A new insomnia drug has a laughably ironic twist

If you suffer from MOTNW, coupled with DRTS, you’ll be glad to hear that the FDA has just approved a drug to treat your condition.

Let’s sift through this alphabet soup. MOTNW, of course, is middle-of-the-night waking, and DRTS is difficulty returning to sleep.

And if you think it’s odd that a drug company would develop a very specific sleep aid to treat these conditions, you’re right — that would be odd. But that’s not what happened.

They call the drug “Intermezzo” — and it’s nothing more than a reduced dose of Ambien, renamed and repackaged for a “medical” condition that only exists because it was imagined by a creative drug marketer.

What’s terribly ironic is that Ambien is the drug that has reportedly caused users to get up in the middle-of-the-night — still asleep — and do things you normally only do when awake, like cooking or driving.

I guess Transcept Pharmaceuticals is counting on “taking a pill” to be one more of those activities.

Sources:
“FDA Approves Transcept’s Intermezzo Insomnia Drug” Dow Jones Newswires, 11/23/11, online.wsj.com