Ambien: That's why he (Rep. Kennedy) was so weird acting...

He had a bad combination of medications. There is proof of his prescriptions. It actually makes complete sense if you remember the recent reporting on Ambien zombies. Yikes! That poor fella. Here is the story:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1153AP_Patrick_Kennedy.html



I think we dodged a bullet, thank God!

I'm just sayin'.

Never heard of that one. Ambien may make you a bit spacey, but it ain't gonna make you think you have to vote at 3 in the morning, crash into a cruiser and then a barrier. (if that's what is still the current story. I read it earlier and don't know if there have been updates.)

Anyone know anything about the reactions of phenergan?

I know nothing about.

Here is a Washington Post article on this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/13/AR2006031301317.html

The frequencies of incidents are so miniscule in comparison to the amount of people who have prescriptions.

I want to know about the effects of the phenergen.

I don't know what happened last night with this and I hope it wasn't because he was drinking. There may be other explanations. But I ain't buyin the Ambien one.

the least, possible. plausible, who knows?

my view: if they are going to charge kennedy, then somebody had DAMNED sure better charge cheney (and yes, I know, different states, different jurisdictions) but nobody got hurt in kennedy's case, did they?

But am amazed they didn't do field sobriety tests.

and didn't do a sobriety test, but he wasn't really drunk, just whacked out because of medication mix.

things at night that I had no memory. Even get up and chat with the kids, eat and drink (juice) and have no memory and accuse them of ganging up on me for accusing me of doing and sayings things I "knew" I never said or did. Ha!

When I got up and put the oven cleaner on that was broken and it ran all night...it scared the sh** out of me. I was afraid I could burn the house down etc. Never took it again!

There are people who live near the Capitol in Washington in an area called Capitol Hill.

Some people DO suffer those effects. I am related to one. And Patrick Kennedy, with his gastrointestinal problems, may well have "leaky gut syndrome" which means that medication is going to have different effects on him than on the average person.

the possible side effects are being exaggerated (way overdramatized). You do realize that the vast majority of side effects are not reported to drug companies? And that a lot less testing is done these days before drugs are released on the market?

i don't know what the other drug is but i guarantee there are MANY people whose physiology is effed by ambien

i'm guessing you're not a frequent flyer, every ff-er knows a bunch of people or has himself a personal story abt a bad reaction, this drug can be v. v. different from person to person


it was the ambien

the poor man is hosed, he has admitted to using a drug know to cause this effect and it is illegal to drive while under the influence of a mind-altering drug

RX drug or not, it makes no nevermind

And it is proven more times than naught that certain medicines effect people differently, I personaly have never had a problem with Ambien and had found it to be a godsend at one time when I used it.

A friend was on it and I woke up to find in thier pajamas and half suit getting ready to go to work - at 4am.

morning, then I'd give it some credence.

I've even woken up sometimes at that time disoriented and thinking I needed to get ready for work, before Ambien was ever even on the market.

But to think you were late for a vote, drive, crash into a cruiser and into a barricade I just ain't buyin it.

Ambien has its side effects, granted. It can cause some memory loss and disorientation. I personally love the medication and find those effects copeable. But no way in hell I believe they were responsible for what happened last night.

but many people have woken up in stores, in their cars or a variety of odd places.

Don't know that was his issue, hope so. But you can't dismiss Ambien issues as MSM hype because you don't have issues.

.1% have issues as bad as sleep walking or driving, and many of them may have had nada to do with ambien. This is just the new bandwagon drama of the year, overhyping the side effects. The incidents are so few in comparison to the amount of people taking the medicine, and even fewer when other factors such as alcohol, dosage, and other ignored recommendations are considered, that through all the facts presented in the articles I still consider the medication to be practically harmless.

This just sounds like an easy out to me, that's all. And I can't stand when people jump on overblown reports to overdramatize something. "OMG, did you hear what that ambien does?". Yeah, I have. It helps millions of people with sleep disorders.

"millions and millions"? We don't have a system in this country for reporting all the after-market side effects that occur, so how the heck would we know?

there to stop him! So I think your standard is a little high.

