This is an old post, but as someone said, Zolipidem is the generic form of Ambien. It is the same thing. It is also in a class all of its own...it's not a benzodiazepine, or a sedative, rather it is a Hypnotic drug (whatever that means in the realm of drug classification). I've been prescribed it for almost 10 years faithfully and have taken it every night for those 10 years. I can say this, it could help me sleep, but it actually takes away the dreadful, debilitating pains have all day from botched spinal surgery along with 10 vertebrae that are either herniated, bulging, and/or have osteophytes. It can go both ways, I can lie down and sleep, but wake up to more pain that gets nothing done or I can take it, be relieved of the pain and take care of my house cleaning, shopping, my home business's, etc and forget the sleep. I take the latter because it gets things done.

DOES ANYONE ELSE HAVE THE SAME EFFECT ON AMBIEN?

My Story: Several Lipomas on spinal nerves, Discectomy on L5-S1 after severe compression on S1 nerve, surgery left excess scar tissue & damaged several nerves, lateral herniation L3-L4, Schmorl's node L3, straightened Lumbar, Straightened Thoracic, Reverse Cervical Spine, Herniations at C4-5, C5-6, C6-7, osteophytes onC4, C5, C6, C7, a 1CM right sided posterior thyroid cyst that abuts the osteophytes in my neck, Fibromyalgia (which I don't believe in), Lupus, Factor IV Leiden, Lupus Anticoagulant, PCOS, List goes on..... And no doctor I know believes in upright MR imaging which I have less than 15 minutes from me! I have 2 kids I care for on my own and one is autistic and he needs his mommy 24/7... Which is hard. Can anyone help me find a doc who will help, I'm at the point where I feel like I'm choking constantly, things constantly stick in my throat, my BP was always normal and now since all this got worse for the last 2 years, my BP went from a steady 112/60 (all my life) to 190-200/165-185 only when I'm up and trying to do things, yet its normal at night after the ambien and normal in the am for less than an hour after I start moving.