​In the name of all that is unholy I am giving up Ambien. Again.

Really. It was a beautiful love affair in the beginning, with Ambien cooing sweetly in my ears, lulling me into deep, undisturbed and unfettered slumber. But I should have suspected something when those crazy, vivid and violent dreams began to happen-- I should have started snooping at Ambien’s emails or sorting through his drawers to try and uncover some evidence of the real Ambien; but I had trust. Hell, I had need, and I wasn’t about to give up on the one thing I’d happily managed to commit to...

Until, that is, the morning I woke up with a with a dozen or so little tin foil wrappers stuck to the side of my face only to then notice little brown splotches all over my arms, torso and egyptian cotton sheets. Yes, I had, in my Ambien haze, managed to procure a bag of Hershey’s kisses, eat a few and then literally roll around in the rest of the bag all night. I’m not sure if I was falling asleep as I was unwrapping them from a horizontal position or if the kisses just melted from my body heat as I slept, but it doesn’t really matter since I looked like a five year old  that pooped chocolate all over her mom’s bed. Never mind the fact that I really don’t ever crave chocolate and that I couldn’t even remember buying the damn things, Ambien had turned on me.

The next day I gave Ambien it’s walking papers. The first time.

Fast forward a few (six) years... 

I go through periods of crazy sleep deprivation. This has happened my entire adult life whenever there has been stress and flux; if you’ve read any of the entries on this blog you might get an idea of the self-induced tumult of my life lately-- my career and romantic missteps. So what does a girl do when she’s feeling a little crummy about herself? She calls an ex for a pick me up, of course! And Ambien, my beautiful pharmaceutical lothario, is always there to oblige.