Ambien Blackout Madness

So I've always been very nocturnal, which means that I suffer from chronic insomnia. After trying everything from meditating and yoga to herbal teas, I just caved and asked my doctor for something to help me sleep at night, and he introduced me to my good friend Ambien.

I had heard the warnings of people who sleepwalk and sleepdrive and sleepeat and laughed, and now I wondered if I could fall into one of those categories. Luckily I don't own a car, so there would be no driving while sleeping for me.

But what did end up happening to me was probably even funnier. The thing is it's not like you're a total zombie, knocked out, when you decide to get up and do these things. You take an Ambien, and in about 15 minutes you start to feel drowsy, but then all of a sudden you have all these awesome ideas/urges of things you want to do right NOW, so you get up and do them.

And they never, ever make sense.

- One time, in the middle of the night, I was hit with the urge to wrote a letter to a friend I had been meaning to write to. The next day I woke up to a page of incoherency that even I couldn't decipher.

- One night, in a fit of anger after I found out that my ex-boyfriend had been a lying, cheating scumbag, I attacked the stuffed frog he had given me for Christmas, and then proceeded to take pictures and send them out to my friends.

The next morning I woke up with no recollection of this and actually screamed when I saw the fuzzy carcass of the frog in my garbage can. The knife had been put away properly but my camera was still out, with all the photos I had taken sent out.

I braced myself for the e-mails of, "S, are you ok? Should we be checking you into the mental institution?", but instead C wrote, "That poor, poor inanimate object. Ha! I'm glad you're feeling better. Love you!"

So I suppose disaster averted on that one.

- One day I was picking up my dry cleaning when a cute guy walked in. Very cute. He was just picking up a shirt and repeated his address and name loudly enough for me to hear and then had to run off. But with this limited information I figured I could at least sit outside his building until he needed to leave. That's not stalking, right?

Fast forward to my nighttime Ambien fix and all of a sudden I have a fabulous idea. I'll write him a NOTE!! Like totally fifth grade. I found some blue stationary and wrote on it, "Dear Joe, We met the other day at the dry cleaner's and I was wondering if you would like to go get coffee sometime. Here's my number." So the note was taken down to his building, and asked to be put in his mailbox.

Fast forward not even a day and he calls. He was only in town for day because he lives in San Diego and the building was his parents' apartment. His mother found the note and asked if she should send it to him, and he said to just read it to him, so his mother heard the entire contents of my note as well. He said it was super sweet, and he'd definitely try to look me up when he was in NY next.

- The worst Ambien Fail I've ever had consisted of J-Boy who I was dating over a year ago, right when I had just started taking the Ambien so I was totally unawares of its varying side effects. We were on the phone late one night and I took my Ambien, and told him i was taking it, and at some point during the conversation, I just blacked out. Apparently I was still talking, making statements, conversing, but I have absolutely zero recollection of this conversation that apparently went oh for hours.

So the next day when I spoke to J-Boy, he kept saying things like, "you know, what you said last night about that," and I'd go "uhhhhhhhhhh" and it kept going like that for a while until I had to be like, "Look J-Boy I'm really sorry but I took an Ambien and totally passed out last night so I have no idea what we talked about.

He got really silent and told me that apparently we'd had a very serious conversation about where things were going with us and and how I was going to meet his family and that we were definitely on the same track fo be exclusive and together in a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship.

So I panicked for about 10 minutes but then did the only thing I could do. I apologized profusely for having blacked out while he was unbearing his soul and making plans for us, but told him that I, sober, non-drugged up, S didn't really feel ready to be having those kinds of conversations and setting up time to meet his family because it was a little too soon.

Needless to say, that relationship crumbled very quickly after that incident.

And created the need for my first rule: no human interaction after I have taken an Ambien. Very quickly followed by: no interaction with my cell phone once I have taken an Ambien.