Confessions of a Sleeping Pill Junkie

Here's a confession of a sleeping pill junkie. She reveals how her secret addiction nearly killed her.

At the peak of my sleep crisis, I was an Olympic endurance insomniac, often awake for 48 hours straight. During those endless stretches of time, I watched TV, called friends in California, whimpered, wept, beat my pillow, flipped through tabloids and surfed the Internet. I didn’t write, though I am a writer — I wasn’t capable of forming thoughts, much less sentences. So by the time I turned to the sleep aid Ambien for relief, I was desperate — and primed to become an addict.

And I started abusing it almost immediately: I ignored the prolific warnings on the package, called multiple doctors to get it, mixed it with alcohol and took more than the prescribed amount. The makers of this drug never intended it to be used in any of those ways. And neither did I.

In the past few years, prescription drug abuse has been all over the news: Eminem went to rehab for an addiction to sleeping pills in 2005; John Stamos gave a bizarre interview on Australian television that he later blamed on Ambien; and in January Heath Ledger died in a New York City apartment from a lethal mix of painkillers, sleeping pills and antianxiety medication.


When I heard about Ledger’s death, my first thought was, God, how tragic. My second thought: Could that have been me?

My sleep problems started in 1999, when I was 28. I’d taken a job as a secretary at an investment bank and had to be at my desk by 7:30 A.M. Right off I had trouble adjusting to my new schedule. The workdays went by slowly and the evenings all too quickly, and by the time I got into bed, it was often midnight or later. Knowing I could get only six hours of sleep at the most, I would start to panic. Worrying about not sleeping kept me from sleeping, and by the time my alarm clock sounded, I was lucky if I’d gotten four hours. At work I often found myself ducking into a bathroom stall just so I could sit on the toilet and rest my head against the cool metal wall for a few blessed minutes.

This went on for three years, until I left the bank to become a writer. Since I no longer had to get up early, I simply indulged my body’s natural rhythm, staying up most of the night and sleeping until noon. It wasn’t the healthiest lifestyle, but at least I no longer spent my bedtime hours steeped in anxiety, watching the clock. Then in 2004 I was hired by Glamour as an articles editor. During the day I worked without stopping and at night I attended parties and premieres. When I got home, the last thing I wanted to do was go to bed (I needed time to myself!), so I would flip on the TV or talk on the phone, and by the time I meandered into my bedroom, midnight had long passed.

Soon the old insomnia was back — and it was even worse than before. My bed wasn’t a relaxing place to rest my head; it was a torture pen dressed up in a downy comforter and pretty pillows. Desperate for a remedy, I called my mom, a world-class insomniac herself. She told me she’d been taking Ambien — and that it had changed her life. The next time I saw her, she handed me one of her pills. “See if this helps,” she said.

Did it ever. That night, for the first time in years, I fell asleep instantly, awash in the kind of deep, dreamy slumber I hadn’t experienced since childhood. The next day I woke up refreshed. Convinced I’d discovered the Fountain of Sleep, I called my doctor that same day to ask for my own prescription. He gave me 20 five-milligram doses, which I was to take for “occasional sleeplessness.” For the first few weeks, I was especially cautious, breaking the pills in half and restricting my use to Sunday nights only. But soon I found all kinds of excuses to take half a pill in the middle of the week, too: I had an important meeting; I was going to be on deadline the next day; I had a fancy event to attend after work and needed to look my best. The insert that came with the pills clearly stated that they could be addictive, but I told myself it was better to have a mild drug in my system and to sleep than to be “sober” and spend my days exhausted and depleted.


Before long I needed to take a pill every night. If I tried to fall asleep naturally, I would have what’s called “rebound insomnia,” meaning I would be up all night as a result of taking the drug the night before. Watching the clock creep around to 5 A.M., 6 A.M., then 6:30 A.M., I couldn’t stand it anymore — I would pop a pill, drifting off for an hour and a half until my alarm sounded.

I began running out of my monthly supply of Ambien after 20 days or so. When my doctor wouldn’t renew my prescription before 30 days, I found a second doctor and had him call my prescription in to a different pharmacy. Already deep in denial, I didn’t think “doctor shopping” was illegal (it is) or even a bad idea; I simply thought of myself as stockpiling much-needed supplies. I also didn’t confide in friends about my growing dependence on the drug; I didn’t want to hear any levelheaded suggestions about “switching to warm milk” or “going to bed at the same time every night” (I’d tried both; neither had worked). Nor did I say a word to the therapist I’d been seeing for more than a year. After all, there were so many more vital things to discuss: job pressures, difficulties I was having with friends, dating woes. Once I met a doctor at a party and said, “I think I’m addicted to Ambien.” He laughed and said, “Are you sleeping well? So you’re addicted — no big deal!” My mind at ease, I continued to pop pills.

I was hardly alone. According to a February 2008 report by IMS Health, a pharmaceutical-industry research firm, pharmacists filled more than 54 million prescriptions for sleep drugs in 2007. That’s up 70 percent from 2002. In 2005 pharmaceutical companies netted more than $2.7 billion from prescription medications for insomnia — and with so many ads for sleeping pills routinely featured on television, those numbers continue to rise. A typical sleep-aid ad shows an attractive couple waking up in the morning, beatific smiles on their faces. Just try telling an insomniac to resist a commercial that promises to deliver the Holy Grail: sleep.

One potential side effect of Ambien is “sleep eating” — the odd practice of preparing and eating food while asleep. That happened to me all the time. I’d wake up to find in my bed cheese and crackers and a sharp knife on a plate (hey, at least I was classy). One morning I wandered into the kitchen to make coffee and discovered a pot of soup over an open flame on the stove. I had no idea how it got there.

Several times I had tried to quit by using sheer willpower: Usually by day three I gave in. “F—k it,” I would say aloud, twisting the cap off the bottle with force and tossing the pills into my mouth. I’d quit at some point in the future: when I didn’t need to get up early for work, when my life became more serene, when I had a husband and kids to take care of. But those things never materialized, and I never stopped.

A year into my job at Glamour, I was promoted to senior writer. My new responsibilities included doing celebrity interviews. Most of these interviews took place in L.A., so I had to travel there about once a month. For as long as I could remember, I’d been afraid of flying, but I wasn’t about to give up the most exciting career opportunity of my life. One day, as I was white-knuckling it through a patch of turbulence, I remembered the Ambien in my overnight case. I’d been taking it every night to sleep — why not to fly? I popped a pill and my fear melted away entirely. I woke up five hours later, just as the wheels touched down on the tarmac. After that I never wanted to fly without Ambien in my system again. But before long it took more than my usual dose to ensure I was out cold, so I upped my “airplane Ambien” to nearly 20 milligrams, quadruple the amount I was supposed to be taking. Once, I woke up to find a flight attendant bent over me, listening to my heart. We’d just landed, and everyone was standing up, collecting their bags. I’d remained slumped in my seat, head lolling forward. Passengers were craning their necks to look at me. When I realized what was happening, I brushed the flight attendant’s hands away. “I’m fine,” I said, annoyed. “I thought you’d stopped breathing,” she said, looking deeply concerned.

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