Thoughts on Sonata as a sleeping aid for the long flight?
 

First, I will start out by saying that I am an avid Ambien user, and have been for several years. I love it. I take one, fall asleep about 40 minutes later, sleep (deeply but not deep enough that I don't know what's going on) for about 6 hours, and wake up refreshed and with almost no staggering jetlag effects.

DH and I moved to a new city within the last year and DH went to his new doctor today. He asked about getting a prescription filled for Ambien, as we will be flying to Japan in October, but the doctor suggested Sonesta for overseas flights because he claims it doesn't have as many negative side effects as Ambien does. As I've mentioned above, I haven't had any unfortunate side effects with Ambien with the exception of the one time I accidently (don't ask) took two and lets just say it made for an interesting experience.

We will, of course, try it out at home several times before we leave, but thought I would see if anyone has any experience with it. I did do a search but not much came back.

Thanks!
Tracy

Oops, I called it Sonesta in one of my paragraphs above. I think I'm getting Lunesta (which he also asked about) and Sonata mixed up...sorry about that! I'm looking for information on Sonata.

Tracy

Hi tc,

>I am an avid Ambien user, and have been for several years.<

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. :)

Your new doc doesn't know anything about you.

((I))

I'm in the same boat. My doctor has seen too many abusers of Ambien and will not prescribe to anyone....even though I did not want any refills and only wanted enough for the flights.

So, we got a prescription on Sonata. I took 1 on the flight to Zurich from DFW and only slept an hour at the most. My husband has trouble sleeping during trips so he took one several different nights and he said they worked well but he had slightly "trippy" dreams, colorful..ya' know what I mean.

He also took them on the flight to and from Europe and slept off and on. They don't seem to be as reliable as Ambien IMO.

ira, I agree. He must have driven a hard sale though because DH thought it sounded great.

Sandi, that's what I am afraid of. I looked it up online and it says that you only need a minimum of 4 hours to sleep, which I translate to mean that its not strong enough to keep me asleep once it kicks in. We have a 14 hour flight to Tokyo and I desperately want to sleep for at least half of it. Thank you for commenting.

Tracy

I would plead my case to the doctor again. Since it is only for the trip I would make sure they understand you are not wanting continual refills and you are asking for a small amount of them. We also used the 5mg Ambien and it was enough to get me through most of a flight.

Ambien is off patent now so you can buy the generic cheaply. Sonata is still expensive.

My doc just prescribed 10 Ambien generics without a second thought. Unlike last time, two years ago, she didn't have an armload of Ambien CR samples to give away; but she did say that the only reason for Ambien CR was to put some bogus "time-release" coating on regular Ambien so they could re-patent it, since the regular Ambien is available as a generic.

The old Ambien is short acting (about 4 hours) while the new Ambien CR is longer acting (about 8 hours) because of the time release coating. I don't think the old Ambien is available anymore, only the generic version of it.

We are going to go ahead and try Sonata for a few nights sometime in the near future and see how it works. If it doesn't work out I'm going to call the doctor and talk to him about Ambien CR because three or four hours of sleep isn't going to cut it!

Is the generic Ambien as good as the old stuff? I think I was using just regular Ambien and it worked like a charm every time.

Cost really isn't an issue. For the money I spend on my vacations its worth $30-$40 to ensure I get enough sleep to not feel jetlagged for half of my trip!

Thanks to everyone who posted!
Tracy