Ambien: No Morning Impairment Found

A recent literature review showed that people who take Ambien at night for sleep are able to drive 5-6 hours later. J. Jason Buckland, D.O. and associates reviewed 10 studies that involved driving tests after the administration of Ambien. These studies showed that there is no residual impairments in the morning, approxminately 5-6 hours later.

Zolpidem: Minimal Morning Impairment Expected

Zolpidem, the generic of the short acting Ambien has a half life of 2.5 hrs. The controlled release version, Ambien CR has a half-life of 2.8 hours. What does this mean? It takes roughly 3 half-lives for a drug to be eliminated from your body. By two half lives, the drug level is at the low end of the curve (meaning little noticable effect if any). So if a person only sleeps 6 hours, they have still passed two half lives of the drug and should show no impairment in their driving ability. This is in contrast to drugs like Trazadone that has a half life of 4-7 hrs or Restoril which is 10hrs. It’s the long half-life that can make people who take these drugs for sleep feel groggy in the morning.