Article/Link: Alcohol and Sleeping Pills – A Strange Combination by Matthew J. Edlund. Published: November 17th, 2011. Accessed: November 19th, 2011.
We’re a depressed world. What does it say about us that we are so very, very fond of depressants? Come on – there are plenty of drugs that get you phenomenally high. Instead, most people choose to drown themselves in alcohol and their own misery.
The recent trend is to add sleeping pills to the mix. Valium, Ambien, Clonazepan, and the like are popular pills that hold the delightful promise of knocking you out. There’s a problem here, though – and it’s not just the alarming fondness for depression. Alcohol and sleeping pills are a combination that can kill you – an even worse pairing than drinking and driving.
Both sleeping pills and alcohol slow down your nervous system. Separately, they have the effect of calming you and lowering your inhibitions respectively. Together, they can kill. And even if you survive the force of destruction that is that duo, your chances of being anxious and depressed are greatly increased, as is the likelihood of your functioning at a subpar level the next day. The combination can also cause you to stay in a realm half-way between being asleep and awake. Sleepwalking and acting under the influence of the depressants is not uncommon. And in the case of Thomas Gatz, a paramedic in Chicago, sleepdriving is apparently also a very real phenomenon. Gatz, stone cold drunk, managed to drive and crash his Honda into a couple of cars, injuring one woman. He has claimed that the Ambien that he took was to blame.
Sleeping pills themselves do NOT emulate natural sleep. In spite of some benzodiazepines hitting all three benzodiazepine receptors in the brain, they cannot fully mimic the effects of normal sleep, and tend to cause more sleepwalking. That is not to say that taking the rare sleeping pill is harmful – it just shouldn’t be used with alcohol.
Now, I have nothing against either sleeping pills or alcohol. I can appreciate both their values. But personally, in a completely, absolutely, hypothetical situation, I’d prefer to be euphoric. Maybe it’s just my cheerful personality.
Vocabulary:
· Sparse
o “Studies of them are relatively sparse, as researchers tend to look at one drug at a time.”
o Sparse: rare. 1727, from L. sparsus "scattered," pp. of spargere "to scatter, spread," from PIE base *(s)pregh- "to jerk, scatter" (cf. Skt. parjanya-"rain, rain god," Avestan fra-sparega "branch, twig," lit. "that which is jerked off a tree," O.N. freknur "freckles," Swed. dial. sprygg"brisk, active," Lith. sprogti "shoot, bud," O.Ir. arg "a drop").
o I am beginning to feel as if common sense is a sparse and precious commodity at Woodstock.
· Inadvertent
o “It was the inadvertent cause of death of Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager in 1967, and many famous and not so famous media folks since.”
o Inadvertent: unintentional. mid-15c., from M.Fr. inadvertance (14c.), from Scholastic L. inadvertentia, from in- “not” + advertentia, from L. advertere"to direct one's attention to," lit. "to turn toward"
o Though the side-effect of having eleventh-graders learn about the Combine was inadvertent – probably – it remains a fact that students have taken to defying the system far more often than before.
· Benzodiazepine
o “Ambien is an exceedingly popular drug. It works by hitting one of the three benzodiazepine receptors in the brain.”
o Benzodiazepine: Any of a class of heterocyclic organic compounds used as tranquilizers, such as Librium and Valium. 1934, from benzo- + di + azo- + epine, a suffix denoting a seven-membered ring, from (h)ep(ta).
o In my humble opinion, some drama queens, not all of them from the female population, could truly benefit from being knocked out by a nice, tranquilizing Benzodiazepine pill.
