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Cris Harshman on 07-02-2007 
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Loading ...According to this news article in the Herald Sun, health officials (I’m assuming in Australia) are alerting doctors to some odd side affects of taking an insomnia drug generically known as Zolpidem - or, as we know it on this side of the pond, Ambien. Forget sleepwalking - some people are reportedly sleepeating, like a woman who “mysteriously” gained more than 50lbs over seven months and was finally discovered eating out of the fridge, fast asleep. And if that’s not bad enough:
The tales match another media report last year of a Sydney man who had taken two Stilnox tablets at home and later woke to find himself lying on a woman’s couch wearing a dress.
And this is what the Air Force (and others) are handing out to soldiers as “pharmacological fatigue countermeasures?” If a study is undertaken to verify these reports, I’d love to see the military participate. Makes me wonder if reports I occasionally hear about returning Iraqi soldiers committing out-of-character acts like suicide and domestic violence are perhaps related to these “pharmacological fatigue countermeasures.”
As the Adverse Drug Reactions Advisory Committee (ADRAC) stated:
…prescribers [should] be alert to the fact that zolpidem may be “associated with distressing neurological or psychiatric reactions”.
Indeed. I’d certainly say a drug causing people to wake up in the midst of cross-dressing and binge-eating to have “distressing neurological or psychiatric reactions.”
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