Blame it on the A-a-a-a-a-ambien.

There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call The Ambien Zone.

So that psychiatrist that I see for like 5 minutes about once every three weeks thought Ambien would be a good idea for my long sleepless nights. I voiced some concerns that I had heard some "weird" things about the drug, but he poo-pooed me mid-sentence and said it was all media hype and that the side effects were very rare, blah blah etc. He likes to cut me off and make me feel like some gripey old man when I start to complain about one of his precious drugs.

Anyway, because I have little to no willpower and I DID want something to help me sleep, I decided to give it a try. And truth be told, those little fuckers work. My head hits the pillow and what normally would have been about a three hour process of shutting down the ol' thinker is now like 4 minutes of mumbling to Jeff followed by the sawing of many logs. And it's kinda nice not to have to lay there thinking about all the crappy stuff that happened that day and how I could have done things differently if I weren't such a screw-up and all that negative business that usually keeps people like me up at night, you know?

But then the weird shit started happening...

Suffice it to say that you do not want to suddenly be awoken from a deep Ambien sleep because you will be FUCKED up. Nothing seems real...or everything seems HYPER-real...I'm really not sure. Alls I know is that it makes me really stupid. The first time it happened was purely Jeff's fault.

He got up in the middle of the night to go pee and left the door to the bedroom open. Of course no late-nite pee would be complete without a monster bong hit before returning to bed. And like any real pothead knows, you have to like cough, man, and like, open up the airways, man and like, let it get all in your lungs and shit like that, you know, man? So it's nearly 3 in the morning and I hear coughing. My eyes open and I smell smoke and see this white haze and this glaring light coming from the other room. Smoke, light, coughing, OH SHIT, FIRE! I jump outta bed, start putting on pants, throw on a tshirt, run my big ass down the hallway and happen to see from the side of my eye Jeff standing in front of the toilet taking a pee and still coughing.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?? WE GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE!!"
"Wha? Why are you up?"

Suddenly I realize, there's no fire. Just pee and bong smoke. What in the hell just happened? One second I'm making a valient effort to remember the cat on my way out the apartment door and the next second I'm standing in the hallways staring at Jeff's balls with a puzzled yet clearly disturbed look on my face. Not cool, man. I just couldn't understand how it was so easy to convince myself the place was on fire while still being in such a sleepy haze. It's like having sound and reason, but only to make the most assenine conclusions of all time. "hmm, it's cold in here, I MUST BE STRANDED ON ANTARCTICA. LOOK AT THAT PENGUIN CAT!" Shit makes no sense. Goddamn Ambien.

The next time it happened, I forreal thought I was dead. I was home alone so I can't even blame Jeff this time. I don't know what made me suddenly wake up, but when I did, I was just surrounded by beaming white light, everywhere. This is it, I thought, heaven. No one was more shocked than me. Surely it must be my reward for never having any filthy dirty raunchy sex...the bright white beacon of light leading me home. So I got out of bed and started to walk around. Heaven was SO BRIGHT and FULL OF HOPE and FILLED WITH WONDER and ...strangely had the same layout as my apartment.

Hey, what the fuck, this IS my apartment. My apartment is heaven?? What a shitty shitty terrible heaven...no one even bothered to clean it. It was somewhere between the kitchen and the living room that the light started to fade and I realized it was just my awful dirty apartment with no cool lighting and nothing different at all except for a fat naked Tricia walking around the living room like some lost confused cherub.

Turns out opening your eyes mid-Ambien makes everything all white and bright and crazy. Things that would have been good to know before my freak-outs and before I booked that full-page obituary talking about how awesome I am/was. Oh well, the world still needs to know.

Truth be told, waking up thinking you're dead a few times a month is worth all the good sleepin' I been getting lately. Maybe the dosage could use some tinkering so I'm not taking like six hour naps every Sunday afternoon, but for now I'm grateful for the zzzz's. Hopefully I don't wake up and walk off a cliff or like sleepily drive into a 7-11 one night, but in the meantime, I guess I'll start putting some clothes on when I go to sleep...just in case.