The point is that , while under the influence of Ambien, people can walk around, operate machinery, open doors, and speak -- which can result in some very weird things happening, because it's like they're awake and dreaming at the same time. I have personally been a witness to this, and so I would be loathe to take that med.

have been on the news

stories like this one in fact, people driving in their sleep from Ambien

Maybe Kennedy was having a nightmare about that sort of GOP tricks again on important votes. ;)

Oh, and there has been a bit of very bad news about the odd things Ambien has done to some people. Evidently, many experience weight gain. Turns out they are up in the middle of the night cooking and eating, none of which they recall next day.

Some people have atypical reactions to many chemicals and drugs. And this drug seems to have a lot of odd effects on many.

on Ambien, cleaning out their refrigerators (eating everything inside) while on Ambien, etc. My mother would wake up about 4 a.m., disoriented, calling us and asking where she was. The instructions with the med say never to take it unless you know you can get a full night's sleep. But some people wake up before this happens, and do crazy things while under the influence.

So I think his story could very well be true.

by patients on Ambien.

As I said in my post downthread, I used to cut the pill into 1/4 because if I took anymore than that I could literally fall asleep sitting up. It is excellent for quelling nausea and vomitting. I guess it could work pretty well if you were going to go on a long plane ride and needed to sleep sitting up.

I took it for anti-nausea. It made me wicked loopy and very sleepy. I can't imagine mixing it with Ambien.

just sayin

I had been reading about these 'ambien zombies' and now it happened to a congressman?!

I DON'T think he overdid it on the Phenergan (promethazine)...if he did, he'd be near-comatose, NOT driving.

I'm a big guy, around 240 pounds. I slept all night once, woke up with the pukes...took one-half a promethazine (total 12.5 mg) and slept the REST OF THE DAY!

But it's all in your TOLERANCE! My mother weighed about 97 pounds soaking wet and she could take one and function totally normal. But who knows, each body can react different ways. For instance, I got totally SMASHED the first time a dentist shot me up with novocaine. I'm apparenty a VERY happy drunk! ;)

FYI: I personally have not heard of ONE 'Ambien Zombie.' And we sell a crapload of it. But less since every insurance company makes the doctor call for "Prior Auth" for it. Hmmm. Great, NOW they can say it's a safety issue instead of 'we're too damn CHEAP to cover it!'

You have great points about individual differences in tolerances to medications -- it always amazes me that one doze (pill size) is supposed to fit all adults. We know that there are male/female reaction differences to meds -- and some even have a racial difference.

I need a double dose of novocaine -- and it wears off very quickly. Good dentists know this and can adjust the dosage as needed.

Actually, thanks for your whole post. It was fact based, insightful and helpful. :)

hours or so and acting nutty (calling us or 911 to ask where she was, etc). They switched her to Benadryl and she was fine again.

When my dad was in the hospital (and on Phenergan), he called my mom in the middle of the night and said that he was "trapped in a model home" and would she please come and get him!! Somehow, he was aware enough to remember his phone number and make a phone call, yet totally out of it.

Then when they put him on Thorazine for his hiccups, he acted so bizarrely that they thought he had a stroke (they did a CAT scan and found that he didn't).

It just goes to show how different people are in their reactions to drugs!

but I don't remember the details -- I just made a mental note never to take it!

"trapped in a model home" -- LOL

is a drug which makes other drugs stronger and more effective. I don't know if they still do but we used to give Demerol and Phenergan for pain. I've read a great deal about Ambien and I would say that Ambien and Phenergan might do terrible things to you.

Goddammit!

Nobody here knows anything for a FACT and just saying you don't "believe" it is possible, even though it's been widely reported, isn't any more logical than believing the guy until proven otherwise.

So there.

What you said! One of the posters on this thread sounds "happy" that Uncle Ted's son may be in trouble!! What's that shit all about!! You know who I'm referring to!:eyes: P.S. It must be nice to know everything about everything, but still have no proof or facts to back ya up!!

