by Rebekah Aura Nemethy

Created on: October 05, 2009

Prescription drugs aimed at insomnia have many risks that you should be aware of before you take them. When you're deprived of sleep, going to the doctor and filling a prescription may seem like the only thing you can do, but you need to know that there are alternative methods to correcting sleep problems.

Some of the most common sleeping pills include Ambien, Lunesta, and Sonata. These medications are targeted at the inability to fall asleep and they make you become drowsy quickly. The amount of side effects that have been reported is immense, but only the most common and some of the more shocking side effects are included here.

Out of all the side effects people have reported most of them such as dizziness and drowsiness after waking, can inhibit your ability to drive or perform other everyday activities. Other common side effects include headache, dry mouth, and heartburn.

Behavioral side effects such as sleep eating, and even driving while asleep, with no memory of the event, have been reported. Some people have even been unaware that they had sex or carried on phone conversations after taking sleep medication. These side effects, known as parasomnias, can be dangerous to everyone. These types of side effects are considered rare, however, there are probably many occurrences that have gone unreported due to memory loss.

Although many prescription sleep aids profess to be non-habit-forming, there are many people that become dependent on them after long-term use. Tolerance to the medication also increases and this causes people to take more than the prescribed amount. Many times, when someone tries to go off sleeping pills they go through withdrawal and can experience headaches or worse insomnia known as "rebound insomnia."

There are many other medications that make you sleepy as a side effect such as the muscle relaxer, Valium, or the painkiller, Tylenol with Codeine; the list could be endless, but these other prescriptions have their own list of side effects.

Remember that if you are taking any other medications, throwing sleeping pills into the mix is likely to worsen or create different side effects. Drinking alcohol significantly increases the rate of side effects from sleep aids; even one drink mixed into your sleep cocktail greatly contributes to the risk of parasomnias.

Sleeping pills should only be considered as a last resort. There are plenty of safer methods you can try to alleviate your insomnia before you pop a prescription pill. If you're looking

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