Sleep-aids offer sweet relief, but at a cost. They’re potentially quite deadly

Butterfly effect

A green glowing butterfly floats through dark city streets.

It drifts through an open bedroom window. A bedside lamp blinks off. A woman goes to sleep.

In another bedroom, the butterfly glides by another lamp. It goes out. A man curls up and starts to snooze.

Of course, this is the Lunesta butterfly. And if these sleepyheads could hear the list of side effects that float along on a gentle voiceover, they might jump up and slam their windows shut.

But they’re not the only ones who have been lulled into denial about sleeping pill dangers. This is a widespread problem. And it’s deadly.

Overlooking the obvious

Last summer, 68-year-old film director Tony Scott committed suicide. He jumped from a bridge in Los Angeles.

Hollywood was shocked. Scott was successful and well liked. Friends say he was enthusiastic about several big projects in the works. Early reports speculated that he had inoperable brain cancer. That turned out to be a false rumor. His personal life revealed no clues. So his motive for taking his life was a mystery.

Recently, coroners released Scott’s autopsy. Some thought they’d found the smoking gun.

There were “therapeutic levels” of the SSRI antidepressant Remeron in his body. Several reports seized on this. Obviously, depression could have been a factor. Commentators noted that research has linked SSRI drugs with suicide.

Well…not really. The suicide link is actually in adolescents, not 68-year-old men. But never mind that. The antidepressant made a good culprit.

But there was one more drug in Scott’s system. And nobody seemed to regard this as a smoking gun. Far from it. It was hardly mentioned.

The other drug was Lunesta. And as the lilting voiceover warns… “In depressed patients, worsening of depression including risk of suicide may occur.”

We’ll probably never know exactly what drove Scott to suicide. But the fact that the post-autopsy commentary overlooked Lunesta speaks volumes.

Antidepressant drugs carry a negative connotation. But we view sleep-aid drugs in a positive way. They help you. They give you sleep. You “wake up refreshed.” Your day goes better.

The exception is Ambien. This notorious drug has been linked with sleepwalking, sleep driving, and sleep shopping. Even so, it doesn’t generate much fear. Just the opposite. Many use it as a recreational drug to experience mild euphoria.

But the numbers are not euphoric.

A few weeks ago, I told you about a frightening sleep-aid study. Subjects who took a hypnotic drug between 18 and 132 times each year were four times more likely to die of any cause. But subjects who took just 18 or fewer doses per year were still more than 3.5 times more likely to die.

These are shocking numbers. And I’m sure none of those victims ever imagined they would be a sleeping pill statistic.

It’s that easy to fall under the hypnotic trance of the glowing green butterfly.

Sources:
“Coroner releases preliminary findings in Tony Scott suicide” L.A. Times, 10/22/12, latimesblogs.latimes.com