I haven’t done a drug Sunday in a while, but I feel as though I should, given the heinousness of my previous post.  You see, I have some sort of anxiety disorder or something which appears to run in my family.  I usually work this out with running but haven’t been able to do that for a while and, consequently, the anxiety gets the better of me.  NOW, a consequence of said anxiety is insomnia – which is essentially the most annoying side effect.  (Most of my family are insomniacs.  At any given point, I could wake up and find some member of my family awake in the house, watching TV or playing on the internets or, in the case of the grandparents, smoking cigarettes reading newspapers…)

Whatever.  The short of the long of it is sometimes I can’t sleep and so I turn to chemistry to help me.  Ambien, consequently, plays an infrequent roll in my life.  As I have said before, I’m totally sXe (hahah) and have little experience with recreational drugs.  However, since I received my first prescription for Ambien in college, I have collected a few unusual stories:

  • I woke up with bruises on my knees and several forts constructed out of couch cushions in my living room.
  • I woke up face down in a pint of melted and congealed ice cream in my living room wearing nothing but a cashmere frock coat.
  • I woke up to discover that the walls of my room had been covered in aluminum foil.

That’s just to name a few…  needless to say, I usually take the drug only when I have little other discourse and there is someone else at home.  My wife, Mrs. Finchsigmate, is usually my trip sitter – though she’s generally asleep by the time I realize it’s either going to be an Ambien night or no sleeping at all.

ANYWAY, not that’s out of the way, let’s discuss Zolpidem, the chemical also known as Ambien.

Synthesis of Zolpidem can be accomplished in a fairly steppy but simple synthesis starting with the commercially available Methylacetophenone:ambien synthesis

The mechanism of action of Zolpidem works by potentiating γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) by binding to benzodiazepine receptors, though the drug bares no structural resemblance to benzodiazepines (well… not very much).  The patent on the drug was held by Sanofi-Aventis and is now available in generic form.  A new formulation called Ambien CR supposedly extends the very short 2 hour half life, allowing patients to “sleep through the night” by retarding the rate of drug release from the capsule in the digestive system.

Ambien sales before generic were 2.1 billion per annum, the Ambien CR formlulation as of 2008 rakes in almost 900 million per annum – so Sanofi isn’t starving having lost their cash cow.

But, by far, the most notorious thing about Zolpidem is the associated sleep walking and amnesia.  My anecdotes above are drops int he pond of larger reports that the drug has been associated with unusual behaviors that place the victim in precarious and even deadly situations.  Why this drug is even allowed on the market at all is beyond me but it’s certainly effective.

Zolpidem is a drug of abuse and trip reports have been extensively loged at Erowid.  From my own personal experience, hallucinations are rare but can be fantastic (in the sense that they give the illusion of rather incredible things occurring – such as seeing the television you’re watching, while waiting for the drug to kick in, fly into the air and bounce off the ceiling like a balloon.)