ODing

[Guest guest]

Hey all,

?I imagine most people know by now that Heath Ledger died this afternoon. Well

they say it may have been an accidental overdose of sleep pills. He apparently

suffered from insomnia and was public about saying he took them to sleep.

Besides the fact that he's been one of my favorite male actors, I'm kind of

upset right now about the OD part. When I heard all this I was in my car, on the

way to the dr's to pick up sleep pills. It's something that I worry about with

all of the stuff I've taken for my sleep disorder. Right now I take 12.5 mg

ambien cr, plus 2 aleve, plus up to 9 mg of melatonin, and sometimes an herbal

pill. When I was on the regular ambien i would also take a tylenol simply sleep.

If I don't take all this I don't sleep, but lately it is really hard to get

myself out of bed in the morning and can take up to 5 or 6 hrs for me to shake

off the sleepiness. I try to be very careful in what I combine, starting at low

doses, and I don't drink alcohol (if I do I don't take the ambien). But it

touches on the fear that I had when I first started having problems sleeping.

Put simply I was afraid I wouldn't wake up at times, a PTSD symptom from having

severe hypothermia while skiing. I'm not usually afraid like that now, it's no

longer what keeps me from sleeping. But the possibility of accidentally ODing

concerns me. There are nights when I have to count how many pills are left in

the bottle because my head is foggy I can't remember if I've taken it yet or

not, which only helps if I started taking it on the day I got the prescription

filled. Because of that fog I have accidentally ODed on Excedrin before, which

doesn't sound serious but it is basically like an OD of caffeine pills, and it

was enough to send me to the ER.

Anyways, you get my point. With taking so much stuff for sleep and other

problems there is room for accident. And when I hear about other people having

such accidents that lead to death or nearly so it scares the hell out of me.

This is a really s----y time to get freaked because it is 2 am and I really need

to go to sleep. It helps to say it to someone though.

-Alia