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--or driving a motor vehicle, as dangerous grogginess may result. After her underwhelming—some might say disastrous—foray into my upstate New York neck of the woods, you might have expected Caroline Kennedy to put in a peppier performance when she returned to the friendly confines of New York City. But Kennedy's statement after her meeting with Al Sharpton today was as soporific as a handful of Ambiens washed down with a slug of Stolichnaya. How bad? Enough that even Chris Matthews was left wondering on this evening's Hardball whether Caroline had displayed the requisite "starch," "gut passion" and political "bug." View...

Remember the good old days? Back during the Dem primaries? When Barack Obama was such an electrifying speaker that women were regularly fainting at his rallies? Ah, how times have changed. Instead of knocking them out with his other-worldly aura, Obama's now . . . putting them to sleep. Check out the woman in the lower-right hand corner of the screencap, seen on CNN today during a live broadcast of Obama on the stump in Virginia. No, I didn't catch her in mid-blink. She actually dozed off just as Obama was ventilating on the horrors of the Bush economy. View...

Steven Kazmierczak had been taking three drugs prescribed for him by his psychiatrist, the Northern Illinois University gunman's girlfriend told CNN. Jessica Baty said Steven Kazmierczak was irritable but not erratic before his shooting rampage. Jessica Baty said Tuesday that her boyfriend of two years had been taking Xanax, used to treat anxiety, and Ambien, a sleep agent, as well as the antidepressant Prozac. Baty said the psychiatrist prescribed the medications, a fact that made her so "nervous" that she tried to persuade Kazmierczak to stop taking one of the drugs.

Steven P. Kazmierczak stopped taking Prozac before he shot to death five Northern Illinois University students and himself, his girlfriend said Sunday in a remark likely to fuel the debate over the risks and benefits of drug treatment for emotional problems. A funeral on Monday in Cicero, Ill., for Catalina Garcia, 20, who was one of five students killed in a shooting Thursday in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University. Over the years, the antidepressant Prozac and its cousins, including Paxil and Zoloft, have been linked to suicide and violence in hundreds of patients. Tens of millions of people...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The string of fires terrorized the Dilworth neighborhood for weeks. Thursday morning, the suspect is due in court, and victims may finally get some closure. Police arrested Susan Davidson in May 2006 for allegedly torching four different homes in Dilworth, including her own. At the time, Davidson was also suspected in setting 11 other fires. Police point to several pieces of evidence linking her to the fires. They also said she told investigators details about the fires which were not revealed to the media or neighbors. Meantime, Davidson’s lawyer said she was taking the sleep aid Ambien...

THE SENSELESS murder of almost three dozen students at Virginia Tech is a profound tragedy. Yet, already some pundits are jumping on that bandwagon which often emerges in the wake of a human tragedy in modern America -- responsibility avoidance. Yes, the blame-shifting has already begun. Barely had Seung-Hui Cho completed his carnage by taking his own wretched life, than those seeking to divert focus from the tortured mind of a mentally deranged young man were declaring that responsibility for the carnage lay not with the individual who perpetrated it, but rather with the system that gave him the tools...

FDA says pills can cause 'sleep-driving' All prescription sleeping pills may sometimes cause sleep-driving, federal health officials warned Wednesday, almost a year after the bizarre side effect first made headlines when Rep. Patrick Kennedy crashed his car after taking Ambien. It's a more complicated version of sleepwalking, but behind the wheel: getting up in the middle of the night and going for a drive -- with no memory of doing so. The Food and Drug Administration wouldn't say exactly how many cases of sleep-driving it had linked to insomnia drugs, but neurology chief Dr. Russell Katz said the agency uncovered...

New evidence has linked a commonly prescribed sleep medication with bizarre behaviours, including a case in which a woman painted her front door in her sleep. UK and Australian health agencies have released information about 240 cases of odd occurrences, including sleepwalking, amnesia and hallucinations among people taking the drug zolpidem. While doctors say that zolpidem can offer much-needed relief for people with sleep disorders, they caution that these newly reported cases should prompt a closer look at its possible side effects.

