Follow-Up:
Wow! There are some scary side-effects/consequences of Ambien usage mentioned here! A rheumatologist blames my chronic allover muscle pain on lack of sleep so I was desperate. Tried Trazadone and Ativan at his suggestion and neither worked. Tried 10 mg Ambien and the hallucinations felt like a 60's acid trip. The people on our bedroom TV kept coming out of the screen. It felt like a crowd was standing around the walls of our bedroom, I could "feel" their presence more than see them. The ceiling fan above me moved up and down with my breathing. None of this was particularly frightening, just interesting. I knew it wasn't real. The scariest thing was a heavy feeling to my chest like I might stop breathing if I went to sleep. I never sleep-walked but my husband says I talked nonsense. I still take half of one (5 mg) occasionally when really desperate for a bit of sleep, but I never sleep more than 3 hours straight and didn't with the 10 mg dose, either. What worries me most is memory loss during the day, which may or may not be related. This seems like a worsening of some symptoms we were blaming on loss of sleep, so who knows if Ambien did it or not. I paid $3 apiece for these pills at CostCo pharmacy (not internet) so I won't toss them out. Probably dumb, huh?