A Really Good Day(29)

Still, despite the delight I’m taking in this early morning solitude, I am worried about how little I’m sleeping. Though the protocol warns that some people require a sleep aid, I am loath to get back into a habit I worked so hard to kick.

Some of my earliest memories are of lying beneath my scratchy polyester quilt, my head balanced on a pillow at once lumpy and hard, staring at the blades of yellow street light slicing between the slats of the mini-blinds that inadequately covered my window. I fought hard to keep from looking at the glow of my flip clock, but the numbers would drop with an audible flop, reducing one by one the possibility of getting enough accumulated minutes of sleep before the radio buzzed static and KISS-FM.

That lasted my entire life, until I discovered Ambien. That’s when everything changed. I would climb into bed and pop a pill, and the lights would go out with a snap. Sometimes the metaphorical lights went out even before the actual ones. My husband, coming in from work at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m., would find me, lights blazing, glasses on, book in hand, snoring away.

I loved that drug so much, even if some of the side effects were, well, disconcerting. Jet lag rendered me impervious to the effects of a single Ambien pill, so when I was traveling I would often allow myself a second one, and sometimes, my judgment impaired, even a third. It turns out there’s a reason the correct dosage is five to ten milligrams. The following text stream, reproduced verbatim, illustrates what happens when you take thirty milligrams:


You love m me right?




YES




Our kids are goog. We did ik




Okay, Ambien typing




If I die too ire il be ins rigyra




Put screen away




Sex in nit sir. Very sky adequate




Stop. Turn off phone and you will be asleep in 5




You talk me. Before you I was imonible. Now in on accordion monorail




HONEY TURN OFF YOUR PHONE NOW




Income home tomorrow




Please, darling. I am begging you. If you love me, turn off your devices, pick up your book, and read. Screens activate




Hiccups





Bad enough sending such gobbledygook to my husband, but once I took two Ambien on a red-eye to London and decided that a very beautiful and accomplished actress friend would make the ideal wife for my husband and stepmother for my kids in the event that the plane plummeted into the Atlantic. I texted her a long set of unfortunately too-coherent instructions on how she should go about taking my place.

Worse than making me a late-night idiot, Ambien made me depressed, though I did not recognize this correlation until I finally stopped taking the drug. Only in retrospect did I appreciate how much gloomier I was the day after I’d taken an Ambien. It also played havoc with my memory. This, too, took a while to realize, masked as it was by the fact that since having children I have experienced an overall decline in memory. For years I blamed my failure to remember simple events—whereas once I’d effortlessly memorized long mnemonics for things like the Rules of Evidence—on pregnancy brain, or lactation fuzzies, or on the myriad distractions of a large family, but now I realize that Ambien was at least partially at fault. Short-term memory loss is a recognized side effect of the drug. Even worse, studies show that, though Ambien might actually help in the consolidation of long-term memories, that effect is true only for bad experiences.*1 Ambien, which makes you forget everything else, actually sharpens your recall of unpleasant emotions and events. Like I needed any help with that.

The six years I relied on Ambien were the first six years of my youngest child’s life, and I have heartbreakingly few memories of that time. Worse, those I do have are all too often unhappy. What if that period of my life was characterized not only by the unhappiness and mood swings that I recall, but also by periods of contentment, even joy, that I have lost like digital photos on a crashed computer? What if Ambien has warped my perception of the extent of my unhappiness, causing me to forget happiness and remember only misery? Wouldn’t that almost be sadder than never having been happy at all?

Kicking the Ambien habit was hell. I lay in bed night after night, rolling from side to side, flinging the covers off, pulling them back up, longing for a pill, my Nightly Roll Call of Anxieties studded with entries like “You’ll never sleep again” and “You’re a pathetic drug addict.” I felt like I was trying to break free from an addiction, though my doctor had promised me that Ambien was not habit-forming. Even now, when I search for research on the topic, I am reassured that he was correct—when, that is, the drug is used correctly. But how non-habit-forming can a non-habit-forming drug be if the non-habit-forming drug has you forming a habit where you’re taking enough to form a habit?

Indeed, my experience with Ambien doesn’t rise to the level of the accepted definition of drug dependence. I did not experience a “preoccupation with a desire to obtain and take the drug, and persistent drug-seeking behavior.”*2 But, then, I always had a prescription bottle in my medicine cabinet, refilled automatically through the mail every three months. I ran out of toilet paper more often than I ran out of Ambien. On the rare occasions when my pharmacy failed me, I experienced a pang of concern, but that was immediately remedied by a call to my doctor. A heroin addict with a bucket full of dope on her nightstand wouldn’t need to engage in “persistent drug-seeking behavior,” either.