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Sid asks:

>Kathie, could you please expand upon Ambien being the worst thing that has
>happened to you?  I do not suffer from taking Ambien that I know of.
>

Sid,

This is the description that I wrote to Charlie Meyer:


"To address your questions about my adverse reaction to Ambien; I think they
fell right into the warnings noted. Ambien allowed me 6 hours of sleep, no
more or less. That's its window. I had been accustomed to 7-8 hours sleep
most nights taking 1 mg of regular melatonin and 2 mgs of time release
melatonin, so fatigue started to creep up on me quickly. When I saw this
happening, I tried to switch off with melatonin, but found that the
melatonin no longer worked for me. The worst thing was that soon I was
caught in a depression that I hadn't seen coming, and I normally don't have
trouble with depression. By the end of the 2 or so weeks that I used Ambien,
the depression had consumed me and I spent the last 3 days in bed, unable to
initiate any activity, overwhelmed by life. When my husband and I finally
connected this whole mess to the advent of Ambien, I immediately stopped its
use, and rode out the 2 or 3 days it took to start to stabilize sleep again.
As bad as I felt at the very end with such sleep deprivation, I noticed the
depression start to lift and that encouraged me to hang in there. I can only
guess how someone with a history of depression might respond to this drug."

Hope it works out for you, Sid. Keep an eye peeled for signs of depression.

Kathie Tollifson
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