whambien

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/07/31/060731sh_shouts

SHOUTS & MURMURS about recipes using the sleeping pill Ambien, which causes nighttime eating. Sorpresa con Queso Ingredients: 7 bags Cheetos, 17 to 19 glasses tap water, 5 mg. Ambien Place Cheetos bags in cupboard. Take Ambien, fall asleep. Wait 2-3 hours, then sleepwalk to kitchen, tear cupboard doors off hinges in search of Cheetos…eat contents of all 7 bags… Icebox Melange…Take Ambien, fall asleep…sleepwalk to kitchen. Devour everything in refrigerator…Belch loud enough to wake wife or girlfriend. When she enters kitchen, bellow, “Can't you see I'm working here?”… Tummy Cake…Take Ambien, fall asleep. Wake up in kitchen, mixing eggs, flour, Crisco, and milk in-for some reason-a mop bucket…Retrieve bucket from kitchen, drink entire contents in 3-5 gulps… Nhi Ho Trang Phu…Lay out beef jerky and Gatorade on nightstand…Take Ambien, fall asleep. After 2-3 hours, awaken half-submerged in a rice paddy in the jungle lowlands just north of the Mekong Delta….

In a few minutes I will be taking Ambien to sleep (I can't think of another reason to take it, it doesn't seem like a very fun drug) for the very first time. I'm more than a little nervous. Will I drink nine glasses of tap water? Will I drive my car willy-nilly all over the streets of Portland? (Will that be any different than usual if that actually happens? Probably not.) As a lifelong insomniac, I have a hard time imagining what a day on a full night of sleep will be like. I once had a job schedule that allowed me to sleep my natural hours-- 2am to 10am. Even when I had the time to do that, there would be days when I couldn't fall asleep. Will I be a completely different person after my first full night of sleep since working for The Big Movie Rental Company? More pleasant? More boring? The anxiety of it all is making me edgy, and if it weren't for the prescription itself I would probably not be able to sleep a wink tonight.

Yikes. Here goes nothing.