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# Are Your Sleeping Pills Causing "Night Eating"
- URL: https://www.foodconsumer.org/sleeping_pills_0923140121/
- Published: 2014-09-23T14:19:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-15T14:25:35.000Z
- Description: The FDA has warned about Ambien hangovers, sedation and dangerous driving and recommended lower doses. Users report driving, eating, sexting and online shopping during Ambien blackouts, extending America's long attachment to sleeping pills back to the barbiturates of the 1960s.
- Author: Food Consumer
- Tags: Drug, Health News, #vivvo-import

It has been several years since the bloom fell off the rose of Ambien, the blockbuster sleeping pill. Recently, the[ FDA](http://www.fda.gov/drugs/drugsafety/ucm334033.htm?ref=foodconsumer.org) has warned about Ambien hangovers, sedation and the risk of dangerous driving and recommended lower doses. The FDA warnings came a year after Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and former wife of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, was arrested for what was believed to be [Ambien-inebriated](http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/kerry-kennedy-acquitted-drugged-driving-article-1.1706141?ref=foodconsumer.org) driving. The arrest came six years after her cousin, former Rhode Island Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy, son of Sen. Edward Kennedy, was also involved in an apparent [Ambien-related](http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=1927026&ref=foodconsumer.org) traffic mishap.

After Rep. Kennedy's crash, as stories of [more bizarre behavior](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/health/14sleep.html?pagewanted=all%E2%80%8E&ref=foodconsumer.org) on the sleeping pill surfaced, Ambien's manufacturer Sanofi-Aventis, was forced to launch an [ad campaign](http://mywebsite.register.com/db5/00405/rentherapy.com/%5Fdownload/AmbienSalesDrop.pdf?ref=foodconsumer.org) telling people if they were going to take Ambien, to get in bed and stay there. (Or you'll "break out in handcuffs" as the joke goes.) Reports of driving, eating, sex and other "wakeful" behavior in Ambien blackouts proliferated.

Under the influence of Ambien, people say they have sexted married friends, drawn penises in the middle of their handwriting, ordered expensive and unwanted items online and one person "tried to legally change my name on the computer." One woman I interviewed drank an entire bottle of black shoe polish under the influence of Ambien. Tiger Woods [reportedly used](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/09/the-big-sleep-2?ref=foodconsumer.org) it for sex. Dieters report being horrified at the type and amount of foods consumed during an Ambien blackout.

Americans have always loved their sleeping pills. In the late 1960s, Jacqueline Susann's novel *Valley of the Dolls* about the addiction of beautiful people to "dolls" or barbiturates was made into a blockbuster movie by the same name starring Sharon Tate, Barbara Parkins and Patty Duke. In the movie, Sharon Tate commits suicide on sleeping pills, an eerie foreshadowing of her death the following year by the Manson gang. Marilyn Monroe's death was also attributed to barbiturates.

When Dalmane and Halcion debuted in the next decades, they were thought to be safer than "dolls" but were they? Dalmane, the first drug in the benzodiazepine (Valium, Xanax) family to be explicitly approved for sleep was launched by Hoffmann-La Roche in 1970\. But by 2001, government officials with the National Transportation Safety Board at FDA hearings said the drug was [likely to](http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/01/Dec01/122101/01N-0397%5Ftr00001%5F111401.htm?ref=foodconsumer.org) “increase the risk of an injurious accident more than five times normal,” foreshadowing the Ambien problems to come and eroding the drug's popularity.

This summer, a new sleeping pill was launched which makers hope will put America to sleep. Belsomra, from Merck, just approved in August may cost as much as $350 to $450 for 30 tablets, speculates [one source](http://frugalnurse.com/2014/08/belsomra-really-need-another-sleeping-pill/?ref=foodconsumer.org) but many are hoping it is an Ambien without the side effects. Getting the drug approved was not easy for Merck but it persevered, said the [*New Yorker,*](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/09/the-big-sleep-2?ref=foodconsumer.org) hoping the drug will make billions as a blockbuster.

But there are already questions about the new sleeping drug and they are not just about its costs, as co-pays are seen to be increasing under some health plans. The drug, suvorexant, impaired next-day driving in subjects at a 20 mg dose so it was approved for a 10 mg dose. But, *at the 10 mg dose, there is little evidence it works,* say pharmaceutical reporters. Needless to say, patients will be tempted to up their dose and incur the dangerous sedation they are supposed to avoid. Will that lead to sexting married friends, drinking shoe polish and worse?

(Martha Rosenberg)