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On Mon, 11 Dec 1995, David Willner wrote: > Thanks for the info on Ambien. Dave has taken it .several times without > success. Please tell us what dosage you take and when you take it. Just > beforing going to bed>? or a certain time period before> Thanks for the > help. Dave n Lyn > David, in response to your query you should note that even before being diagnosed and medicated for Parkinson's Disease, I always had a problem going to sleep. I wouldn't call it insomnia but rather a reluctance to fall asleep -- perhaps a feeling that I had not done everything I wanted to do that day. So, what I would do is go to bed with a book every night and read until the book had fallen over and hit me in the face a second time. Then I would turn the light out and sleep till the alarm rang. Now what I do is climb into bed, read for half an hour or so, get up, take one 10 mg Ambien, climb back into bed and read for another twenty or thirty minutes, then shut the light off. On most nights I fall asleep within thirty minutes of shutting the light off, but on some nights (when my mind is still racing) it takes a good hour of trying to sleep before the Ambien takes affect. When I first started taking Ambien I was a little uneasy with the idea of taking a sleeping pill (or any pills for that matter), questioned the value of drug induced sleep, feared that I might be establishing a psychological dependency, and was concerned that there might be a negative chemical reaction inside my body with Eldepryl and Sinemet. But once I accepted the fact that I needed Ambien, that it worked for me without trauma and without side effects, I could relax and sleep. Ambien works for me -- Melatonin did not. Searched all over for Melatonin and finally bought a 6o tablet jar of 3 mg each. Took one tab the first night twenty minutes before lights out; took two 3mg tablets the second and two the third night. The result was three sleepless nights. Bottom line --I'm sticking with the Ambien. What works quite well for some of us doesn't work for others. -------------------- Sid Roberts 66/dx2 [log in to unmask]