Zolpidem, which is handed out to 750,000 NHS patients in Britain seeking treatment for insomnia each year, has been found to be a factor in dozens of instances of people breaking the law while sleeping.

Another case of the harmful side effects of psychiatric drugs

As reported in the Daily Mail

NOTE: Zolpidem is also known as Ambien by in the the USA

Sleeping pills taken by celebrities including Lindsay Lohan and Tiger Woods – and prescribed widely in Britain – could be to blame for numerous cases of dangerous and even criminal behaviour.

Zolpidem, which is handed out to 750,000 NHS patients seeking treatment for insomnia each year, has been found to be a factor in dozens of instances of people breaking the law while sleeping.

They include 43 instances of driving, nine rapes, eight assaults, ten murders or manslaughters, and burglaries – all of which were claimed to have been carried out while the perpetrator was apparently asleep. In most cases they also had no memory of the event.

Neurologist Professor Mark Mahowald, of Sleep Forensic Associates, a US-based organisation of doctors who help those who break the law while still asleep, says: ‘It appears that one part of the brain responsible for complex activities, like driving or cooking, is awake, while another, involved in memory, is not.

‘In sleep-driving for example, people take the drug, go to bed, and then wake up in the car with their pyjamas on. When the police pull them over, they do not know how they got there.’

Prof Mahowald, of the University of Minnesota Medical School, adds: ‘One of the difficulties in advising people about taking the drug is that it is effective and there does not seem to be any way of identifying people at risk of these uncommon side effects.’

Some 82 medication-related cases worked on since 2006 involved ‘toxicity’ due to Zolpidem. In 79 of the cases the defence was successful.

Troubled actress Lohan has admitted to problems while taking Ambien.

Initially marketed two decades ago as a safer alternative to older, more addictive benzodiazepine drugs, including Valium, in recent years Zolpidem, along with similar so-called Z-drugs such as zopiclone, have been linked to a raised risk of dementia and heart problems.

Numerous studies have reported rare instances of patients driving, eating, making telephone calls and even having sex while under the influence of the medication.

Some experts even recommend that patients secure their bedroom windows and get into bed before taking the drug, to reduce any possibility of harm.

One report, by doctors at the Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, claimed that up to one per cent of patients had a sleep-eating problem after taking the sedative. The only clues to their nocturnal feasting were morning leftovers and crumbs in the bed.

Patients being prescribed Zolpidem are already warned that changes in sleep behaviour, including sleepwalking, are a possible side effect, but this is the first time data on criminal behaviour linked to the drug has been comprehensively collected.

New US research shows that the drug is implicated in one in ten emergency department cases due to psychiatric drugs. In over-65s, it accounted for 21 per cent of cases. One theory is that the events actually occur while people are waking from deep sleep.

Although prescribing guidelines state Zolpidem should be used only in the short term, with an initial two-week course recommended, a recent study by herbal sleep aid company Sleepio found that up to 42 per cent of patients on sleeping pills had been taking them for more than a decade, and a quarter for between three and five years. And, according to the Economic and Social Research Council, one in ten of us now regularly takes some form of sleeping tablet.

Dr Guy Leschziner, consultant neurologist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals in London, says: ‘These drugs tend to be habit-forming and can have unintended consequences such as these unwanted behaviours.’

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