AMBIEN Reviews (ZOLPIDEM TARTRATE)

Average Rating: 3.1 (1450 Ratings)

Filter Results

Compare AMBIEN with similar:
 SEDATIVES HYPNOTICS    DEA Schedule IV   

 Type: Rx Drug

  

AMBIEN  (ZOLPIDEM TARTRATE):  Zolpidem is used to treat a certain sleep problem (insomnia) in adults. If you have trouble falling asleep, it helps you fall asleep faster, so you can get a better night's rest. Zolpidem belongs to a class of drugs called sedative-hypnotics. It acts on your brain to produce a calming effect. This medication is usually limited to short treatment periods of 1 to 2 weeks or less.   FDA Approval Date: 1992-12-16 (Sources: U.S. Centers for Medicare Services, FDA)

  

Results are sorted by Date added.

Key to Ratings: 1=LOW (I would not recommend taking this medicine.)
5=HIGH (this medicine cured me or helped me a great deal.)

Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73


RATING  REASONSIDE EFFECTS FOR AMBIENCOMMENTSSEXAGEDURATION/
DOSAGE
DATE ADDED
 
 5  Insomnia No side effects, works beautifully, no scare stories like I've read about. Must take it because beta blocker Metoprolol prescribed for Atrial Fibrillation causes insomnia!! F 74 2 years
2.5 mg 1X day
7/22/2011
Email
 4  insomnia do not take with wine and go to bed within a half an hour,some memory problems It has given me 6 hours of sleep after years of waking up at 3am and not getting anymore sleep. Yes there can be sleepwalking but I have not had near the problems others have had. M 63 2 years
10mg 1X day
7/22/2011
 1  Sleep None. It didn't work at all. I slept less while taking it then without it! All the sleeping pills and muscle relaxants that I have used have not worked either... F 33 5 days
10mg 1X day
7/13/2011
 2  Insomnia None that I'm aware of, and that's the problem!! I usually take this on a Tuesday/Thursday night so I can be assured of a solid night's sleep, and drop my dog at daycare by 6AM the next days. You can't take this every night or you build up a tolerance and it stops working. I will watch a half-hour TV show and check the time to make sure I swallow the pill and give myself 15 minutes before I make sure I am in bed. Sounds fine, right? Wrong. My husband just told me I've been having wild hot monkey sex with him during several Ambien-fueled trances. I wondered why I was waking up all sore, with wild clothing strewn about the house, and have a chronic bladder infection. I believe this only happens, not on the Tues/Thurs I take it, but on a Saturday when I combine it with alcohol. I've always made my H hide the bottle from me so I don't accidentally sleepwalk and double-dose myself, which my dad did on Ambien, and his wife was so scared she called 911. It would be easy enough to say "I'm never taking this stuff again!" and just stick with the OTC stuff I take on the other nights. Problem is, my husband LIKES Crazy Ambien Me! Now I'm afraid if this Sexy Alt-Persona of mine doesn't visit any more, he'll stop liking me!! He told me some horror stories of things I've been doing in a trance, dressing up like a nurse, demanding to take his temperature. I had to tell him to stop talking b/c I was so horrified!! . F 50 3 years
10mg 3X W
6/10/2011
Email
 5  Insomnia F 51
10 1X day
6/6/2011
Email

