After drinking 5 or 6 glasses of wine, Julie Bronson downed an Ambien sleeping pill. At some point, she then got into a car and ran over three family members in their front yard. 18-month-old Ava Lopez, who was with her mother as she did yard work, suffered severe brain damage.
Bronson got off on probation using the controversial “Ambien defense“:
Bronson is far from the first person to have acted strangely and without memory while using a therapeutic dose of Ambien, testified Dr. Janci Lindsay, a biochemist and toxicology expert hired by the defense to review the case. In 2008, the company changed its patient brochure to more explicitly warn users that side-effects in some cases have included sleep-walking, sleep-eating, sleep-driving, sleep-sex and sleep-talking on the phone.
Some 44 million Americans are Ambien pill poppers, and all across the country the “Ambien defense” is being used in criminal cases. The most famous was a 2006 case of Patrick Kennedy, the former congressman from Rhode Island and son of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. And the Mercury News yesterday reported on the case of Kevin Robertson in another Ambien acquittal.
Is this a case of juries running amok, or is there a serious problem with the medication? Hard to say — Bronson had taken alcohol even though instructed not to. And Robertson had previously been involved in an Ambien-related accident.
No, it’s definitely a very real side effect of taking the drug. I know a lot of people with weird Ambien stories, including one involving a car. I’m not sure I’d say it’s a big enough problem to ban it, though – I don’t believe in alcohol prohibition, and that’s a much bigger problem for public safety. As for legal culpability, I’d give the drivers the benefit of the doubt the first time around, but not the second. As for the woman who mixed it with alcohol, combining different categories of CNS depressants is one of the surest ways to kill yourself, so I’m guessing God will sort her out sooner rather than later.
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Isn’t this called “operating under the influence”, which carries severe penalties in the United States?
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It’s a real problem with the drug. I wouldn’t go so far as to ban it, but people on Ambien should have their keys taken away while they’re affected.
But people are *instructed* not to combine it with alcohol (so this is gross negligence on the part of this driver).
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Crazy shit Ambien… Just look at this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEWRHKhENlU
that stuff can mess you up