What Happened to People Under the Influence of Date Rape Drugs

By Allison McCabe

On March 29, 2009, Robert Stewart, 45, stormed into the Pinelake Wellness and Rehab nursing abode in Carthage, North Carolina and opened fire, killing eight people and wounding two. Stewart's apparent target was his estranged wife, who worked as a nurse in the dwelling house. She hid in a bath and was unharmed. Stewart was charged with eight counts of outset-degree murder; if convicted, he could face the death penalty. Even though there was show that Stewart's deportment were premeditated (he allegedly had a target), Stewart's defence team successfully argued that since he was under the influence of Ambien, a sleep help, at the time of the shooting, he was not in control of his actions. Instead of the charges sought by the prosecutors, Stewart was convicted on eight counts of second-degree murder. He received 142 – 179 years in prison.

Ambien, a member of the class of medications known as hypnotics, was approved past the FDA in 1992. It was designed for short term apply to combat indisposition and was a welcome change from the prevailing sleep aid at the time, Halcion, which had been implicated in psychosis, suicide, and addiction and had been banned in half a dozen countries. Ambien works by activating the neurotransmitter GABA and binding it to the GABA receptors in the same location as the benzodiazepines such as Xanax and Valium. The actress GABA activeness triggered by the drug inhibits the neuron activity that is associated with insomnia. In other words, it slows down the brain. Ambien is extremely constructive at initiating sleep, ordinarily working within 20 minutes. It does not, however, have an effect on sustaining sleep unless it is taken in the controlled release form.

After its approval, Ambien quickly rose to say-so in the slumber aid market. Travelers swore by it to combat jet lag, and women, who suffer more insomnia than men, bought information technology in droves. Sanofi, Ambien's French manufacturer, fabricated $2 billion in sales at its peak. In 2007 the generic version of Ambien was released, Zolpidem, and at less than $2 per pill, information technology still remains one of the well-nigh prescribed drugs in America, outselling popular painkillers like Percocet and prescription strength ibuprofen.

Although the Ambien prescribing data warned, in small-scale impress, that medications in the hypnotic class had occasional side effects including sleep walking, "abnormal thinking," and "strange behavior," these behaviors were listed as extremely rare, and any anecdotal evidence of "sleep driving," "slumber eating," or "slumber shopping"—all behaviors now associated with Ambien blackouts—were characterized as unusual quirks, or attributed to mixing the medication with alcohol. It wasn't until Patrick Kennedy's 2006 middle-of-the-night car accident and subsequent explanation to arriving officers that he was running late for a vote that the bizarre side furnishings of Ambien began to receive national attending. Kennedy claimed that he had taken the slumber aid and had no recollection of the events that night.

Before long later the Kennedy incident, Ambien users sued Sanofi because of bizarre sleep-eating behaviors while on the drugs. Co-ordinate to Susan Chana Lask, chaser for the course activeness adjust, people were eating things like buttered cigarettes and eggs, complete with the shells, while nether the influence of Ambien. Lask called people in this state "Ambien zombies." Equally a event of the lawsuit, and of increasing reports coming in about "slumber driving," the FDA ordered all hypnotics to upshot stronger warnings on their labels.

In addition to giving consumers extra information then they could take the medication more carefully, the warning labels also gave legitimacy to the Ambien (or Zombie) defence. In March of 2011, Lindsey Schweigert took one Ambien before getting into bed at 6pm. Hours subsequently, she woke up in custody with no idea how she'd gotten at that place. In the post-obit weeks, Schweigert pieced together the events of that nighttime. She'd gotten out of bed, drawn a bath, and left the business firm with her domestic dog. She started driving to a local eatery but crashed into another automobile soon after leaving her firm. Law described her every bit swaying and glassy-eyed. She failed a sobriety test and was charged with DWI and running a stoplight.

Schweigert had a job that required a security clearance. She had never been in trouble with the police force before and was terrified of losing her job and having a criminal record. Prosecutors initially wanted to impose a vi month jail sentence in add-on to other punishments, but Schweigert'south lawyer argued that Lindsey's bizarre behavior on the night in question was a event of a medication which warned correct on the characterization that "After taking AMBIEN, you may get up out of bed while not being fully awake and do an activeness that you do not know you are doing. The next morning, you may not recall that you lot did anything during the night…Reported activities include: driving a car ("sleep-driving"), making and eating food, talking on the telephone, having sexual activity, slumber-walking." In fact, the lawyer argued, Schweigert should have been taken to a hospital, not to jail. Prosecutors dropped the charges and immune Lindsey to plead to the lesser charge of careless driving, which meant that she could keep her security clearance. Her license was suspended for a yr, however, and she had to pay upwards of $nine,000 in legal fees.