Patient History
 4  Occasional insomnia Slight grogginess next morning, mild to severe nausea next day. I have been taking Ambien CR 12.5 MG on and off for about 2 years now. I find it does a very good job of getting me asleep and keeping me asleep. Typically, I fall asleep about 1/2 hour after taking and sleep almost exactly 7 hours before waking. My biggest problem with the stuff is the nausea it is causing me the following day. Sometimes I feel like I am going to vomit almost all day long. Experimentation has shown that the less of the drug I take, the less intense the nausea. It seems about 5 MG is about as low as I can go and still have it be effective. Anybody else have this and found any helpful tips for avoiding or eliminating the nausea? M 53 2 years
varies 1X day
6/2/2011
 4  to sleep Fuzzy thinking. Somewhat dizzy. Memory loss. Late afternoon exhaustion. I have not slept over 6 hours a night for over 46 years. I went into a sleep study at Stanford Hospital in 1998. The doctor put me on Ambine and said to only take it when I was having "one of those nights". Well, they are all one of those nights. The best sleep I get is to take 5mg when I go to bed and the other 5mg 2 to 4 hours later when I wake up again. I know I shouldn't be taking this stuff, but my sleep doctor now said it is better to take it because not sleeping would kill my brain cells. I'm not sure I have any left to kill! Doctors have put me on other types of pills, but none work as well as Ambien (Zolipdem). F 72 13 years
10 MG 1X day
5/28/2011
 1  chronic insomnia Intense anxiety, depression, waking up too early. I cycle through sleep meds for chronic insmonia along with periods where I don't take anything. This last cycle of ambien triggered my anxiety disorder to the nth degree. I ended up taking about 10 one night in an amnesiac state. I did not know this till three days later and I could not figure out why my anxiety/depression was out of control for three days. It was absolutely brutal and relentless. I discovered that I took the 10 pills three days into this intense anxiety. I was terrified but relieved that this was the reason. I checked into the hospital for 4 days for detox and monitoring. I am lucky I have good insurance. Once the ambien worked out of my system, the anxiety/depressive state dissipated greatly. I am 10 days off it and I will never take this poison again. This is how it affects me and I will never out myself in this position again. However, if it works for you than all is good, but as far as how it affects my chemistry, it is poisonous. Glad to be off it. M 41 4 weeks
10-15mgs 1X day
5/25/2011
 1  insomnia It works great for getting to sleep, but im wide awake 3 hours later. It you stay up past a certain point you become fixiated on a task and can act in ways, do things, and not remember a thing. The worst aspect of Ambien is its apparent ability to damage your memory to the point of dysfunction...will this be permanent??? F 54 1 years
10 mg 1X day
5/24/2011
 4  sleep problems i dont know if the brain zaps split second with a rushing sound that ive been getting when i start to fall asleep are related. they usually occur when i am really tired and have stayed up past my usual bedtime. if i miss that circadian rhythm thing it takes another few hours to feel sleepy, which is different than feeling tired. i took one pill the first night, couldnt walk to the bathroom. i take it 1-3 times a week, usually at 3 am when i cant get back to sleep (longstanding frustrating horrible problem) and i bite off a quarter of a pill chew it up and drink half a cup of water. i dont read, and dont watch tv i just wait for it to stop the chatter in my head. i can go a ten days or more with no pill. i take a generic. F 55 1 years
Rx 10 mg 1X day
5/20/2011
 4  insomnia elevated blood pressure, possible occasional short term memory loss, possible short term hypnotic states I took less than 10mg for 5 years; first a quarter, moved to half, two thirds then the whole thing. That's when I started having elevated BP. When I found information linking blood pressure increase to Ambien, I went cold turkey off the drug. Withdrawal took 3 days to get back to being a normal insomniac. The first night was pretty bad; no sleep at all. After that it got easier. I'm retired so it wasn't that bad. I've seen much worse withdrawal with relatives going off opiate based meds. My doc has advised me to stay on the Ambien and treat the BP.... I'm thinking about it. I have no reservations about recommending this drug for short term use. Using it for 6 years, as I have, may have caused some relatively minor fogginess and memory loss. M 64 6 years
10 mg 1X day
5/20/2011
Email
 1  Waking up at about 3:00 AM Gritting teeth in daytime, memory loss, lack of concentation, sleep eating, electrical zapping noise in my head at night. After starting on ambien, I began gritting my teeth so much that I had jaw and tooth pain. I did not relate it to ambien and my dr. prescribed diazepam for anxiety. This worked for a while. Recently the ambien stopped working so well and I began having dizzy spells. I think my body was screaming for more ambien! I started having alarming noise in my head when I was falling asleep that seemed like electrical zaps. Some days I was dizzy and felt like I was just in a fog. Then one morning I got up and found evidence that I had been up eating peanut butter during the night. Had to be me since my husband hates peanut butter. That was the last straw. I stopped the ambien and have been tapering off with diazepam at night. I will soon be off of both for good! I never thought this could happen to me. I really wonder what else I have done at night that I can't remember. My husband is a very sound sleeper and would not know if I was sleep walking or sleep eating or anything else. F 68 2 days
10 MG 1X day
5/9/2011
Email
