Ambien CR and parking lot

My mother started taking Ambien CR around a year ago about this time last summer. Almost immediately I noticed a severe change in her mood and demeanor. She started experiencing tremendous mood swings, delusions, paranoid and aggressive thoughts, sleepwalking, eating and others activities while asleep and waking up not remembering a thing. In a matter of 4 months she had totally lost the ability to think or care for herself. Her house was about to be foreclosed on because she hadn't paid any of her bills in 4 months! Not only that she had been throwing away all of he mail and business information so even when I tried to take over the finances I couldn't because there was no paper work left to find anywhere in the house. To top it all off she was going through the process of preparing for a surgery on her back that she had been waiting for almost a year.
The surgery was supposed to last a few hours and then she would have to stay in the hospital for 1 week for recovery and then do a couple more weeks of rehabilitation. By this point though she had been taking the Ambien every night for about 5 months and at 2am about twelve hours after surgery I received a call from the hospital saying that my mother was catching a cab home from the hospital and had signed herself out against doctors advice. They also told me that she was having paranoid delusions that people were watching her from the parking lot of the hospital and that the hospital was trying to overly drug her up. My mother confirmed these statements as the security guard handed her the phone to try to have me persuade her to stay.
She couldn't remember anything or do anything and her delusions were getting worse. One evening it got to the point where the delusions combined with her back pain sent her by ambulance into the emergency room. While going thru intake she couldn't even answer basic questions like her name and age with out prompting from me to have her answer. This brought up a huge response from the intake nurse who asked if the only reason for the visit was back pain or if something else was wrong. She was then transported to a crisis center for an evalutation, which made her mood severely extreme she became verbally aggressive defensive and paranoid. Before the crisis center could even complete an evaluation they had to come and ask me about her basic medical history because she couldn't even correctly give them that information.
After they finished the evaluation they came to the conclusion that my 49 year old mother either had schizophrenia or dementia! These two mental disabilities do not just manifest themselves in people who them and their families have no history. The interviewer, staff, and doctors were at a complete loss and had no idea what was going on or creating my mother’s mood swings and bizarre behavior. They tried to threaten her to get her to sign herself inpatient saying that if she had come back again she would not have a choice but that didn't work. State law requires that only a person that is harm to himself or herself or someone else can be admitted into an impatient crisis ward and since she had made no such threat nothing could be done.
I started to talk to her doctors finding out that they were noticing the came bizarre behaviors that were not present before and accumulating a list of medications that she was on. After fully investigating the possibility of a drug interaction between the medications and the possibility that she was experiencing psychosis and finding out that that again was not the cause I became even more discouraged and frantic. Then I started to talk to some of the students at my college and found out that they were also experiencing the same problems either in their own lives or with their loved ones the only commonality between the collections of people I talked to that were experiencing the same problems was the drug Ambien. I immediately called my mothers doctor and he advised me that must be source of the problem and for her to stop taking the medicine. It took about 2months for my mothers’ mental state to return to normal but it has taken over a year and a bankruptcy to clear away the damage that Ambien had created in her life.

My husband took Ambien for about 4 months when he was experiencing severe insomnia. (He would go days without being able to sleep!) The Ambien majorly messed with his head!! The best way to describe it is that it made him STUPID! Its so sad, but true. He couldnt think!! his head was foggy. Do not confuse this with him being sleepy. It was NOT sleepyness, or drowsiness. It was his thought process. the brain itself! Simple things became hard to do. He'd forget EVERYTHING!!

The straw that broke the camels back was when he almost got in 2 SERIOUS car accidents. One day on his way to work he was pulling out of a gas station right into traffic. He said he didnt even look! he just drove without thinking!!! By the grace of GOD alone did he not kill someone or get killed himself!! Then the last time, where I put my foot down... My husband went to make a left turn into a store parking lot... but he was in the right hand lane!!! So he turned right into the left lane of traffic and we got t-boned by another woman. THANK GOD it was at slow speeds. Both lanes just started off from a red light, so we were all going less than 20 mph. But the accident was almost hard to believe! If i wasnt there I would have never believed he would do such a STUPID thing!!!!!! Both incidents were within the same week!!

At work that week too he locked himself out of the one office and had to call his boss to come let him in.... (thought there was a problem with his key) the problem was he had the deadbolt locked! It never even dawned on him to unlock that part too!! Now mind you he's been employed here for 3 years! He's been in and out of this door a million times!

My husband is a brilliant man!!! Went to college for Civil Engineering, is a math wizard, among many other things! He has a squeaky clean driving record! This isnt a case of him just being an idiot on his own merits. This medicine was seriously messing with his head!!!!! he said he felt like he had no control over his mind. He had no "quick" thinking!

I called his doctor to ask if it was the Ambien CR or possibly another medication (he takes meds for blood pressure) and the doctor said to stop the Ambien because that was the newest medication. Within a week of stopping it, my husband got his mind back!! It was night and day!!!

This is the worst medication and I will not be surprised if its pulled from the market! Its one thing to give someone a headache, or maybe make them gain a little weight. These things arent dangerous. But when it messes with critical thinking and thought processes....this is DANGEROUS!! I have no doubt in my mind my husband would have ended up killing himself in a car accident if he didnt stop that medication when he did!