Don't you believe it.

Even if it can be proven beyond a shadow of medical doubt that this is what caused Kennedy's behavior, you can count that, by the end of the week, the "another Kennedy caught driving drunk" meme will be firmly planted in conventional wisdom (with the help of the conservative noise machine, of course).

You'll have as much of a chance of eradicating that as you will of convincing people that Al Gore didn't claim to have "invented the Internet." :eyes:

Last I heard it reported they didn't know. I quit listening to reports earlier.

I hope if this is true they did test him for drinking or rumors won't stop.

I guess it really does stick. It will be the pukes Cheney conspiracy.

Users beware. The drug companies will happily kill you off at any rate that they can get away with.

It's not clear how common this side effect is -- sleep-walking and sleep-eating and sleep-f***ing seem to be more frequent. But a few cases make this danger clear. There may be many more undocumemnted cases, since testing for Ambien is not standard procedure in investigating cases like when (as seen on the local news recently all too frequently) some driver gets on a freeway in the wrong direction and ends up in a fatal head-on crash.

From the NYTimes:

Doctors affiliated with the University of Minnesota Medical Center who have studied Ambien recently reported the cases of two users who told doctors they sleep-drove to the supermarket while under the drug's influence. Neither of the patients remembered the episode the next day, according to Dr. Carlos Schenck, an expert in sleep disorders who is the lead researcher in the study.

"Luckily, neither of them got hurt," said Dr. Schenck, who added that sleep-driving — which really occurs in a twilight state between sleep and wakefulness — was more common than people generally suspect. He said he believed that Ambien was an excellent sleep agent, but that patients need to be better warned about its potential side effects.

The traffic cases around the country include that of Dwayne Cribb, a longtime probation and parole officer in Rock Hill, S.C. Mr. Cribb says he remembers nothing after taking Ambien before bed last Halloween — until he awoke in jail to learn he had left his bed and gone for a drive, smashed into a parked van and driven away before crashing into a tree. Mr. Cribb is still facing charges of leaving the scene of an accident.

A registered nurse who lives outside Denver took Ambien before going to sleep one night in January 2003. Sometime later — she says she remembers none of the episode — she got into her car wearing only a thin nightshirt in 20-degree weather, had a fender bender, urinated in the middle of an intersection, then became violent with police officers, according to her lawyer.

More at: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/08/business/08ambien.html?ex=1299474000&en=17c799814d697014&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

the same New York Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/08/business/08ambien.html?ex=1299474000&en=17c799814d697014&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

"In some state toxicology laboratories Ambien makes the top 10 list of drugs found in impaired drivers. Wisconsin officials identified Ambien in the bloodstreams of 187 arrested drivers from 1999 to 2004."

SNIP

"While alcohol and other drugs are sometimes also involved in the Ambien traffic cases, the drivers tend to stand out from other under-the-influence motorists. The behavior can include driving in the wrong direction or slamming into light poles or parked vehicles, as well as seeming oblivious to the arresting officers, according to a presentation last month at a meeting of forensic scientists.

"These cases are just extremely bizarre, with extreme impairment," said Laura J. Liddicoat, the forensic toxicology supervisor at a state-run lab in Wisconsin who made the presentation."

(i.e., "take it, go to sleep") can lead to "crazy" and dangerous behavior. With other meds, booze, etc, which warn against driving or "operating heavy equipment" while under the influence, the impaired driver can at least be held responsible for the impaired driving. But the user of Ambien gets put into these dangerous situations when all they did was lie down in bed and fall asleep.

should have been able to sleep for the 8 hours. BUT instead she woke up after 4 hours, still under the influence, but walking around and doing stuff. Thank goodness she didn't try to drive!

On Edit: Even reading the article further, its not exactly conclusive. That doesn't mean this couldn't happened to Kennedy.

a lot earlier than they used to -- so the final stage of testing basically occurs while the new drug is on the open market. That's why there are so many more drug recalls these days. At the same time, however, there isn't a systematic way for people to report complications.