 4  night time anxiety I always took RIGHT before I got in bed, and never had any real issues. If I read a little first, it would knock me out with my book on my face, and I would not remember some conversations with my husband. No sleep walking, driving, eating-- that I know of! BUT-- and this really wasn't so bad-- great for bedtime sex. Good, sometimes wild sex. Slept GREAT after! Husband didn't hate this either... But I wouldn't take it and get in bed with anyone you shouldn't be having sex with. After taking it for an extended period, I did start to notice more foggy-headedness, forgetting, cognitive problems. Also, just a general *hung over* sort of feeling started to build up. I started to take only half at night, and this helped the hung over feeling, but not so much the cognitive issues. So I weaned myself off by taking half, then a quarter, then none. I still use it here and there if I need it, but my brain is thinking more clearly now that I don't take it every night. I think that is something to worry about! But a good sleep aid here and there. 37 14 months
10MG 1X day
5/8/2011
 1  Insomnia DO NOT TAKE THIS DRUG! IT IS HIGHLY ADDICTIVE ALTHOUGH THE DOCS WONT TELL YOU THAT! DON'T TOUCH IT! M 50 10 weeks
5 to 7 MG 1X day
4/13/2011
 1  sleep aid I had slep walked in the middle of the night. Went to a grocery store & bought random things including alcohol. When i returned to the house i took another ambien and began to drink the alcohol. the whole time was talking about the people following me and were trying to kill me and my family. i ended up getting ahold of one of my firearms and shot the imaginary people. i dont have any recolection of any of this at all. I could have killed my 4 yr old neice, sister, and brother in law (because of this drug) who were just on the other side of the wall that i shot through. that was the first time i had any side effect from the ambien. besides the one minor hilucinasion i had but was told by my dr. to continue with my medication. NOT WORTH THE RISK!!!!! (also if anyone knows a good defense lawyer please email me) M 27
10mg 1X day
4/8/2011
Email
 1  Insomnia Sleep Driving Last Wednesday I took one of my pills and fell asleep very quickly. The next thing I remember was being in the Sherriff's office arrested for a DUI. I was told what I had done the next day since I have NO memory of any of it. In my mind I don't think it happened. I literally cannot remember anything. That is a very uncomfortable feeling. I obviously woke up and got in my car and along the way drove down an embankment, tearing through a fence and getting stuck in a field. Had I went left instead of right I would have ended up in a deep slough. ( for some reason all of my windows were down during this and I drive a black car, I'm certain if I would have went in the water I would have sunk & drowned and no one would see it) Somehow I got out of the field. I then proceeded to continue on and drove through someone's yard striking and breaking a ceder tree. The police were called and they gave me a field sobriety test, didn't pass, was handcuffed and taken to jail and booked. I was wearing my pajamas and slippers. This has scared me to death and I threw away my one pill shy of a full prescription. I won't be taking this ever again and I am looking into filing a lawsuit for the maker of this medication. I've read far too many stories since this happened to me and even worse, DEATH. I would urge everyone to think long and hard before taking this medication. It could ultimately kill you and then you wouldn't have to worry about not sleeping anymore. DANGEROUS!!!!! F 48 8 years
5-10 mg 1X day
4/7/2011
 5  hard falling & staying asleep I had one episode of sleep phone calling to my 93 yo mom @ 3 in the morning & 1 episode sleep cooking of raw eggs PLUS the eggshells & episodes of sleep eating, which stopped eventually. I was on Ambien generic 10 mg for 6 years & about 1 year ago I had to increase my dosage by 5 mg until I reached 20 mg nightly--then it stopped working altogether. When I ran out, I took Trazodone 100 mg plus Elavil 40 mg at bedtime. I have not experienced ANY withdrawal from stopping the Ambien cold turkey. When I receive my 3 month supply from a mail order pharmacy I will stop the other 2 meds & go back on the Ambien 10 mg at bedtime. Substituting the Elavil & Trazodone for the Ambien has provided very good sleeping---you may even be able to get by with just the Elavil or just the Trazodone alone. I am a retired pharmacist. I plan on going off the Ambien periodically, for a week or so (substituting with the Elavil & Trazodone, so I do not build up a tolerance to the Ambien. Good sleeping to all !!! M 60 6 years
10 mg 1X day
3/28/2011
 3  Insomnia Decreased recall of early morning events I don't believe it worked for me like it does for others. My problem was not that I had difficulty falling asleep, but rather in staying asleep. I went from 1-2 hours asleep per night to 3-4 hours with ambien. Although it increased the amount of hours I slept per night, it was still broken sleep and not a sufficient amount of hours to feel refreshed in the morning. I then attempted splitting the dosage to 5mg at bedtime and 5mg when I woke at night and most times I did not fall back to sleep with the middle of the night dose. Switching to Ambien CR did not make any difference either. I also noticed that my recall memory of events that took place about a 1/2 hour after waking were diminished. F 54 2 weeks
10 mg 1X day
3/27/2011
 1  Insomnia Texting people in the middle of the night. Sending emails and chating on Facebook. And not remembering anything the next day. No serious side effects but it's a little scary to read some of these things. I never really thought about anything bad happening but I can totally see how that could be possible. I guess I will keep using it for now. Hopefully nothing bad will ever happen. P F 31 1.5 years
10mg 1X day
3/26/2011
 5  Insomnia None I LOVE this sleep aid. I tried the CR and couldn't wake up in the morning, but I just take half (a full one if I'm really restless) and fall asleep within 15 minutes of taking it, and I wake up feeling well rested. If I do wake up in the middle of the night it is easy to get back to sleep, and it is the only one I have tried, including natural supplements, that does not give me nightmares. Highly recommend! F 32 6 months
10 mg 1X day
3/18/2011

Previous Page       Next Page

BACK TO TOP