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Comment by ComputerGuru | Hacker News Reader

Zolpidem is famous for this, although it’s raised more questions than answers. This particular phenomenon has been known since the early 2000s; NYT has a good write up about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/magazine/can-ambien-wake-...

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After taking it for sleep, I think it should be researched for way more. It’s clearly rewiring things.

Can you elaborate on your experience with it? I’m super curious about that.

Zolpidem is Ambien, which is notorious for its interesting side-effects https://www.healthline.com/health/side-effects-of-taking-amb...

I would never take Ambien myself after someone I know was prescribed it, and instead of sleeping they would black out, blast techno/dance music in their apartment, and scream at the top of their lungs while stomping up and down ("dancing"). Then post about it on social media. All without remembering it, or with only hazy memories.

Sounds like it's a gateway drug to demon possession (or at least descriptions of it -- in case of an atheist reading).

Atheist here; you are implying a religious person would believe that taking this (and others as 'a gateway drug' implies) drug makes it easier for demons to possess you? Is that a common thought in some circles? I was raised religiously (catholic and reformed), but never heard about this.

What do you think of this then? Some Loa riding you, like you would a horse, or putting you on like just another coat?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loa

Combine with parts of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis as you see fit, for instance some bored coder looking into why some parts of code suddenly fail, and putting you into debug mode :)

edit: also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinn

> Sounds like it's a gateway drug to demon possession

Are you seriously suggesting that demonic possession is real and that a drug could lead to it?

One of the major side effects of Ambien is anterograde amnesia, some people are less sensitive to it, but generally anything you do in "black out" phase will be a complete blur the next day. I used to take it an hour before bed and try to get some work done, I'd usually wake up the next day to several pages of code with absolutely no recollection of writing it.

Those people typically have not had any experiance with benzos and are over perscribed. 3mg is equal to 60mg of valium. Someone with no benzo tolerance getting 60mg of valium is going to blackout and act stupid too.

I should hope not- there are no wires in your brain!

This is way better. I think the "sciencedirect" article is based on this. Re-link? @dang

Is this a joke? Sciencedirect is a database hosting academic journal articles. This particular article is from the joural Cortex and reports novel research results. It is obviously not based on a NYTimes article! The NYTimes could of course be more accessible or have a broader perspective.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zolpidem#Research

treatment effective in the short term, but only in a small proportion of cases (estimated at around 5%)

Indeed, there was even a Dr House episode featuring it.

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