Ambien Dreams

I have so much on my mind today.  I've come to find out that if I don't write what's on my mind and post it right away then I either forget what was so important about what I was thinking, or I'll re-read it and it'll seem just dumb to me.  So here I go (please be patient with me).

I have difficulty getting to sleep.  I've always been like this.  When I was in my early 20's and I was going back to school this worked out great for me.  I'd work my full time job, my part time job, raise two kids on my own, go to school at nights and I was able to stay up until 2 am doing my homework and still get up in the morning to go to work.  Now it doesn't work out so well for me anymore.  I don't know if its because I'm older now and need more sleep, or if all the years of minimal sleep have caught up to me, but I still stay up until 2 am and get up at 6 am to get ready for work BUT now I'm dead tired all day long.  I could easily go home at 5 pm, go to bed and be out cold until 6 am.  In fact, I think that would be ideal.  However, I can't do this.  I have to go home, make dinner, clean the kitchen, do a load of laundry, read with K, etc.  By the time I can go to bed at 9 pm I've got my second wind and I'm up until 2 am.  It's a vicious cycle and it's beginning to wear me down. 

So I talked to my doctor and she prescribed Trazedone for me. ( I know I'm never going to spell that right so I relied on sounding it out.)  That drug was originally used as an anti-depressant but didn't work for those symptoms.  They did realize that it worked great as a sleep aid.  Not for me though.  Oh, it knocked me out all right but it took me half the day the next day to come out of my drug induced slumber.  She has now prescribed me Ambien.  I love this drug.  It puts me to sleep gently, I get up with my alarm in the morning and I'm not half asleep for half the day. 

Last night I took my pill like usual and was asleep by 10:30 (woo hoo!).  I was woken up at 12:45 am to knocking on my bedroom door.  I wasn't really awake; just kind of... not sleeping sort of.  The knock was from K, L and L's friend, Becca.  Apparently K's legs were hurting her (she's suffered from growing pain type discomfort occasionally in the evenings her entire life) so L told her to take the pill that was in the Alieve bottle.  The problem is that I don't know what was in the Alieve bottle, but it wasn't Alieve.  K was then freaked out that she took something "bad" and was then all in a tither that the veins in her arm were hurting because of this pill.  I remember telling her not to worry about it; that it was just prescription strength Advil. 

As this conversation was coming back to me this morning in bits and pieces I realized that the prescription strength Advil (800 mg) was in the kitchen and the Alieve bottle from which she got this pill was in the bathroom.  If I'm remembering correctly the pill in the Alieve bottle was vicodin.  K was tripping out on Vicodin!!  This worries me.  A lot.  It worries me because their SFB (That's what I call their father - Shit For Brains) is an addict.  After we got divorced he got messed up big time on Meth and other drugs.  I know addiction is hereditary.  I'm starting to freak out now that K is going to think back to her Vicodin trip, like it, and want to score more.  She's going into the 8th grade, and it's not as hard for kids her age to get drugs as it would have been for me at that age.

Of course I've had the Drug Conversation with both of my kids, and they know what their SFB went through (he did a stint in jail for 8 months for being busted in a rolling meth lab).  I've always known that the girls are going to try drugs at some point, I think all kids do, but I've really believed that L will be the one who won't like it and K will be my problem.  I just never thought that K would be my problem at 13 yrs old.  Tonight I'll have to have that conversation with K again.  I mean, really?!  She's 13 yrs old!  She should know better than to take random pills laying around!  What was she thinking?!  She knows what the Advil bottle and pills look like.  She knows what the Generic Tylenol bottle and pills look like.  Why would she open a bottle and just swallow the pill?!

I'm freaking myself out now, but I'm freaking myself out even more because I wasn't completely awake when she woke me up at 12:45 am.  I had taken a pill that made me sleep but didn't allow me to fully wake up when needed.  I should have asked her more questions about the pill she took, what it looked like and exactly why she took it.  I didn't even remember that I'd had this conversation until I was in the shower this morning.  What kind of parenting is that?!