Question by mocean: What are the symptoms and effects of staying awake on sleeping pills?
My grandmother insists that she needs sleeping pills yet stays awake on them. When she does this she eats a lot, gets on the computer, watches tv, and she doesn’t remember any of it in the morning. Is this bad for her health? I believe she uses ambien? I’ve heard that staying awake on sleeping pills is similar to the effects of drugs. Is this proven?
Best answer:
Answer by Kris
Grandma is using them to get high! haha.
I do that sometimes, if your body has a tolerance to them you stay awake but buzzed. Granny is probably saying, oh they take awhile to kick in etc.. she is a fibber! she likes to relax. She needs to just drink a beer instead of the sleeping pills.
Is she really hurting anyone? it really shouldn’t hurt her health wise unless she is on other meds and they shouldn’t be mixed.
She should just go to Doctor, and have them prescribe her a mild ant anxiety med instead.
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Amnesia is definitely a symptom of staying awake on sleeping pills. It is not good at all. She should not take them UNTIL she is ready to go to sleep. Good luck trying to tell her to stop. Most older folks don’t really like to be told anything by those younger than themselves.
You can hallucinate, feel relaxed and/or do a bunch of shit and don’t remember doing it. It’s not healthy but I doubt you can convence her to stop.
Yes, this is definitely Ambien.
When you take Ambien, it can be hard to actually ‘feel’ tired. If you don’t take it when you’re in bed with the lights out, you won’t really feel tired (and it works pretty fast). You actually feel energetic–you want to talk, to eat (in particular), to wander, to watch TV, to go on the computer…
For lots of people, this is completely involuntary. However, some people DO abuse it–it’s called “Ambotripping.”
It’s dangerous mostly because you are pretty unsteady when you take a pill (especially Ambien.) Older people are unsteady anyway, and taking Ambien could make her so unsteady that she falls (which is really dangerous when she’s older.)
You should talk to her about this. There are ways to prevent it (like taking it while in bed.) There are also many other sleeping pills out there.
I take an anti psychotic that works like a tranquilizer, so it makes me pretty tired, but sometimes I can’t fall asleep for a while after I take them. When this happens, I eat a lot, I zone out, sometimes get cranky and If I watch a movie that night, sometimes the next day I can’t remember how the movie ended. So yeah, I do believe this is simialar to drugs. Your gram is basically tranquilized, kind of like a walking zombie. Some days I’m so messed up from my xanax and other medications, I’m like in a complete daze, and I can’t really remember what happened the next day. The only concern I’d really have is her memory loss, and of course her liver. Some medications can be very damaging to the organs