So Monday morning I woke up, my nightgown marked with peanut butter. The thing is, I’m not a sloppy eater, and I didn’t have any peanut butter the night before. At least, I didn’t think I did. But that was only the first clue. The second was a sticky taste in my mouth and a grumble in my stomach. I got on the scale and somehow – although I had skipped dinner – I had gained three pounds.Slowly, I went down the steps from our bedroom to the kitchen, confused. There, I was confronted with clues three and four: a discarded spoon smelling of peanut butter and in the garage, an empty container of – you guessed it, — peanut butter. It looked licked clean.
By this time I was going a little nuts (!)– wondering if I had been taken over by ghosts or aliens – when I suddenly remembered several stories I had heard on the news in January about the sleep aid Ambien.
For the past month, during a very stressful time, I had been taking Ambien to catch some zzz’s. The stories I had heard about the drug seemed too bizarre to take into account: tales of emptied Oreo sleeves, folks shopping for and cooking entire meals and eating them while under the influence, with no memory of the experience afterwards. At all. They literally blacked out. It was akin to my heading downstairs in the middle of the night and downing an entire jar of Trader Joe’s salted crunchy peanut butter. And then, in my sleep, sending the jar towards the recycling bin.
For a veteran dieter and person with type 2 diabetes, this event struck me as cataclysmic.
Not only did I have to find another way to get to sleep, but I had gained three pounds involuntarily. When I went to my doctor, he asked, “Where was the chocolate?” He had a good laugh about my recycling while sleepwalking, and took me off the drug.
I’ve been working on getting off those three pounds. I won’t let peanut butter in the house. the only upside? At least my subconscious went for low-carb.
Zoplicone works well, but I can’t say whether or not it causes sleep-walking, as I’ve been a sleep walker since childhood. I still am, and in my late 50’s. I have had Type 1 for 45 years, and sometimes I do get up and treat a nocturnal low, and don’t always remember doing so. Melatonin also works well, but no sleeping aid should be used on a regular basis, as there are bound to be side-effects. Good luck.
Did you find a successful Ambien replacement that you can share with us? Sleep is sooo important.