Everybody knows that mixing alcohol and sleeping tablets can have dangerous side effects.

Sometimes, those are as benign as a little drooling and some rather odd sleeptalking outbursts, and other times things go further south.

Take for example the travel writer John Vlahides, who falls into the more benign category. During a flight from London to San Francisco in 2008, he chatted with fellow passengers, necked two small bottles of wine, one milligram of a tranquillizer, and 10 milligrams of sleeping aid Ambien, and settled in for some shut-eye.

According to CNN, he didn’t exactly go down for the count:

…he had no idea he had been sleepwalking until he saw the photos and selfies on his smartphone the next day.

“The weird thing was remembering it all when I saw the pictures,” Vlahides said. “And you say, ‘Oh my God’ and you cringe.”

Vlahides had become what many flight attendants unflatteringly call an “Ambien zombie.” But Vlahides was lucky. He hadn’t done anything too embarrassing, unlike other unlucky sleepwalkers.

When you read about what can go wrong, John got off very lightly.

Just ask a flight attendant, calling herself “Betty”, who penned an article talking about the “Attack of the Ambien Zombies”:

The streaker was a sleepwalking economy passenger who had taken off all his clothes and decided to run up the aisle to first class. According to the story, he was stopped by flight attendants and told to don his clothes; he only realized his humiliating exploit when he later woke with his underwear in his hand.

Flight attendants told similar stories to Mayo Clinic sleep specialist Dr. Lois Krahn during her research on inflight substance use and jet lag. Krahn tells her patients one disconcerting tale as a warning about the potential dangers of sleeping aids, especially if combined with alcohol.

“This trans-Pacific and business class passenger mixed alcohol and Ambien and then woke needing to relieve himself,” Krahn said. “He stood up and urinated on the passenger sitting next to him.

“Can you imagine how hard it was to calm down the business class cabin for the rest of the night?,” Krahn added with a chuckle.

It would be remiss of me to write this story without at least mentioning some of the parallels to that infamous Bridesmaids scene.

If you’re going to run around naked, do it at the Cricket World Cup and in style, like this chap.

Some people might recommend cracking a few Ambien on a long-haul flight if you hate the person sitting next to you, and then blaming that for your indiscretions, but we wouldn’t do such a thing.

Taylor Garland, a spokesperson for the Association of Flight Attendants, says that whilst the Ambien Zombies are a real thing, it’s not exactly an everyday occurrence.

What does happen, though, is perhaps even creepier, with Garland saying it’s far more common for the dosed sleeper to reach out and fondle their unlucky seatmate.

Here’s a little more on Ambien:

Ambien, or zolpidem tartrate, belongs to a class of drugs called sedative-hypnotics. Prescribed to treat insomnia for adults over the age of 18, it works by slowing brain activity.

“One of the normal side effects of Ambien is that it basically turns your brain into Teflon. You don’t lay down any new memories,” said Dr. Julie Holland, a psychopharmacologist who practices in Manhattan.

“And the other thing that happens is that you get sort of disinhibited, the way that you would if you were drunk or had taken Xanax or Ativan or Valium or something like that,” Holland said. “So you get very relaxed and disinhibited, and you don’t remember what you’re doing.”

Not an excuse to cop a feel, y’all.

Here are a few tips for sleeping on a plane:

• Avoid pharmaceutically induced sleep
• Try melatonin instead
• Limit alcohol
• Pack a sleep kit
• Plan ahead

You can find an explainer for each of those tips over on CNN.

Safe travels, and don’t be that person.

[source:cnn]