Category — Other Sleep Medications

I see today Martha Rosenberg has written an interesting article, Do You Have Excessive Sleepiness, with the tagline Pharma hopes so. She’s referencing shift work sleep disorder, and she’s attempting to be clever and humorous. Really though… the world has had it’s one Andy Rooney, and God help us that was more than enough.

The thing about sleepiness and insomnia though…and, as a poor guy who suffers from these problems…I can tell you that it’s not something to joke about. Such humor is in very bad taste. If you’ve ever gone for three weeks averaging ninety minutes of sleep a night… believe me… Pharma is the last thing of which you’re curious about…you want relief for the insomnia! I wonder if Ms. Rosenberg has ever suffered from insomnia. Only then do you really understand the full context of the word “suffered” in the expression “suffered from insomnia.” And, you may not so casually write off Ambien, Lunesta, Sonata, and Rozerem. You might actually come to think of that pill bottle as your salvation. Yes, that’s the sort of pathetic desperation that insomnia brings its victims. Yea, I did use the word victim! I just don’t think humor has an appropriate place in discussions about insomnia. Sorry Ms. Rosenberg.

Neurocrine Biosciences’ Indiplon is awaiting FDA approval. Indiplon seeks to enter the competitive sleeping pill market. One quality that distinguishes Indiplon is that it’s a “short-acting”: meaning that it puts the person to sleep at the beginning of the night or is to be used to put the insomniac back to sleep should he wake up in the middle of the night. And, the sedative effects are not supposed to be present in the morning.

Gary Lyons says the medication takes effect in about fifteen minutes and only lasts for an hour.

The article also distinguishes Rozerem as one of the few drugs that does not use a sedative to bring about sleep. Rozerem works by being a melatonin receptor agonist.