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"Valerian: 200-600 mg at bedtime I have prescribed these in various combinations for my patients who were withdrawing from benzodiazepines or the newer sleeping pills such as ambien (Zolpidem). As far as ambien goes: despite claims of Ambien's being "not quite a benzodiazepine" and non-addictive, this has not been so in the many cases I've seen. Benzodiazepines (and ambien) must be withdrawn very slowly under close medical supervision, sometimes over several months." - Hyla Cass, M.D., Supplement Your Prescription: What Your Doctor Doesn't Know About Nutrition (Get the book.) "Valerian: 200-600 mg at bedtime I have prescribed these in various combinations for my patients who were withdrawing from benzodiazepines or the newer sleeping pills such as ambien (Zolpidem). As far as ambien goes: despite claims of Ambien's being "not quite a benzodiazepine" and non-addictive, this has not been so in the many cases I've seen. Benzodiazepines (and ambien) must be withdrawn very slowly under close medical supervision, sometimes over several months." - Hyla Cass, Supplement Your Prescription: What Your Doctor Doesn't Know About Nutrition (Get the book.)

"One man on a transatlantic flight took ambien with two glasses of wine. In his sleep, he tore off his clothes and threatened to kill himself and others. As a result, the plane had to make an emergency landing. He had no memory of the incident. Any amount of alcohol, even a glass, greatly increases the risk of having a dangerous sleepwalking accident. Also, sleepwalking has been reported more commonly with ambien probably because it accounts for 85% of the insomnia medication market. It is very possible that other insomnia medications can have the same side effect. Of ." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.)

"As far as ambien goes: despite claims of Ambien's being "not quite a benzodiazepine" and non-addictive, this has not been so in the many cases I've seen. Benzodiazepines (and ambien) must be withdrawn very slowly under close medical supervision, sometimes over several months. Stopping these drugs suddenly can bring on seizures, severe anxiety, insomnia, nightmares, abdominal pain, palpitations, loss of balance, sweating and quite a long list of other symptoms. CANCER CHEMOTHERAPY Chemotherapy. Just the word is enough to bring up a wave of anxiety." - Hyla Cass, M.D., Supplement Your Prescription: What Your Doctor Doesn't Know About Nutrition (Get the book.)

"Ambien or This long-acting prescription will give you less of a hangover than other drugs may, ambien CR but some docs feel it is addictive. The controlled-release (CR) version will give you a or Lunesta boost after four hours to avoid middle-of-the-night awakening. Lunesta works like or Rozerem ambien but is thought to be nonaddictive. Rozerem works like melatonin in our opinion, and it is nonaddictive. Sonata This fast-acting prescription hypnotic drug is good if you wake up in the middle of the night, because its effect is quick and won't last all night." - Mehmet C. Oz., M.D. and Michael F. Roizen, M.D., You: Staying Young: The Owner's Manual for Extending Your Warranty (Get the book.)

"Being new agents, ambien CR, Rozerem, and Lunesta are at the start of their patent lives and therefore lucrative years. Recently, several articles have been published in the professional journals that have been described as "trazodone-bashing." It turns out that the authors of these articles— university psychiatrists—have been paid by the makers of ambien, Rozerem, et al. According to The New York Times, "a careful reading of these articles reveals a pattern of rhetorical techniques" to put Trazodone in a negative light and downplay its positives." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.)

"Cases of people who have gotten out of bed after taking ambien (sometimes with a glass of wine), driven, and gotten into car accidents, with absolutely no memory of what happened, have also been reported. Some people have gotten up in the middle of the night, crashed their cars into parked cars, and then tried to drive away, with no memory of what happened (remember Patrick Kennedy?). One man on a transatlantic flight took ambien with two glasses of wine. In his sleep, he tore off his clothes and threatened to kill himself and others. As a result, the plane had to make an emergency landing." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.)

"As far as ambien goes: despite claims of Ambien's being "not quite a benzodiazepine" and non-addictive, this has not been so in the many cases I've seen. Benzodiazepines (and ambien) must be withdrawn very slowly under close medical supervision, sometimes over several months. Stopping these drugs suddenly can bring on seizures, severe anxiety, insomnia, nightmares, abdominal pain, palpitations, loss of balance, sweating and quite a long list of other symptoms. CANCER CHEMOTHERAPY Chemotherapy. Just the word is enough to bring up a wave of anxiety." - Hyla Cass, Supplement Your Prescription: What Your Doctor Doesn't Know About Nutrition (Get the book.)

