Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I enjoyed the reality of it. I also enjoyed the idea that readers are shocked ... SHOCKED ... by a woman who accepts gifts from a snotty rich boyfriend. Grow up.
I agree that the writing of this piece is particularly gag-worthy and self-involved (alas! what's a fast-lane gorgesso whip-smart-yet-vulnerable girl to do?). Ach.
And I agree that one must--in the best of all possible worlds populated with well-adjusted, high-on-life types--always follow one's prescriptions to the letter and heed the cautions.
However.
Ambien-cum-alcohol is a weirdly compelling combo, which I explored briefly in an insomniac period. I stopped when, one night, unable to fall asleep despite the mixture, I started hallucinating. My computer screen started doing weird stuff, and when I glanced down at the yellow pages on the floor of my home office, I saw that the little insurance salespeople on the back cover ad were waving at me. Hey! How ya doin'? I wasn't scared, just fascinated.
I stopped mixing my drugs then and there. For what it's worth (not much, I know).
I thought it was a good article, and funny, which maybe it was supposed to be.
The local media just did a story on driving while on Ambien, and evidently there are a lot of cases of blackout driving occurring under Ambien- without alcohol. (Disclaimer: I never watch TV news but was hooking up my mother's new computer for her, and caught it.)
Funny how we have pro drug company shills posting letters blaming everybody but the company. However, it is well known that people are paid to do this by corporations and the GOP. Perhaps Salon needs to restrict letter posting to Premium Members, at least then they could make some money off these shills.
So Tessa revealed parts of herself - I always thought good writing was supposed to do that. She has money/lives in a moneyed world. Let's poop all over her and call her a skank. What the hell is that? Money happens. If someone handed you money, you'd be all pissed off and tell them to shove it? Fine. Just make sure you send it to me.
And as far as 'did she write the bio herself' and the apologist's need to assure everyone Tessa probably didn't. Yes, she probably did. In indie filmmaking you do everything yourself. That said - why shouldn't she write about her life? It's. Her. Life. No one told her she was supposed to be mortified by her own existence. Good thing you set her straight. I assume she'll hang her head in shame from here on out.
To DSK. Ambien is not a benzodiazepine. It is related, but should still not be mentioned in the same breath as Xanax. It does not have the anti-seizure or muscle-relaxing component of the traditional benzos, is mainly a hypnotic, and is far less dangerous on the whole than that other noxious class of sedatives.
I have tried all the sleeping medications; my insomnia yields to few effective treatments. My physician pulled me off of Ambien immediately after I told her I'd stayed up late talking with my boyfriend and had no memory of it the next day. No abuse, no mixing, just plain old black outs. This is not an uncommon action of taking the drug. Neither is its addictive powers, which were originally denied when it first hit the market. (The commercials on TV now stress that ALL sleeping medications can be habit forming, but originally they explicitly claimed that Ambien wasn't. My physician told me it produced some of the most immediate and severe cravings she'd seen -- she pulled ALL of her patients off of it.) It's a lovely drug, subjectively -- the sleep is terrific, it has no hangover, and it produces a sweet euphoria before dropping off. Too bad that it's really dangerous, objectively. How did it get through to the market without these effects being noticed? How is it that physicians keep pushing it? Oh wait, we know the answers to these questions, don't we?
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.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
