Rejected by NY Times Op-Ed section — WTF?

The Food and Drug Administration’s March 13 press release/warning on the potential risks and side effects of prescription sleeping pills was, you should pardon the expression, a real wake-up call for me.

The prescription sleep aide that I take is among the 13 drugs in the F.D.A.’s list of medications that may cause bizarre activities while asleep, including driving or preparing and gorging on food. This certainly explains a lot of the uncharacteristic behavior I’ve displayed while on my sleep meds.

Some Ambien patients were arrested while driving in their sleep. I’ve managed to avoid this humiliation while sleep-driving, but it’s still very disturbing to wake up suddenly on the Ohio Turnpike, heading west toward Toledo, with Travis Tritt blaring on the car radio. I don’t even like country music.

I’ve woken up to find myself sitting in the parking lot of a local music venue, watching people file out of a Josh Groban concert, and in the middle of the Cold and Allergy aisle in an all-night CVS, gripping two bottles of Chloraseptic. One morning I awoke in an outdoor park, lying on top of a picnic table with a Frisbee on my chest.

It doesn’t end there with my sleeping pills’ side effects.

A friend told me that I had called in the middle of the night and sang much of the Doobie Brothers catalog over the phone to him. I’ve prepared and eaten Mexican and Thai dishes, cleaned up, ran the dishwasher and unloaded it, all asleep. I’ve made jambalaya and once, a Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings.

I arose recently to find that, overnight, I had written a dramatization, for puppets, of the inauguration, and death from pneumonia a month later, of President William Henry Harrison.

One night while asleep I had taken photographs of myself with my digital camera and uploaded them to my computer. The next morning I found these images scattered on my desktop, with me in various poses and positions, pouting and pointing at the camera, wearing the Christina Aguilera wig I had acquired earlier in one of my sleep-online-ordering episodes. To my horror I saw in my sent box that I had e-mailed these photos to the entertainment editors of 37 daily newspapers, as well as to Variety and Us Weekly.

I’ve done sleep-carpentry and crafts, making wooden crates, clay pots and tea cozies. I’ve started a number of small businesses, complete with financial backing arranged on-line.

It may be time to talk to my doctor to determine if my sleep medication is right for me.