Zolpidem

Zolpidem

X drove his car with both right wheels on the pavement until it was blocked by a bucket. He was found asleep shortly after the accident. When awake, he responded coherently to anyone who came to him, but one chance would be enough and he would fall asleep again. Hours later he was able to stay awake in the hospital. He hadn’t consumed alcohol, and there was nothing wrong with his exams. His wife suspects he took more than one zolpidem pill overnight.

Y was about to move to another city for a new job, forced to leave without her family. Worried, she no longer slept at night. His doctor neighbor prescribed him zolpidem to solve the nocturnal problem. From then on, after the first few minutes of sleep, he would get up and go shopping online, mostly for ugly and expensive shoes. She was convinced that she was the nocrime consumer and not a criminal when her husband showed her on video squandering her credit.

Z prides itself on a very healthy diet. But he was anxious and faced many family difficulties. She became sleepless and resorted to zolpidem. Since then, he’s been waking up in the early hours of the morning and gorging himself on greasy food, even talking with his mouth full. But the other day he doesn’t remember anything.

The drug zolpidem hit the market in the 1980s after clinical tests confirmed its effectiveness against insomnia and also indicated that the drug was not addictive, nor was it a morning tranquilizer and no one would ever abuse it. Miraculously, the drug was the opposite of everything pharmacies sold for insomnia until then. That’s how it won the hearts, I mean the minds of the people and the market, with more than 10 million recipes/year in the US. In France, zolpidem was the most commonly prescribed drug.

A success that gained additional charm. In 1999, the world’s most influential medical journal, The New England Journal of Medicine, published a letter from Roman Catholic University physicians describing a patient with a rare, incurable and fatal disease, progressive supranuclear palsy, whose symptoms were caused by zolpidem were alleviated. The same magazine published a new letter in 2004, this time from Paris’s Hospital de la Salpêtrière, reporting that the drug made a man talk again after a cerebral infarction had left him almost completely silent. In 2000, another magic, the drug, woke a person from a coma.

But if there is no saint who specializes in granting miracles for every request, poor zolpidem, it is just another means of testifying that medicine should be humble, not stubborn, in the face of certain fates. The biochemical wonders of the hypnotic, aside from insomnia, have not been replicated in other experiments. The neurologist writing here tried but was unsuccessful.

Miracles lost their appeal while here and there a sin was exposed. Tolerance induction was a deficiency that the drug allegedly lacked. However, medical reports have indicated that some people have taken 20, 30, or 100 times the maximum recommended dose. Some of them suffered convulsions when not taking the drug for a single night, in open and severe withdrawal. And paradoxically, when taken in high doses, zolpidem can induce euphoria and becomes a recreational drug.

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Growing experience with zolpidem has made it clear that the drug can cause hallucinations, delusions, amnesia, and complex sleep behaviors such as driving, eating, shopping, cooking, having sex while you sleep. In January 2013, the FDA warned of the risk of morning cognitive impairment after overnight use, a statement that the drug may cause morning sedation effects contrary to what was originally thought.

Insomnia is a problem that affects many people, and it takes a heavy toll. Against this misadventure, cognitive behavioral therapy is the first choice. Nonetheless, zolpidem is still an alternative to consider.

References:

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