A judge has rejected a family's plea that a 53-year-old woman in a vegetative state should be allowed to die. He has ordered instead that she should be given a drug that could wake her up. Theoretically the patient could then spend the rest of her life severely disabled and aware of her condition. Sir Mark Potter, president of the High Court Family Division, says the woman should be given zolpidem, a common sleeping pill. It has been used before on victims of severe brain damage who have then regained consciousness. The woman, who cannot be named, suffered a massive...

Close window Published online: 23 May 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060522-9 Sleeping pills offer wake-up call to vegetative patients Drug could overcome brain shutdown caused by trauma.Michael Hopkin Clinical researchers have discovered that they can rouse semi-comatose patients by giving them, bizarrely, a common sleeping drug. If more wide-ranging tests are successful, the drug could become the first effective treatment for 'persistent vegetative state', the condition at the centre of the US legal battle over sufferer Terri Schiavo last year. British and South African doctors have reported the cases of three semi-comatose patients who were revived for several hours at a...

Perhaps the last word should go to Pat Flores, the mother of George Melendez, the 31-year-old coma patient who reassured his parents that he wasn't in pain after taking Ambien, as zolpidem is known in the US. He was starved of oxygen when his car overturned and he landed face down in a garden pond near his home in Houston, Texas, in 1998. "The doctors said he was clinically dead - one said he was a vegetable," says Pat. "After three weeks he suffered multi-organ failure and they said his body would ultimately succumb. They said he would never regain...

We have always been told there is no recovery from persistent vegetative state - doctors can only make a sufferer's last days as painless as possible. But is that really the truth? Across three continents, severely brain-damaged patients are awake and talking after taking ... a sleeping pill. And no one is more baffled than the GP who made the breakthrough. Steve Boggan witnesses these 'strange and wonderful' rebirths For three years, Riaan Bolton has lain motionless, his eyes open but unseeing. After a devastating car crash doctors said he would never again see or speak or hear. Now his...

We have always been told there is no recovery from persistent vegetative state - doctors can only make a sufferer's last days as painless as possible. But is that really the truth? ...For three years, Riaan Bolton has lain motionless, his eyes open but unseeing. After a devastating car crash doctors said he would never again see or speak or hear. Now his mother, Johanna, dissolves a pill in a little water on a teaspoon and forces it gently into his mouth. Within half an hour, as if a switch has been flicked in his brain, Riaan looks around his...

Rhode Island Republicans have received piles of “hate mail” from supporters of U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, angry that the GOP has called for the troubled six-term congressman to step down. “This has clearly hit a raw nerve somewhere,” Rhode Island GOP spokesman Chuck Newton told the Herald.“We’ve received mountains of hate mail from all over.” Most of the letters and emails include angry and in some cases obscene tirades blasting party leaders for pushing for Kennedy’s ouster as a result of his legal troubles, Newton said. Republicans initially called for Kennedy to step down the day after he slammed...

Can Ambien Wake Up PVS Patients? The Guardian gives credence to a case report concerning three patients purportedly diagnosed in PVS for more than three years who were "aroused transiently every morning after zolpidem," a sleeping pill. That would be Ambien. The report, by Clauss and Nel, of Royal Surrey County Hospital and of Family Practice of Pollack Park South Africa, was published in this month's issue of Neurorehabilitation. There are 26 million annual prescriptions for Ambien, most of which are probably not to patients in a persistent vegetative state. Recall that Ambien is oft reported to cause odd behavior...

