Sleep drug causes ‘sleep driving’?

AADT have some intriguing coverage on recent concerns that popular sleep drug Ambien is linked to ‘sleep driving’ and ‘sleep eating’ in some people.

The issue has recently been covered by the New York Times owing to the increase in people who have had the drug detected in their body by toxicology tests after “bizarre” road traffic accidents.

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.

The woman, whose lawyer says she previously had a pristine traffic record, eventually pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of careless driving after the prosecutors partly accepted her version of events, said the lawyer, Lloyd L. Boyer.

A further article from the NYT examines a recent study which looked at Ambien users who seemed to compulsively eat while asleep.

Although sleep-walking and related behaviours and relatively common, some researchers suspect that the drug may make them more likely, although no clear explanation for why this might happen is available.

Link to ‘Dangers Begin to Surface for Sleep Drugs’ from AADT.
Link to NYT article ‘Some Sleeping Pill Users Range Far Beyond Bed’ (reg free link).
Link to NYT article ‘Study Links Ambien Use to Unconscious Food Forays’ (reg free link).