Ambien

[sonicwhite]

Does anybody else notice anti anxiety symptoms while taking this drug. I'm up'd to 1mg xanax four times a day but when I take ambien I calm down alot quicker and it also has this way of taking my anxiety away. Just wondering if anybody else has this experience.

[Eden]

I'm surprised you remember this effect.

[Screamingbutterfly]

I always did stuff on ambien I don't remember. I also noticed anxiety relief symptoms that carried over to the next day.

[albertolobat]

There is some kind of cross-tolerance between Ambien and benzodiacepines, so I guess they must also share some common effects (and side-effects). My experience with Ambien was that I got an almost instant euphoric feeling after taking the pill. And if I waited some time I would even get some mild hallucinations, like stuff moving, nothing scary though. What I didn't like was that at the other morning all my euphoria banished and the contrast was very hard, having to confront the "cruel reality" without the euphoric feeling. And of course, the amnesia. If I read something after taking the pill, at the other day I wouldn't remember a word at all of what I did read.

A very weird drug, I 've stopped taking it a long time ago.

[saoirse]

Yes, ambien makes me calm and mildly euphoric, like everything is great. But it can also make you do some pretty weird stuff.

[melissaw72]

I don't remember a thing when I am on Ambien.

[Momof3monkeys]

I have a love/hate with Ambien. I hate that I can't remember things from the night before--when did I go to bed, what did I say, what did I eat, etc. But yes, it helps me to get a little sleep, for the most part.

The thing is I take it with the intention of going to bed within 30 to 45 mins. Well, I NEVER do. EVER. Ambien works on me as kind of an ADD med. I all of the sudden want to do laundry, I want to do the dishes, I want to organize things, I want to research stuff on the internet, etc. It's energy but not energy. It's just thinking clearly and on task. I wish I was like that all the time. What is it in Ambien that does that? I thought it was related to the benzo families and not the SSRI part. Hmmmm....

[midnightman]

People have this concept that Ambien works by making you tired, almost the way benadryl or seroquel do, but it really doesn't. If you look at the mechanism of action you'll see it selectively targets the GABA Subunit-A receptors, which are what benzos can "tickle" but don't fully bind to. In essense, Ambien is a benzo without being a benzo, and just hits the receptors that affect memory, sleep, thought-processing, etc.

I've taken Ambien on-and-off for about 5 years, and have had some crazy experiences with it when I first started it. After you start to develop a tolerance, typically within just a couple weeks of starting it, I found that it no longer caused bizarre reactions, and that I could actually remember things I'd done after taking it without it having lost efficacy.

In terms of Ambien's effects on anxiety, I do believe that it acts more powerfully than many benzo's for this indication, but is simply unrealistic to take during the day for this indication due to the side effects. There have been a couple of times where I popped one during the day while in the midst of an anxiety attack due to a lack of benzos, and have found it to be very effective. Since it has a fairly short half-life, it tends to wear off for me before I do anything stupid, but I know there are plenty of others who will take it and just go wild for whatever reason.

An interesting thing to keep in mind is that Zolpidem is metabolized about twice as fast in males than in females. In turn, I may be able to remember certain things I do after taking a dose due to my gender (M), but am unsure of how much of a difference this really makes. The source of this information was found on the Intermezzo website, a new SL-tablet form of Zolpidem indicated for middle-of-the-night awakenings. It's available in a 1.75 and 3.5mg dose, and the prescribing info explains that females should recieve the former while males should take the latter.

Interestingly, it seems that few doctors or psychiatrists are aware of this, and don't change their prescribing habits as a result. It'd be interesting to try to make a poll about the severity of Ambien-induced behavior(s) and gender, just to see if it actually held true in a real-world setting.