A growing number of city high-school and college kids are popping Ambien - the drug Rep. Patrick Kennedy blamed, in part, on his car crash - not to sleep, but to party. The insomnia medication, known as "zombie pills," "tic-tacs" and "A-minus," has become popular at house parties and nightclubs....illegally sold by Internet drugstores, peddled outside Big Apple nightclubs and even bartered on Craigslist. One desperate user offered his X-rated DVDs. "You give me Ambien, I'll give you porn," he wrote. At the street price of $5 a pill, young people are gobbling Ambien for relaxation, euphoria and hallucinations. Partyers...

A HUMILIATING accident. An apparent memory lapse. A sudden, emotional confession. Representative Patrick Kennedy's car crash on Capitol Hill early Thursday and a news conference a day later had a familiar rhythm, especially for those who study addiction or know it firsthand. Mr. Kennedy, a six-term Democrat from Rhode Island, said that his addiction was to prescription medication and that he planned to seek treatment at an addiction clinic, as he had done before. "I struggle every day with this disease, as do millions of Americans," said Mr. Kennedy, who is 38. But will a cure that apparently didn't take...

Denny Scaffer in Atlanta brought up an interesting question today on his talk show. What was Patrick Kennedy wearing the night of his accident? For someone claiming to have risen from bed thinking he needed to rush to the Capitol to cast a vote, was he wearing his SpongeBob Sqarepants pajamas? Or was he still dressed in the clothes he wore the day before? Inquiring minds want to know.

Investigation Continues as Congressman Enters Mayo Clinic May 5, 2006 — Capitol Police have taken disciplinary action against a watch commander for the handling of Rep. Patrick Kennedy's car accident, acting Capitol Police Chief Christopher McGaffin said. Lou Cannon of of the Fraternal Order of Police for the District of Columbia said there are questions about whether Rep. Patrick Kennedy received special treatment. (ABC News) McGaffin said the incident was improperly delayed due to "poor judgment" on the part of police managers and that a field sobriety test should have been administered to Kennedy after his car hit a barrier...

WASHINGTON - Zolpidem tartrate, the sedative-hypnotic better known to wide-awake, stressed-out sheet kickers as Ambien, is an efficacious little helper if you ever thought you might go crazy from not sleeping. It's "Goodnight Moon" for grown-ups. You should take it only with some Charlie Rose. Now it's also become the new explanation for that which goes bump in the night: I took an Ambien, Americans are saying, and then I don't know exactly what happened.

See for example this thread first. Have you heard 'bout Patrick Kennedy? His escapades, high comedy! "Forgive me, I've sinned." Four sheets to the wind? Or an "Ambien"-ce like Uncle Ted-dy?

With a tendency to stare zombie-like and run into stationary objects, a new species of impaired motorist is hitting the roads: the Ambien driver. Ambien, the nation's best-selling prescription sleeping pill, is showing up with regularity as a factor in traffic arrests, sometimes involving drivers who later say they were sleep-driving and have no memory of taking the wheel after taking the drug. In some state toxicology laboratories Ambien makes the top 10 list of drugs found in impaired drivers. Wisconsin officials identified Ambien in the bloodstreams of 187 arrested drivers from 1999 to 2004. And as a more people...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy (news, bio, voting record)'s statement that he used Sanofi-Aventis's sleep drug Ambien, to explain how he might have been involved in a late-night car crash, has led to renewed attention on the drug's possible side-effects. The Rhode Island Democrat had also taken the prescription nausea drug phenergan before crashing his car into a security barrier in Washington D.C. early Thursday morning. Nobody was hurt but the incident has intensified questioning about whether the drug causes side-effects like sleepwalking and binge eating, and how prevalent they are. "There is white hot attention on this...

CNN reports Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) will hold a press conference today at 3 p.m. in Washington, D.C. to discuss his recent traffic incident on Capitol Hill.

WASHINGTON -U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy insisted yesterday that he had consumed “no alcohol” before he slammed his Mustang convertible into a concrete barrier near his office, but a hostess at a popular Capitol Hill watering hole told the Herald she saw him drinking in the hours before the crash. “He was drinking a little bit,” said the woman, who works at the Hawk & Dove and would not give her name. Leaving his office late last night, Kennedy refused to say whether he’d been to the Hawk & Dove the night before. Earlier in the evening, Kennedy issued a statement...