"The quick fixes are out there, in the form of Prozac and ambien, to name just two, but if your mood is low or you're tossing and turning in the night, Prozac and ambien won't fix the underlying problem. And these one-pill fixes don't usually last because the real problem has not been addressed. By getting rid of a symptom, you may feel better temporarily, but over time another symptom or two will emerge to make you miserable, either from a side effect of the very medication you've taken to feel better or from the actual root problem, which is being ignored." - Phuli Cohan, The Natural Hormone Makeover: 10 Steps to Rejuvenate Your Health and Rediscover Your Inner Glow (Get the book.)

"For insomnia, CBT has been shown to be more helpful than the sleep aid ambien. In 2004, CBT was shown to help alleviate hypochondria in six sessions and, in conjunction with drugs, to help depressed adolescents and kids with obsessive-compulsive disorder. There are currendy about 150 clinical trials being conducted to test CBT for an ever-widening number of problems: Tourette's syndrome, gambling addiction, obesity, irritable bowel syndrome, and as a therapy for sexually abused kids.11 It also has no side effects—unless you count the homework." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.)

"Although the drug companies push their newest product, one does not work any better than the next. ambien will soon be available as a generic and provides the best overall effect of drugs in this group, so I prescribe it most often. Since the remaining drugs in this class are quite expensive and can also be habit-forming, my next choice is Rozerem, the melatonin-like drug I mentioned earlier, because it is the only one of the sleep-inducing drugs that is not habit-forming." - Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D., Your Symptoms Are Real: What to Do When Your Doctor Says Nothing Is Wrong (Get the book.)

"Also, sleepwalking has been reported more commonly with ambien probably because it accounts for 85% of the insomnia medication market. It is very possible that other insomnia medications can have the same side effect. Of .'-Label So Unions There are a handful of drugs that are prescribed and used "off label" for insomnia. These include drugs from allergy meds to antidepressants. Since they have active ingredients that work on other brain and body functions, even the most benign of these drugs (such as antihistamines) should be used with care if not caution." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.)

"The makers of ambien have offered a week's worth of their pills for free.97 "The Lunesta 7-Night Challenge" made the rounds in newspapers and on television in 2007. The print ads exhorted: "Ask your doctor how to get 7 nights of Lunesta absolutely free!"98 Paxil and Zoloft in particular have been the recipients of heavy DTC rotations. Paxil's story is a particularly sordid, and successful, episode in the history of drug marketing. Paxil was a late entrant to the SSRI party—not arriving until 1993, five years after Prozac and a year after Zoloft. Sales prospects seemed limited." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.)

"In 1997, it issued a draft rule, finalized two years later, permitting companies to boil down the brief summary to a few seconds for broadcast advertisements, thus opening the gates to Zoloft cartoon ads during prime-time sitcoms and ambien ads on the nightly news. That same year, Seldane was removed from the market, after it was found to cause fatal heart arrhythmias when taken with other drugs. In 199 c, the pharmaceutical industry spent a mere $595 million on direct-to-consumer advertising, virtually all of it on newspaper and magazine ads. By 1998, that figure had jumped to $1.17 billion." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.)

"Sonata has a much shorter half-life (1 hour) than ambien (2.5 hours) and Lunesta (6 hours), and is therefore promoted as being associated with less drowsiness the next day. Lunesta is a pure "mirror version" of the same molecule as its parent, zopiclone, and appears to have been developed in a marketing effort to leave behind the negative marketing that was associated with studies of zopiclone (conducted before the latest Z drugs were released), which showed an increase in traffic accidents with its use." - J. Douglas Bremner, Before You Take that Pill: Why the Drug Industry May Be Bad for Your Health (Get the book.)

"According to AARP, a consumer using ambien pays $900 a year more at the end of 2006 that he did in 1999. He would pay more than $500 more per year for Plavix and the same for Zocor. Using Celebrex, he would've paid $300 more per year and $100 more per year for Toprol. Outrageous! This is so many more times the cost of living.66 In the following chart are listed the biggest selling drugs used by the elderly." - Kenneth W Thomas, Ron Gilbert, Gerd Schaller, Side Effects: The Hidden Agenda of the Pharmaceutical Drug Cartel (Get the book.)

