. Yippee. It figures. The article is mostly addressed to the prescription sleep aids such as Ambien and Lunesta, but I'm sure much of what it says a applies to non-prescription too. This guy sounds like me:

Steven Wells, a lawyer in Buffalo, said he started using Ambien last year because his racing mind kept him awake at night.

He ended up with side effects like amnesia an sleepwalking.
But then this also sounded like me Monday morning.

In clinical trials, the most common side effect of the drugs, however, is that people wake up feeling sleepy the next day.

I did not want to wake up for anything. I wanted to sleep about five more hours. I was so low on energy, but I didn't know whether to blame it on the drugs or hunger.

I imagine I'll continue to use "Simply Sleep" on Sunday night until I feel like it's either doing me more harm than good, or I think I can manage without it.
Written at 10:36 AM by Highlandgal.
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