New Year 2019

I stayed up on New Year’s Eve and watched the ball drop in Times Square. It wasn’t because I wanted to; I simply wasn’t sleepy. Suddenly it was midnight and I decided to resort to chemical help, so I swallowed an Ambien. I don’t like taking Ambien, it makes me do strange things sometimes. But I wanted so badly to feel sleepy. For days I had not been able to sleep before 5AM.

I went to bed and to sleep. I slept soundly and was in the middle of a long dream when I awakened with a crash. I had rolled off the bed onto the hardwood floor, still clutching the blankets which were now mostly under me.

This is my problem with sleeping pills. I have never rolled off the bed in my sleep. Now, I take an Ambien and I roll off the bed. Coincidence? Maybe, but I don’t buy it. Weird stuff happens too often when I take Ambien.

For example, I’ve found things broken in the house, such as boxes crushed, and it happened while I was “asleep” after taking Ambien. One night I took an Ambien and went to sleep, and the next day I remembered that Daylight Saving time had ended and I hadn’t set the clocks. So I went around the house to change all the clocks, and found that all the clocks in the house had been correctly set to the new time. I had no memory of doing it. I had even set the clock on my VCR (remember VCRs?) during the night, and that requires turning on the TV and navigating a set of menus to set the time. Yet, I was apparently asleep at the time.

So rolling off the bed doesn’t surprise me; it scares me. Because, what’s going to happen the next time I take Ambien? Do I need to get a safety belt for my mattress? And is rolling off the bed on the first morning of the year a harbinger of what 2019 holds in store for me?

To be fair, I acknowledge that millions of people take Ambien without problems. But for a small number of us: problems.