2009 February (pre): ZZZ-Mailing

In February 2009, the journal Sleep Medicine reported a very odd behavior in a 44-year-old woman who had recently increased her dosage of the sleep inducing medicine called Zolpidem... also know as "Ambien."

        She has initially been prescribed the medicine in 2004 due to an inability to get normal sleep at all, but over the next few years her body apparently got used to the dosage she was taking, and she began to lose sleep again. So her doctors increased her dosage with a goal of getting her at least five good hours of sleep a night.

        Shortly after this increased dosage, the woman received a puzzling phone call: it was one of her friends calling to accept a dinner invitation. But the woman didn't send out any invitations, and had no such dinner planned! Confused, she looked back in her emails and discovered that she had sent just such an invitation the previous evening at 11:47PM. The invite read: "I don't get it. Please explain Lucy! Come tomorrow and sort this hell hole out! Dinner and drinks, 4:00pm? Wine and caviar to bring only. Everything else, a guess?" In addition, two more such emails had been sent, at 11:50PM and 11:53PM, both far less readable.

        In talking to the doctors, it became clear that, while sleeping, the woman had gotten up from bed, turned on her computer, logged into her email, written three emails, and then shut everything down and gone back to bed!