"When Sanofi's product, ambien, was approved, the FDA required the company to warn doctors it should rarely be prescribed for more than ten days. The company's pill was so dangerous that the Drug Enforcement Administration controlled its use as tightly as potent tranquilizers like Halcion, Valium, and Miltown. Many doctors hesitated to prescribe it. Sanofi executives had decided to go around those physicians and push their product directly to an overworked, stressed-out public, including the women of Storm Lake. Ms." - Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.) "Everybody here uses ambien." There is a problem, however, with the new American way, one that the drug companies and doctors prescribing the medicines do not like to talk about. Experts estimate that more than a hundred thousand Americans die each year not from illness but from their prescription drugs. Those deaths, occurring quietly, almost without notice in hospitals, emergency rooms, and homes, make medicines one of the leading causes of death in the United States." - Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.) "The angelic woman, a model featured in a large poster advertising the sleeping pill ambien, served as a suggestive centerpiece as twenty Iowa women filed by the table to pick up their free lunches. The women chatted about the sudden bout of hot, humid June weather before settling into their seats to listen to the drug saleswoman tell them how they too could fall into blissful slumber." - Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.) "People over the age of sixty-five, who made up about half the women at the luncheon, are particularly susceptible to suffering harm from sleeping pills, including ambien. The pills can cause older people to lose their memories or to fall if they become dizzy. The elderly take sleeping pills at the highest rate of any age-group, but on average they gain only twenty-five minutes of extra sleep a night. Ms. Hillmer's sales tactics had not been aggressive like those of a promoter of vacation time shares. Instead, her approach had been far more subtle but quite effective." - Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Get the book.)

"On March 14, 2007, the FDA issued a new warning for a broad range of sleep medications, including every one listed in the appendix, but the real culprits are the newer drugs like ambien and Lunesta that brought these starting phenomena to medical and public attention.9 The new warning describes the following risk: Complex sleep-related behaviors which may include sleep-driving, making phone calls, and preparing and eating food (while asleep). It can be very difficult to wake up sleepwalkers, and on awakening they are often confused and usually have no memory for what they have been doing." - Peter Breggin, Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications (Get the book.)

"Together, Sepracor; King Pharmaceuticals, which makes Sonata; and Sanofi-Aventis, the maker of ambien, provide about a third of the sleep foundation's $3.6 million annual budget. In addition, Sepracor was a $250,000 platinum sponsor of the foundation's 200c poll; another $300,000 grant from the company went toward a series of "Sleep Medicine i ne rer suauer i i y 1 Alerts," brochures to educate doctors, who, according to Gelula, don't treat insomnia adequately because they "don't think sleeplessness is a sickness." But is it?" - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.) "When the ambien left Justin feeling bleary and depressed, the doctor put him on an antidepressant, which can cause akathisia. Then she put him on another drug in the same class that has similar side effects. Why wasn't the doctor alerted by Justin's agitation and worsening symptoms? Concerns that SSRIs might be dangerous for some patients had already surfaced by 1994, just four years after Prozac was approved." - Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (Get the book.)

"The nonbenzo sleeping aids ambien, Lunesta, and Sonata are also classified in Schedule IV (see appendix A) and pose similar risks. Halcion is a benzodiazepine approved exclusively for the short-term treatment of insomnia. It is so highly potent and short-acting that individuals frequently go into withdrawal within hours of taking it. This short duration of action was touted as a positive attribute for a sleeping medication on the grounds that the individual would awaken in the morning without a "hangover" of persistent sedative effects." - Peter Breggin, Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications (Get the book.)

"It turns out that the authors of these articles— university psychiatrists—have been paid by the makers of ambien, Rozerem, et al. According to The New York Times, "a careful reading of these articles reveals a pattern of rhetorical techniques" to put Trazodone in a negative light and downplay its positives.79 But the most nefarious and manipulative practice of all is barely known, even within the medical profession." - Charles Barber, Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (Get the book.)

"The 2007 FDA-approved label for ambien CR as found in the Physicians' Desk Reference contains a warnings section that focuses on potential behavioral abnormalities, while painting a clinical picture of potentially severe spellbinding: A variety of abnormal thinking and behavior changes have been reported to occur in association with the use of sedative/hypnotics. Some of these changes may be characterized by decreased inhibition (e.g., aggressiveness and extroversion that seemed out of character), similar to the effects produced by alcohol and other CNS depressants." - Peter Breggin, Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications (Get the book.) "Although ambien has a different chemical structure from the benzodiazepines like Halcion and Xanax, it affects the same neurotransmitter system, GABA, producing very similar effects, including abnormal behaviors and addiction. Too many physicians have been fooled into thinking it is really "different" from the benzos." - Peter Breggin, Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications (Get the book.)

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