I have serious insomnia problems and have been prescribed the entire spectrum of benzos and anti-psychotics over the last few years. ( Ambien,Valium,Xanax,Remeron,Trazadone,Seroquel, Versed, Ativan,)
I can tell you that of all drugs that I have done, and there are many, benzos are the toughest to stop and have the most symptoms associated with them.
Valium, Xanax,Versed,Ambien... Especially, the latter 2 can become VERY addictive. They are very fast acting, hitting the receptor quickly and causing a lot of unwanted side effects.They also have a lot of hypnotic type effects so it is very easy to forget how many you have taken, there have been many days when I get my 10 mg ambien refilled (60 at a time) and wake up the next day with 20-30 of them gone.. I literally thought that my wife was taking them for a while, but then realized that after I took about 5, the rest were just for sport and I couldnt remember it.
Let me preface this by saying that my circumstances are not common and my consumption levels are extremely atypical...
But I doubt that there has been a day over the last 2 years that I have not taken at least 30 mg of Ambien at night to sleep. In conjunction, I also take Xanax for anxiety..
I have taken as much as 350 mg of Ambien in a 24 hour period and it was not uncommon for me to eat 20 mg of Xanax in 24 hours. Needless to say, the repercussions have been excruciating, my health has failed miserably during this time, with symptoms ranging from extreme weight gain, to severe memory loss ( sometimes days at a time) to renal, cardiac and liver damage.
I started off just taking 10 mg of Ambien at night to sleep and progressed from there...
Good luck and cut that shit off before it is too late. Its not too cool to forget entire days and sometimes weeks of life. Honestly, I cannot remember the last time that I had a clear thought, I think that I have been mostly zombified by this shit for the last 2 years.