Beware the Zopiclone, My Son

Beware the Zopiclone, my son; for it strength to leave you stunned. I have a sleeping aide called Zoplicone. I take it rarely; I've had the subscription for a month and have only taken three pills so far. This sleeping pill works fairly quickly for me, and apparently fairly powerfully. In the description they warn about the "hypnotic" effect, where you are sleeping so deeply that you lose touch with everything, and if you are wakened you actually may forget about the whole waking period.

That happens to me. When I take one of these little suckers, I go dark for about 8 hours, with no notion of what happened in between. Last night, after spending an afternoon in the woods, I had dinner in camp with Kate and Mike and his clan. I had a couple of drinks of something called Rum Chatta, a drink Rick and I discovered in NOLA, along with a steak and beautifully baked potato. About an hour later, I was on the road back to the hotel, for a much needed rest.

I watched the last of the Canucks hockey game, checked email, and was in bed before 9:00 PM. I was tired, really tired. Yet sleep did not come. I tried, I really tried, to shift myself into sleep mode. Alas my body thought otherwise; perhaps this is the true punishment for all my Tuesdays where I stay up until 2:00 AM or later, sitting with the folks in the bar, listening to their tales and telling a few of my own. Still, sleep did not avail me.

So I took the pill a little after midnight, having spent 3 hours restless. I can remember readjusting in bed a couple of times; that's all. My next memory was at about 9:00 AM, thinking that I should probably get up as quickly as possible so I could get to the hunting grounds early. I sat up, and fell right back over. The pills have a warning that you might experience instability on awakening; I did. So I went back to sleep and re-awoke at 11:00 AM. I got up more steadily.

It was then that I realize the hotel might have a checkout time before noon. I got up, called the front desk and was told checkout time was 11:00 AM. By this time it was already 11:25; the front desk girl was so nice. She said "I know you are in that wheelchair and I didn't want to bother you." We arranged a 12:30 PM checkout.

I don't think I am going to make it to camp early. If I get there by 2:00 PM, I will be lucky. Given that it is full dark by 5:00 PM, my suspicion is that the deer and moose will be safe today. Oh well, I am going to blame it on the Zopiclone monster.