Last night Charli and I were watching TV and a commercial for this popular sleep aid product came on. The ad itself wasn't all that interesting, but we cracked up at this list of frightening side effects.
sleepwalkingHoly crap! You'd have to be a pretty serious insomniac to sign up for that. The funny thing is, I've heard a few tokes off the old doobage works pretty well for insomnia also. But of course that's not an option since it's illegal, because... uh because... oh yeah, it's dangerous.
eating or driving while not fully awake, with memory loss for the event
abnormal behaviors
confusion, agitation, and hallucinations
worsening of depression
risk of suicide
shortness of breath
swelling of your tongue or throat
drowsiness, dizziness and headache
diarrhea
risk of dependency
may be fatal
So anyway, then I went to their web site to read more about it and I saw this picture and became even more frightened.
OH MY GOD... THE PILL THOSE PATIENTS ARE STANDING ON IS HUGE! How in the world could someone be expected to swallow something that big?
But then I saw this disclaimer and my fears were calmed.
13 comments:
Years ago I went to the emergency with chest pains. It was caused bny the Lipitor. I should have read the fine print. Tell me why warnings are not printed at least as large as the rest of the instrucions. It said "May cause chest pains or spasms".
Here I thought they just had very, very tiny actors.
"Risk of suicide"? "May be fatal"? Sheesh! Well, I guess you wouldn't have insomnia anymore.
Ahahahahaha! Boy, it's a good thing they have those disclaimers ... in tiny writing, or at the lowest possible volume at the highest possible speed during TV commercials...
When a list of side effects is worse than what you're taking the damn pill for, um why exactly ARE you taking it???
I hate even taking aspirin and try to avoid as many pharmaceuticals as possible.
A colleague got hooked on Ambien for a while, and she told us stories of eating without being fully awake. She was also trying to get the rest of us hooked, too. It was pretty funny!
I still can't get over the name "Aciphex" for the pill to treat a digestive disorder.
PS: I tagged you for a good old-fashioned meme, if you're up for it.
bill - Yeah, but you know that you should ALWAYS go in with chest pains, right? RIGHT?
heather - I guess it's all a matter of how you look at it.
elizabeth - You got that right. Nothing like permanent sleep to take care of your insomnia.
maureen - It was funny on TV because they didn't rattle off the disclaimer at high speed. It was as if they weren't worried about it at all.
april - A guy here in St. Cloud got up in the middle of the night (after taking Ambien) and drove his car right through his garage... and then went in and went back to bed. He didn't even know he had done it the next day.
jess - I know. And if you didn't catch it, I actually wrote about that in this post.
That reminds me of all the warnings for the classic SNL skit Happy Fun Ball.
The eating-in-your-sleep thing is the worst. If I'm going to get fat, I at least want to remember how I got there. Cripes.
Ha,that ad came on while I was reading your blog. Most of these drugs have side effects worse than the malady they're treating. Alli, which you presumably use to lose weight, make yourself more attractive to the opposite sex, may cause uncontrollable bowel movements. Yeah, that's attractive.
The only thing that would make those ads funnier is if Billy Mays screamed the side effects.
A lot of anti depressants have a side effect of risk of suicide. I have never understood how they work out if it's the pill or the depression that causes this.
I know a guy who sleepwalks without the help of any drugs. The other night he tried to fix his computer cooling fan in his sleep.
I hope I don't catch too much flak for this...
Toke off the old doobage = excellent for putting one to sleep.
Illegal, yes.
Dangerous? Look at the side effects.. ambien is ten times as dangerous!
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