I so wholeheartedly agree.

The number of people calling for sleeping tablets to be banned scares me- I know that without the occasional use of these medications I wouldn't be able to safely hold down a job.

OK, your daughter died, and maybe it is easier to blame the sleeping tablet than anything else that might have been going on unseen. Maybe the sleeping tablets have caused some people's deaths- but it is also possible that they have saved other people's lives.

It's a risk/benefit thing. I think some people have trouble understanding that just because something is risky, that doesn't mean it isn't worth that risk under certain circumstances.

Doctors have refused to give me sleeping pills forver, even though I am also an imsomnimaniac. Trouble is, the insomnia leaves my other aches worse.

What I've discovered is that significant amounts of ginger helps relax the day-after muscles: it means I can get through the day a little less worse for wear.

I've also discovered that if I eat no carns after 8 pm, I'm less likely (only less likely, not 100% unlikely) to get insomnia.

I need to clean my computer screen. There is just one small bit of fuzz and it was at the 'n' so I read it and thought 'that's the blotch' but no, it was a typo.

Why not go with gourmet cures? Dark choc almonds and dark choc ginger.

Ow, I hate that, people trying to interfere into other people's lives, while they don't even know what it's about.

My insomnia troubles have lessened a lot since I decided it was ridiculous to go to bed as the same time as my husband, then wake up at 3am, unable to sleep until 6.30 and then be woken up by the &*&%$ alarm (and cranky!)

Now I never go to bed before 12pm on the pain of death, and I wake up at about 6am. My body says that's enough. No more tossing and turning (I believe that is much worse than the actual sleep missed).

And, at the end of it all, Stilnox has had warning labels on it for some time - well before that young woman died. There were warnings on the product when it was approved in 2005, warning against extended use, and there has been substantial noise about some of the more bizarre (and rare) side effects like sleep walking, eating and driving since 2006, particularly since one of the Kennedy's blamed the drug for getting busted pissed behind the wheel in early 2006.

But people don't pay attention to drug warnings - seriously, spend five minutes watching people as they come out of chemists. Almost no-one reads the warning labels on the pack, let alone the more detailed ones inside the box. You take the pills and dump the pack.

And even fewer get any serious monitoring from their GP when they start on new meds.

I think there's a number of reasons for that first part - firstly, like everything else, consequences (side-effects) are for other people. Nobody really takes them seriously until they're dealing with them - and then only if they recognise them for what they are.

Secondly (and this can be partly attributed to pharma marketing), you take pills to deal with a particular problem - be it insomnia, pain, or whatever. If the drug is doing its job, it's really difficult to give it up because there's a possibility of something else becoming a problem - you're more likely to take something else to deal with the problems caused by the first drug, IMHO. That's particularly true when the problem is a debilitating as insomnia.

And that also leads into the problem with drug monitoring by physicians - how many people, do you think, visit a doctor monthly to talk about the monitoring of an ongoing condition? Mostly we visit GPs to get a new script when the old one has run out - because talking the pill solves the problem, right?

And how many people tell their doctor the truth about side effects when they do? I know I've downplayed the side effects of meds I've taken when I'm desperate to solve the original problem - I figure I can muddle through the rest myself. Except when I can't.

Don't get me wrong - I think pharma marketing people, like Frenchmen, are shat out by the devil - but there's a lot of our own behaviour that contributes to pharma adverse events, also.

PS - you want adverse events? There is no way paracetamol or aspiring would get through the clinical trial process, if you were trying to get them approved now. The level of renal damage attributable to paracetamol would probably see it rubbed out pretty early on in the clinical trial process, these days.

It's liver damage that paracetamol does, not renal damage

Indeed it is. And I was doing so well, too.

It's probably symptomatic of a bad habit I should break before it gets settled in - I think I used "renal damage" because I was reading some analysts report on NSAIDs in development and it stuck in my mind. If I'd translated it out of medicalese I probably would have asked myself which damage it did, double checked, and got it right.

I'm completely with you on this. In fact, I'm ready to form up a zombie posse to attack these people...save I'm sure they have no brains.

K--, whose arthritis regularly wakes him (and yeah, me, cuz there I am, just 5 cm away) wasn't able to get his rheumatologist to write him a script for Stilnox at his last annual visit. He'd been having a series of really bad nights, to the point where he'd completely lost any decent sleep pattern. Even now that his flare-up had subsided, he couldn't sleep. But no stilnox. Even though he's been using it for years, on and off, with no noticeably bizarre side effects.

Now this is just nuts. His only other options are to load up on NSAIDS, with all their charming side effects mentioned above, or to just remain awake admiring the effectiveness of pain. (I will not comment the absence in Oz of medicinal cannabis cuz, like, that'd just get me started...).

In fact, I'll just stop now. All that spittle dripping onto the keyboard....