So anybody who's taking a new drug (under 5 years, sometimes even older than that) is being a guinea pig for the drug companies.

She and her husband both took one and lay down for a nap...woke up in the morning realizing they'd both dreamed of a rather...interesting...sexual encounter, an activity they would not normally have engaged in, let's say; except certain things led them to realize it hadn't been a dream at all.

:rofl:

I worked nights (11 pm - 7 am) in a hospital. The evening nurses would hand out the Ambien (5 mg, not 10) at around 9 pm. So by about midnight or so each of these women (who were in their 60s or so) had gotten out of bed and gone wandering in the hallways. In so doing, they each had ripped the IVs out of their arms.

Blood everywhere!! The beds had to be totally re-made. The floor had to be cleaned (and as housekeeping wasn't available, this too became yet another nursing responsibility). And, of course, the IVs had to be re-started.

These women were TOTALLY out of it.

When I told this to the head nurse in the morning, I figured that for sure they would stop giving the Ambien to people "of a certain age."

Yeah, right.

the FDA?

They have no idea how many adverse effects there are, 'cause there's no easy way to count them.

I don't care if he was drunk or messed up from medication. Maybe it's just the mood I'm in but I couldn't give a flying fuck about this when people are dying in Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, and war with Iran is getting closer to being a reality. Am I the only that thinks this way? If this comes up in conversation, I'll be changing the subject to something that actually matters. I hope other people do the same.
"Hey did you hear what that Kennedy did?"
"Yeah. Did you hear that almost 40 fucking thousand civilians have been killed in Iraq, all for nothing?"

so it doesn't hurt for us to have a response.

and it makes you extremely drowsy. I used to cut the pill into 1/4 because if I took more than that I could literally fall asleep sitting up.

maybe "we" dodged a bullet but this poor man is effed

ambien apparently inteferes w. yr ability to make decisions but under our laws if you drive under the influence it doesn't quite matter if you were on a prescribed drug -- what matters is that he acknowledges being under the influence

i think they should take it off the market frankly since people who would otherwise never harm anyone are put in a position where they have no ability to control themselves

killed her boyfriend ... just providing some balance.

They gave it to him when he was in the hospital for a bowel obstruction. It affected him terribly--his breathing was labored, he had weird facial and arm movements, he was totally out of it--even talking to people that weren't there (and he is normally a very sharp guy). I had to be pretty forceful to make the doctor take him off of it, but since I was with him all the time, I could see that he had a bad reaction to it every time they gave it to him.

I know it doesn't affect everyone like this, but some people are very sensitive to these types of drugs. In fact, I did quite a bit of research because my dad had terrible reactions to several of the drugs he was given in the hospital: Phenergan and Reglan for the stomach problems, and also Thorazine for the hiccups. I found that all three of these drugs are in a family that can cause something called "Tardive Dyskinesia side effects" in some people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardive_dyskinesia

Here's what I found just now under side effects of Phenergan (from http://www.drugs.com/phenergan.html):

I posted this in another thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1107918&mesg_id=1108298

We threw out his Phenergran after that first dose.

Your dad is lucky that you threw it out after the first dose. It took several doses (and quite a bit of research on the web) before I figured out that this was a dangerous side effect of the drug. And the doctor kept trying to tell me that the Phenergan was perfectly safe. It's so important to have a loved one with you in the hospital to keep an eye out for drug reactions. I truly believe that my dad would have died if they continued giving him the Phenergan--mainly because of the breathing problems.

reactions do occur, they discount them or attribute them to something else. Thus, they continue to believe the drug never causes bad effects.

One of my children had a vaccine reaction that last more than a week. The doctor insisted the cause had to be something else -- because the vaccine's reactions never lasted more than 48 hours. Of course he DID NOT report my child's unusual reaction, so the FDA wasn't given the info that an unexpected reaction had occurred. Multiply this by thousands or millions and this is what happens. The same thing happens with drugs.

After this happened to my child, my mother told me that a perfectly healthy baby sister of mine had died the day after that same vaccine. Of course, that wasn't officially a vaccine reaction either. Hah!