Much is being made in the press about Congressman Patrick Kennedy's run in with a jersey barrier last week, but the controversy is an interesting piece of spin control.
The question on everyone's mind, including the Gather editorial team, is this: was it just Ambien, or something stronger?
In this, the press has snapped up, without reason or research, the Kennedy camp's framing of the affair. But of course, we're conditioned to do so.
Ambien (a brand name of the hypnotic sleep aid, Zolpidem) is a widely prescribed, and wide abused drug. As a legitimate sleep aid, it's taken 15 minutes before sleep -- not on the ride home. The warnings included in the Ambien packaging warn that one should not drive or operate machinery.
Yet the New York Times reported at the beginning of March on the rise in "ambien drivers," who often claim to have forgotten that they took the drug before taking the wheel. This is the same drug that, more whimsically, has been reported in cases of people sleep-eating, or even cooking entire meals, while in a sleepwalking, hypnotic state.
With a half-life of only two to three hours, and a fifteen minute lead from dose to unconsciousness, what in the world was Kennedy doing driving under the influence of a drug far surer to incapacitate him for driving? Was it his driving, or his judgement that was impaired?
Why should we treat this as less serious than driving under the influence of alcohol?
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 3