Every bit a outcome of the Schweigert verdict, an chaser successfully used the Ambien defence to overturn a 2006 DWI conviction for a New Jersey woman by arguing that the drug'southward labeling had inverse vi months after his customer'south abort. The courtroom agreed, saying that information technology would be an "injustice to hold her responsible for the undisclosed side furnishings of a popular and readily available medication that she was lawfully prescribed and properly administered."

The Ambien defense was also used in the case of Julie Ann Bronson, a 45-yr-old flight attendant from Texas. In April of 2009, Bronson took a couple of Ambien to assistance her sleep. She had been drinking wine earlier in the day, and went to bed early. She awoke the following forenoon in jail, nevertheless in her pajamas, barefoot and terrified. When she was told that she had run over 3 people, including an eighteen-month-one-time girl who suffered severe brain harm as a result of the wreck, she was horrified. "Information technology was surreal. It was like a bad dream." In May of 2012, Bronson pleaded guilty to the felonies of intoxication assault and failure to cease and render aid. "I did the crime but I never intended to exercise information technology," she testified. "I wouldn't injure a flea. And if I would have hitting somebody, I would accept stopped and helped. We're trained in CPR." Bronson faced ten years, but considering of the Ambien defense, she will serve half dozen months in prison and have ten years of probation.

Non all prosecutors will consider the Ambien defense, and its position within established criminal rules is tenuous. It doesn't really autumn under "voluntary intoxication," in which someone is responsible for his own intoxication and any events that occur as a result of that intoxication. The Ambien defendants knowingly took the drug, simply they were non enlightened that they were drugging themselves in a way that could produce anything other than slumber. Nor does the Ambien defense force fit under "involuntary intoxication," which is when someone commits a crime after existence drugged without his knowledge, or has an unpredictable reaction to a prescribed medication. The defendants knowingly took the medication, and the reactions, although surprising, were not unpredictable because they are listed as potential side effects in the prescribing data. Finally, in that location is the "unconsciousness/sleepwalking" defense force, in which the person is not responsible for the crime if he did non intentionally crusade the sleepwalking or unconsciousness. The whole motivation for taking Ambien in the first place is presumably to cause unconsciousness then this defence force doesn't really apply either.

Ironically, you are more likely to be successful using the Ambien defense if yous injure or kill someone than if yous merely crash into a parked car or a tree. DWI laws usually just crave the prosecution to prove that the defendant was loaded and got into a motorcar to drive. There's no requirement to prove intention. When someone is harmed, however, it is up to the prosecutor to prove that the defendant was enlightened enough to be guilty of the crime. If people on Ambien are interim in an automated, or unconscious state, information technology's hard to claim that they accept cognition of their actions. That'due south why people like Lindsey Schweigert become suspended licenses while Donna Neely, who was sleep-driving on Ambien and killed a mother of 11, was acquitted of vehicular manslaughter.

Not everyone who engages in bizarre behavior every bit a result of taking Ambien ends up in legal problem. And some people enjoy the high they go from the drug so much that they are willing to overlook the blackouts and negative consequences that result from their drug use. Near recreational users started out taking the drug to care for indisposition, but found that if they fought the drug's sleep-inducing effect, they could get really high. "Information technology's similar having that final drink at the bar when yous know you should go home -- I'd fight the pill'due south furnishings and stay upwardly, often telling my friends insane things like how to plow the light in the room into energy, or how paintings of forest scenes on their walls were actually drawings of mermaids bathing themselves in claret," writes ane young woman whose addiction to Ambien caused increasingly baroque and alienating behavior. She continued taking the pill and staying awake regularly until one morning she woke up with two black eyes and a cut across her nose. Her pillows were bloody, and there was a stranger, naked and wrapped in a rug, on her floor. Neither she nor the stranger had whatever recollection of the events of the previous nighttime. That situation, though jarring, was not enough to get her to give up Ambien; the high was too practiced. She took a break, but was soon back to taking it regularly, filled with rationalizations for her erratic behavior (All 20-somethings take drugs!) It wasn't until she was found wandering the Brooklyn streets in the middle of the night, virtually naked, that she was able to give it up for skilful.

Rapper Eminem, whose albums have titles like "Relapse" and "Recovery," has been open about his battles with prescription drug habit, including his near overdose on methadone, his relapse, and his eventual detox. He blames Ambien, however, for huge lapses in his memory over v years and an extended menses of author's block. "…a lot of my memory is gone. I don't know if yous've ever taken Ambien, but information technology's kind of a memory-eraser. That shit wiped out five years of my life. People volition tell me stories, and it's similar, "I did that?" I saw myself doing this matter on [television network] BET recently, and I was like, "When was that?"" Eminem has kept some of his writing from that flow, albeit to Rolling Stone that "Information technology fucking creeps me out…Letters all down the page – it was similar my hand weighed 400 pounds. I have all that shit in a box in my cupboard. Equally a reminder that I don't always desire to become back."

