The sleeping pill Ambien seems to unlock a primitive desire to eat in some patients, according to emerging medical case studies that describe how the drug’s users sometimes sleepwalk into their kitchens, claw through their refrigerators like animals and consume calories ranging into the thousands.
The next morning, the night eaters remember nothing about their foraging. But they wake up to find telltale clues – mouthfuls of peanut butter, Tostitos in their beds, kitchen counters overflowing with flour, missing food, and even lighted ovens and stoves. Some are so embarrassed, they delay telling anyone, even as they gain weight.
“These people are hellbent to eat,” said Dr. Mark Mahowald, director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center in Minneapolis and one of the sleep experts researching the problem.
He and colleagues are preparing a scientific paper based on their findings – that a sleep-related eating disorder is one of the unusual side effects showing up with the widespread use of Ambien. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., have made similar findings.
Spurred in part by consumer advertising, more than 26 million prescriptions for Ambien were dispensed in the United States last year, an increase of 53 percent since 2001.
Sanofi-Aventis, the French company that makes the drug, has defended its safety in 13 years of use in the United States.
“Sanofi-Aventis has received reports of people eating while sleepwalking, and those reports, like all reports of adverse events, have been provided to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,” said company spokeswoman Melissa Feltmann.
She said the package insert for Ambien warns that a sleep-related eating disorder may occur, but she cautioned that every case reported in patients taking Ambien might not be caused by the drug.
Most of the people who use Ambien say the drug puts them to sleep and that they wake up without incident. But several doctors and a number of patients say that sleep-eating is one of a variety of unusual reactions to the drug.
The reactions range from fairly benign sleepwalking episodes to hallucinations, violent outbursts and, most troubling of all, driving while asleep.
The FDA said it would monitor the drug’s safety record.
Dr. Carlos Schenck, a sleep- disorder expert in Minneapolis and the lead researcher on the study, estimates that thousands of Ambien users in the U.S. experience sleep-related eating disorders while taking the drug.