DOSE:

10 mg

oral

Pharms - Zolpidem

(pill / tablet)

BODY WEIGHT:

145 lb

I took a pill of Ambien (10mg) about 20 minutes ago, and it already seems like time has rushed past to the state I'm in now. I took the pill then headed to the bathroom to brush and clean and so on. By the time I was done I could definite feel some wooziness creeping in at a cognitive level, and deja vu, a very common returning feature, about things I would have no reason to experience deja-vu about...this sentence for example. I believe the drug makes the mind run in very circuitous patterns.

My gross motor sensations are very effected. Sitting up in a chair feels like a much greater movement than it is. There is an 'ideal movement' I sense which brings my body along with it but the body is slow in coming.

My visual perception at this very minute is pretty clear, but it takes on shapes and characters very foreign to simply reading a 2 dimensional screen. One of them asking me to create a new email address, became a decline into a profound pit which I had to work my way in and out of. A warning page about the email address thing became very hard to read with the ends of some lines curling back before I could read them. The vividness of different areas in my room is variable but tends to light up when I attend to them. But off the computer screen there are no hallucinations, just different perceptions of things that pretty much look and act normal.

My mindset is fuzzy. In clearing off my bed I had to make some decisions of where to put things and some of it, I did haphazardly. I am not in a state to understand any complicated instructions or reading. It is accompanied by word synesthesia - the words themselves seem to clunk in the way like spilled piano keys. My mood is somewhat flat affect. I am pretty perpetually surprised by the strange changes I'm witnessing but I'm not especially euphoric nor terrified or anxious. I am having 'hallucinations in my mind's eye' - I see things, as you'd see them if I asked you to say, 'picture a house', but they are hallucinations in that I am not consciously evoking these images.

My mindset is probably quite reduced in cognitive and emotional capacities but I still am able to type, with some trouble with word selection, and motor slowness.

If watching TV shows on the computer, they often begin to seem quite hilarious, although I cannot usually remember most of the subject matter. Sometimes I will talk to housemates or type messages to friends via AIM and both forms of communication tend to produce nonsense. Once I have a topic of discussion other than focusing on this I tend to expound a great deal of information about that topic regardless of the other's interest.

I have had an experience that some websites (such as the gmail registration) gave me the feeling that other entities were down there with me as part of the process. I didn't perceive them as friendly or hostile, just there. I didn't really perceive them either, just felt their presence.

In bed I generally get closed eye visuals to the extreme, sometimes seeming to be small worlds composed of connecting tunnels to other worlds, which I explore and plunge deeper and deeper into.

Right now, T+20 minutes, I'm writing this and wondering what the point is, as well as being convinced I wrote something exactly like it before. The cognitive impairment caused by Ambien is powerful. In other ambien experiences I have found that a friend's screen saver could entrance for any amount of time (until I got kicked out of the room and that I can babble ceaselessly about ephemera for quite a time when I have an audience. Because of this I am not planning to leave my room right now.

Body movements feel slowed and dragged as if the ethereal 'superbody' were leading all the movements and dragging my shape along in its tracks. I notice that my face looks haggard and zombie like in the mirror, as usual with ambien. I am thirsty and drink some water, The rim of the cup seems unusually thick.

There are no effects I would describe as 'tripping' except for the way certain things on the computer screen (often web pages) take on a shockingly different character than just blank text. The text may seem to grow into a location I've seen in life, or the entire page may seem to become a bottomless shaft at which I am at the bottom, the walls lined with check boxes and lines to type answers into. Once while communicating with a friend over AIM I felt there was a version of myself somehow manifest in the world that our IMs inhabited; this other self was in a version of Philadlphia's Chinatown. My friend told me to 'come to his house' which is walking distance from Chinatown and I tried to make the avatar do that but the situation fell apart before I could make it happen.

I am now thinking about the addictive character of these pills, which i have been using as prescribed as a sleep aid. They produce euphoria and tripping sometimes, other times just cognitive distortions and stoned apathy, which is what I have now. It will make me fall asleep soon, I can feel the drowsiness. It also removes all worries, about school, work, girls and the future. All of these combined seem to have quite a potential for abuse. I ration mine however, trying to use them only on night when I have to get up early.

When not on the pills, I look back at some of my stoned writings or antics and am appalled at what a jackass I acted like, not to mention taking my problems serious again. Still, every night there is a powerful urge to take the ambien again and a fear that I won't be able to sleep if I don't. So I usually do.

The drowsiness hits pretty hard now. Also the thirst - always have a full glass of water by the bed all night and be ready to get up and pee a few times before I fall asleep.

Exploring the rest of the apartment mostly indicates that my gross motor skills are very inhibited - I feel that I walk roboticaly and shuffle and bump into things a lot. Seeing things that require comment, my inner speech goes from being articulate (man, my roommates really need to clean these dirty dishes) to partial sentences (dirty...disgusting habits...dirty roommates..got to clean)

This ambien experience is probably going to end now as I'm going to bed. Usually there I experience more vivid closed eye hallucinations, again of a neutral variety (not especially stunning or beautiful, though interesting, and not frightening or disturbing. Definitely weird though.

Exp Year: 2009	ExpID: 77891
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Mar 31, 2011	Views: 27,791
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Pharms - Zolpidem (143) : Medical Use (47), Alone (16)