Tiger Woods was as well famously associated with Ambien when ane of his mistresses claimed that she and the golfer would have "crazy Ambien sex activity." Ambien lessens inhibitions and erases memories, an ideal combination for someone who is cheating on his spouse. The fizz created by the drug appears to enhance sex as well. One woman described feeling "very relaxed and sensual" when she had sex on Ambien. "I suddenly accept floaty free energy. . I am tired, but energetic. It's almost like I'grand in a dreamlike land. I might compare it a little to weed, but nothing that I've done actually compares, to exist honest."

The darker flipside to Ambien's purported sex activity-enhancing qualities is that it is becoming increasingly used equally a date rape drug. In fact, the merely case of "slumber-sex" that appeared in a 2008 medical journal review of instance reports on Ambien-related sleep behaviors involved the Ambien taker beingness raped. The aforementioned lack of inhibition combined with amnesia that allows people to commit crimes, indulge in dishonest beliefs, and take bang-up sex on Ambien is also an ideal formula for a sexual predator. Ambien is also much more widely bachelor and easily accessible than rohypnol, the drug normally associated with date rape.

Ambien is an effective sleep aid and a huge money maker for its manufacturer. Most people take information technology as prescribed and treat their insomnia successfully with no problems. But the problems that do occur with the drug are often extreme and tragic, and they seem to be increasing. (These cases only scratch the surface – currently a homo in Northern California is using the Ambien defense to fight a charge of 2d caste sexual abuse of a small and 3rd degree sexual abuse of a small-scale. He allegedly molested a 10-year-old daughter in April of 2012. He has no recollection of the alleged molestation and a polygraph test supports his claim. His court example is gear up for March. There is as well a whole website, Ambien Outrage, dedicated to making "the public enlightened of the dangers of Ambien, Ambien CR and Zolpidem." Additionally information technology maintains a database of "victims of Ambien," those people who have either been harmed or killed by people on Ambien, or who have themselves committed baroque acts while on Ambien.)

In May of final year, the FDA acted again to change the labeling on Ambien, this time lowering the recommended dose and warning people who take the controlled release version that they "should not drive or appoint in other activities that require complete mental alertness the twenty-four hour period after taking the drug because zolpidem levels can remain loftier plenty the next twenty-four hour period to impair these activities." If the whole idea of taking a sleep aid is to treat insomnia so that you lot can role more finer during the day, being instructed to avert driving and other activities that crave mental alertness seems to defeat the purpose of taking the drug in the offset place.

The DEA categorizes drugs according to their potential for abuse and habit. Schedule I drugs are the well-nigh probable to exist abused, and Schedule V drugs have the to the lowest degree potential for corruption or addiction. Ambien is a schedule Iv drug, and tin can exist prescribed and refilled without restriction. Some toxicologists, such equally Janci Lindsay, believe that many Ambien-related tragedies would be avoided if the drug were upgraded to Schedule II, a category that includes controlled substances such as Ritalin and Oxycontin. Other countries, such as Australia, Taiwan, and Japan, accept all issued special warnings about Ambien and have begun regulating the drug more than advisedly always since reports started surfacing most "potentially dangerous" Ambien-induced behaviors.

Julie Ann Bronson took ambien and so later got out of bed and got backside the wheel in a blackout. She ended upward running over people and causing a baby to have severe encephalon damage. Lindsey Schweigert also got out of bed, unconscious, and engaged in baroque behavior before crashing her machine. Even in the wake of these and other tragedies, Sanofi notwithstanding maintains that "When taken every bit prescribed, Ambien is a safety and effective treatment for insomnia." Sanofi also points out that the prescribing literature warns patients not to drive or to go out of bed after taking the medication.

Merely call up: If only Julie, Lindsey, and countless others had followed Sanofi's instructions and not gotten out of bed, all these tragedies could have been prevented!

Merck is currently working on a new sleep medication which acts on unlike receptors than the hypnotic medications. In early studies, the drug appears to exist effective at treating insomnia while lacking the disturbing side effects of the hypnotics. If successful, the drug would be a much needed alternative to the current group of sleep aids which all work the same way in the encephalon. It's not clear, withal, that any new medication could fifty-fifty make a dent in the $i.6 billion U.S. market place for indisposition treatments currently dominated past Ambien.

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Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ambien-side-effect-sleepwalking-sleep-aid_n_4589743

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