Name: Todd
Gender: male
Age: 42
Location: OKC
Here’s one for you. Several months ago I had difficulty sleeping so I got a prescription for Ambian. I’ve been using it off and on for several weeks and it worked fine. But I think there are side effects. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and find the TV in my bedroom on and a porno in the DVD player. There’s lube and cum stains on my sheets, but I don’t remember a damn thing. I’ve heard of people sleepwalking, but not to this extent.
[S]ome people don’t just walk in their sleep; they eat as well. And some people, like you, have sex in their sleep. As sleep disorders go, this is pretty extreme, but researchers are finding that abnormal nocturnal behaviors like eating, having sex, even driving a car may be a side effect of that popular sleep medication you’re taking.
You may be a parasomniac, someone who is prone to unusual sleep-related behaviors. Ambian may be aggravating and intensifying or triggering the condition. But curiously enough, there is such a thing as a sexsomniac.
Sexsomnia is an umbrella term for any sexual behavior (masturbation, taking dirty, even fucking) that happens while the person is asleep. The incidences of sexsomnia appear to be on the rise, but that might be attributed to growing public awareness.
As an aside, get this. — A surge in naked sleepwalking among guests has led one of Britain’s largest budget hotel groups to re-train staff to handle late-night nudity. Travelodge, which runs more than 300 business hotels in Britain, says sleepwalking rose seven-fold in the past year, and 95 per cent of the sleepwalkers are scantily clad men. Isn’t that amazing?
The exact number of sexsomniacs is difficult to determine because it usually isn’t that much of a problem to either seek treatment or report. Perhaps if you weren’t taking Ambien you wouldn’t have even known you were a sexsomniac.
I’m gonna guess, Todd, that you don’t share your bed with a regular partner, right? The reason I ask is that some sexsomniacs have been know to assault their partner, either in the form of non-consensual sex, or consensual sex that becomes disturbing or violent.
So it would seem that the best treatment for you would be to stop the Ambien. You might want to consider an herbal remedy for sleeplessness, one that doesn’t have as many unhappy and unwelcome side effects of this prescription med does.
Good luck