Comment by propter_hoc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by propter_hoc | Hacker News Reader

The article notes allegations that the Board is concerned that Mr. Musk has been taking Ambien as a sleeping aid, but instead of sleeping, has been posting bizarre tirades on Twitter. I actually have a number of American* friends who take Ambien frequently with the intent that it be a sleeping aid. However, they all commonly do exactly what Mr. Musk may be doing: failing to sleep after taking their Ambien, and instead staying up late and acting in a crazy manner, and then failing to remember what they did in the morning.

How can it be that this drug is prescribed so often? It is pretty clearly a dangerously strong hallucinogen. Maybe it is warranted in really bad insomnia cases, but the risks seem to outweigh the benefits here. Would love to hear any perspectives from users or doctors here.

* I am in Canada, and while this may just be sampling error, I know many more Canadians than Americans, but don't know anyone here who to my knowledge has been prescribed Ambien for sleep.

A family member was taking Ambien and gave another family member quite a scare when they got up early for coffee and then passed out face down in their coffee.. and began talking gibberish while the ambulance was coming and taking them.. Doctors chalked it up to a TIA (mini stroke) but saw no physical evidence.

The little sleep he IS getting isn't even quality. From the author of Why We Sleep:

> Unfortunately, the current set or classes of sleeping pills that we have do not produce naturalistic sleep. So they are all a broad set of chemicals that we call the sedative hypnotics. And sedation is not sleep. It's very different. It doesn't give you the restorative natural benefits of sleep.

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/20/630792401/sleep-scientist-war...

It's a whole lot better than nothing, that's for sure.

It's not Ambien or nothing for most people. This is a false choice and a dangerous way of framing it. Cognitive therapy for insomnia is just as effective in short-term and, unlike sedatives, do not cause sleep to be worse in the future.

http://www.sleepeducation.org/treatment-therapy/cognitive-be...

Didn't Roseanne also blame her tweet controversy on taking Ambien aswel?

Yes but Ambien doesn't have a side effect of gifting the taker racist views.

I don't think they test for racism as a side effect, so you can't say that definitely. I actually think it's very possible that certain drugs can have irrational fears and phobias/-isms as a side effects.

This is such an ignorant meme. Ambien probably does have the side effect of removing your higher level filter, and so a joke slips through that would otherwise be short circuited because of its connotation when understood in a wider cultural context. Sleep walking on Ambien impairs just that sort of higher level cognitive processing.

Do your friend's prescriptions really come up in conversation that often?

I have no idea what prescriptions my friends may or may not have with the exception of one or two really close friends.

No, but it's fairly common for people on Ambien to have stories about crazy things their SO found them doing in the middle of the night. These stories often pop up in conversation similar to how drunk stories do. There's even an entire subreddit dedicated to the topic [1].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ambien/

Is that solely on Ambien or in combination with other drugs?

No combination is needed, Ambien by itself causes such effects.

Both tend to reduce you're internal "Maybe I shouldn't say this even if I mean it, it might not have the intended consequences" filter. Putting them together definitely heightens it.

They don't prescribe Ambien in Canada, although they do prescribe Zopiclone which is a cousin of it.

I use it for jetlag. It's pretty good really. I guess people put up with the risk of odd side effects as it normally works ok.

Just out of curiosity, why would one take a prescription sleeping pill for jet lag when there's over the counter ones for occasional use?

I've taken OTC sleeping pills to recover from jet lag with great success.

I got them in Vietnam where you can get them over the counter. By the way if anyone's using them for that I've found you can often use a half or quarter and it's less side effecty that way.

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