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• Friday, March 10, 2006 06:21 AM

  Who cares about the morality, or money, of the writer?

  So many people are missing the point of this story.

  I don't care if the writer was a selfish bitch or a trust fund baby or whatever. The interesting thing here is that, under the influence of a drug, her boyfriend turned into a completely different person -- *and she couldn't tell* except by comparing it to his usual behavior. Normally, drugs that affect our personalities so dramatically, in such a short period of time, and which generate amnesia, are obvious. If someone's drunk enough that they won't remember what they did in the morning, you know it from talking to them. If someone's done enough pot that it affects their personality and behavior, you can tell. Drugs that have a long-term slow effect on personality like the SSRI's don't cause amnesia. But apparently Ambien and alcohol radically alter who someone is, in a way that records the memories so the later self can't get at them -- very similar, in fact, to the experiences of people diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, commonly referred to as "multiple personalities" -- and those closest to them *can't tell* just from the behavior. They have to observe over time that it happens in response to a drug and that then there's amnesia -- it isn't obvious the way alcohol is.

  This is fascinating and frightening. It implies that who we are, our personalities, the self we think we are, is nothing more than a collection of chemicals, and altering that balance can actually turn us into someone else. I wonder if Sam could remember, under the influence of Ambien, the other incidents that had occurred under Ambien. I wonder how consistent his "Ambien-and-booze" identity was, and whether his amnesia really was so thorough or whether embarrassment made it convenient for him to forget (if he was naturally a cold, prickly person, turning into a snugglebunny would probably be a bit humiliating.) I wonder if the writer really could see signs that the guy was drugged up and just pretended to herself that she couldn't, or whether she was truly incapable of seeing any effect from the Ambien cocktail except for the more affectionate behavior.

  Yes, it's insanely stupid to take any sleeping pill with alcohol, but traditionally the effect, with barbituate (sp?) sleeping pills, is that you don't wake up in the morning. Ambien doesn't seem to kill you (well, unless you get in a car accident) -- it turns you into someone else, it makes you sleepwalk or hallucinate, it lets you dream without actually turning off your motor cortex, but these are much, much more interesting effects than just putting you in a coma. What this tells us about sleep, and about the true nature of the human psyche, is what fascinates me, and I wouldn't mind seeing more stories like this. Even if they happen to be written by and about self-centered rich people. Self-centered rich people have the same brain wiring the rest of us do, and *that's* what I care about in this anecdote.

  —alarajrogers Read alarajrogers's other letters
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