Ambien Makes Me See Spaceships and Tonka Trucks

It's 5:45 in the morning. 5:45 on a freaking Saturday. I have absolutely no idea why the hell I'm awake and the very fact that I am is just pissing me off at this point.

Here's the thing...I don't sleep. I don't mean I go through boughts of insomnia for a week or two and then everything goes back to normal, I mean I don't sleep. I'll go to bed, sleep for an hour or two and then toss and turn in that annoying half awake, half asleep state for 3 or 4 hours. Usually I finally fall asleep about an hour before that most evil of inventions, the alarm clock, wakes me up.

Those are the good nights. The bad ones are when I have one really bad nightmare after another.

Now, you're probably wondering why someone who has these problems doesn't do the sensible thing and just take a damn sleeping pill. Well...very bad things happen when I do that.

I was going through an unusually bad time with the insomnia a while back. We're talking no sleep, not even a nap for several days. I was loosing my damn mind and so my mother-in-law gave me some Ambein so that I might be able to get some sleep. Now what you need to remember is that this is a woman that regularly takes sleeping pills with a small glass of Congac just about everynight, so she has something of a tolerance. Not to say she's all Judy Garland about it, it seems to work for her, so whatever.

I decide that I'm going to take the pills in the hopes of actually getting a couple of hours of sleep, so I carefully read the prescription bottle. It specifically tells me to take two of the tiny little pills. I remember thinking that perhaps 2 pills might be a bit much, but considering the fact that my mother-in-law is so tiny that I can practically pick her up and put her in my pocket and it was her prescription I was taking, I didn't think it would be a problem.

I take the two pills and Nick runs out to the store for some ice cream and then we were going to watch a movie. He was gone for a total of 15 minutes and by the time he got back, I was cowering on the corner of my couch, my pupils dilated to the size of a dinner plate, telling him that I as afraid of all the people in my apartment and could he please make them stop staring at me.

There was nobody in my apartment. This wasn't good.

After looking around and seeing the Ambien bottle, Nick calls my best fried, Jen (not the one who just got married...this one lives in Louisiana and more stories about her, me and vodka will be forthcoming). You see, Jen's a drug counselor so Nick figured she'd know what to do. I vaguely remember Nick on the phone with Jen, but I was too terrified of the people in my apartment to really pay attention to their conversation. I do remember briefly speaking to Jen, but I couldn't tell you what she said or what I said. I talked to her a couple of days after and she said she couldn't understand a damn word I was saying because I was babbling like a crazy person.

At this point Nick decides it's time to take me to the hospital, something I flat out refused to do. I don't know why, all I know is that there was no way in hell I was going to go to the hospital. Nick told me if I could walk from my bed to the bathroom (about 10 feet) by myself, he wouldn't take me to the hospital. I walked about 2 feet and promptly passed out, crashing head first into the corner of my bed, gashing my head open in the process. Great, now I'm crazy and bleeding profusely.

Nick manages to get me in the car and starts driving to the hospital. I start freaking out in the car because I think I'm seeing one truck after another pass us on the road and was afraid of the little Tonka Trucks that were in front of the big trucks. I have no idea what the hell I was really seeing, but I thought it was some sort of Tonka Truck, Regular Truck parade and this freaked me out.

We get to the ER and there's a bazillion people there. Nick sits me down in the corner of the waiting room and goes to sign me in. He comes back over to where I am and tells me that it's going to be a couple of hours before we get seen by anyone. At this point I'm on another planet.

All of the sudden I start crying hysterically because I'm terrified of the people in the waiting room and am convinced they are all plotting to do something horrible to me. I am seriously cracking up at this point, so Nick calls our friend James who is an EMT. James calls ahead to another hospital in the area and tells them that we're on our way and they need to see me as soon as I get there.

So...back in the car and off to another hospital. I don't remember much of the drive, but apparently I thought I saw a spaceship land in Lake Woodlands and much more crying and freaking out insued. I do remember all the pretty, pretty lights, although I have no idea if they were really there or not.

We get to the hospital and are seen right away. They check me out, give me a tetanus shot and treat the gash on my head and give me a lecture about taking other people's meds. I do remember seeing an elderly man in a wheel chair and trying to engage him in a wheel chair race (yes, they had me in a wheel chair, because I was too fucked up to walk).

Nick gets me home and puts me to bed where I sleep for 18 straight hours, so I guess those pills did their job afterall. I woke up with what can only be described as the worse hangover I've ever had in my life (and that's saying something).

I guess I'm just going to have to live with the fact that I don't sleep since the doctors have expressly forbidden me from ever taking another sleeping pill as long as I live. I just wish there was something I could do that would actually let me sleep and not wake up at 5:45 on a goddamn Saturday.