Sleep walking and sleeping pills

Today the Food and Drug Administration will start requiring the manufacturers of several sleeping pills to list complications such as sleep walking in the information about the drug.  As most people know, numerous reports of abnormal behavior such as eating or walking or driving occur after use of certain medications.  This is especially clear for Ambien because it is the most prescribed agent, but can occur with many other medications such as Lunesta, triazolam, and temazepam.

I have personally had negative, embarrassing, and upsetting experiences with the problem of sleep walking after Ambien use, and I am happy to see a little backlash on what has been years of marketing and increased prescriptions.  As the New York Times article from Stephanie Saul states, prescriptions are up 60 % in the last 6 years.

My first experience was presenting a case to colleagues.  At our weekly conference I talked about a 55 year old woman whose family reported that she “sleep walked” after taking Ambien and would walk to the kitchen.  Because they were still awake, they would lead her back to bed.  Two of my senior colleagues in essence said that this was impossible and that the woman needed psychiatric help.  This was back in 1995 when Ambien was fairly new but even at that time there were isolated case reports.  In the next year, a physician friend told me that he ate a chicken one night during his sleep after taking Ambien and he stopped taking it

More recently, I had a tragic case of a woman who lived alone and got up in the night after taking Ambien and took a bath.  She left the water running and totally flooded her condo and did not have flood insurance.  She is probably losing her home.  Another very nice lady aged 60, drove from San Diego to Temecula (about 50 miles) during a night after taking Ambien, parked her car in a closed bank, and then woke up near morning.  She had no idea of how she got there. Obviously neither woman takes it anymore. 

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