Patrick Kennedy's Capitol Hill car crash in the early hours of Thursday morning was the second vehicular mishap suffered by the Rhode Island Democrat in three weeks. Appearing on ABC Radio's Mark Levin Show last night, WRKO Boston radio host Howie Carr detailed the earlier accident, which went unnoted outside of the local press in Providence, Rhode Island. "The accident wasn't reported in the newspapers until almost a week after it happened," Carr complained in his own Boston Herald column last week. "The story ended up in the D section of the Providence Journal, under the East Bay Sports Bulletin...

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) crashed his car near the Capitol early Thursday, and a police official said he appeared intoxicated. Kennedy said he had taken sleep medication and a prescription anti-nausea drug that can cause drowsiness. Kennedy, D-R.I., addressed the issue after a spate of news reports. His initial statement said: "I consumed no alcohol prior to the incident."'Later, however, he issued a longer statement saying the attending physician for Congress had prescribed Phenergan on Tuesday to treat Kennedy's gastroenteritis.Kennedy said he returned to his Capitol Hill home on Wednesday evening after a final series of votes...

The sleeping pill Ambien appears to unleash primitive desires to eat in some patients. It’s even been linked to unconscious food forays that cause these hapless souls to wolf down thousands of calories in the wee hours. Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) asserts that he is one of those “hapless souls.” “For years I have been plagued by nightmares where I have this sensation of drowning,” said Kennedy. “I have taken Ambien to help me sleep. Over this same time period I have become grotesquely obese. Once I was a svelte heart-throb, able to establish close working relationships with my staff—especially...

Unless you’ve spent the last 24 hours snoozing, you’ve probably heard the big news: Ambien, the sleeping pill, seems to “unlock a primitive desire to eat in some patients.” It’s even been linked to “unconscious food forays” that cause these hapless souls to wolf down thousands of calories in the wee hours, and wake with no recollection of the binge - and mysteriously snug pajamas... And Ambinging isn’t the only alleged side effect. There are reports of people holding entire conversations while they sleep, adding Ambi-talking to drunk dialing and drunk-Berrying to the list of roadkill in Progress’ wake.

The sleeping pill Ambien seems to unlock a primitive desire to eat in some patients, according to emerging medical case studies that describe how the drug's users sometimes sleepwalk into their kitchens, claw through their refrigerators like animals and consume calories ranging into the thousands. The next morning, the night eaters remember nothing about their foraging. But they wake up to find telltale clues: mouthfuls of peanut butter, Tostitos in their beds, kitchen counters overflowing with flour, missing food, and even lighted ovens and stoves. Some are so embarrassed, they delay telling anyone, even as they gain weight. "These people...

With a tendency to stare zombie-like and run into stationary objects, a new species of impaired motorist is hitting the roads: the Ambien driver. Ambien, the nation's best-selling prescription sleeping pill, is showing up with regularity as a factor in traffic arrests, sometimes involving drivers who later say they were sleep-driving and have no memory of taking the wheel after taking the drug. In some state toxicology laboratories Ambien makes the top 10 list of drugs found in impaired drivers. Wisconsin officials identified Ambien in the bloodstreams of 187 arrested drivers from 1999 to 2004. And as a more people...

Americans are about to be reminded again how much they need sleep — and sleeping pills. A new effort appears to be developing to expand the use of sleeping pills, which because of their potential for abuse have long had a reputation as being in some ways more dangerous than the insomnia they are meant to treat. Some sleep experts say newer pills are safer than the ones that once caused deaths from overdose. Moreover, some say, there is growing evidence that insomnia is a serious medical condition, not just a nuisance. "Slowly, we are beginning to identify that insomnia...

Here we go...