Ambien responds

The pills made me do it

Roseanne Barr is a disgrace.

Barr has since defended herself, writing: “It was 2 in the morning and I was Ambien tweeting,” Barr tweeted. “It was Memorial Day too. I went too far and do not want it defended. It was egregious [and] indefensible.”

“I think Joe Rogan is right about Ambien,” she added, referencing the comedian and UFC host who described the drug as “scary stuff”. “Not giving excuses for what I did (tweeted) but I’ve done weird stuff while on Ambien: cracked eggs on the wall at 2am etc.”

  The Guardian

I don't want to defend it, but it's not my fault.

I'm pretty sure Ambien didn't make Roseanne a racist.  And maybe if you're doing "weird stuff while on Ambien," perhaps you should get off Ambien.

Barr will appear on Rogan’s podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, this Friday. On Wednesday, Rogan tweeted a link to a Huffington Post story titled The Disturbing Side Effect of Ambien, the No 1 Prescription Sleep Aid.

As far as I know, even through all her apologies, Barr has never admitted to being racist or needing to do anything about that other than not show it publicly.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Dr. Jackson keeps his job

The White House medical unit frequently functioned as a "grab and go" clinic where mid-level staffers to the most senior officials could obtain prescription drugs without being examined by a doctor, casually pick up the powerful sleeping aid Ambien even for their children, and get drugs that were not prescribed to the person actually taking the medication.

These examples, described to CNN by five of the medical unit's former and current employees and which appear to represent the more problematic practices there, were endorsed by Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, a doctor.

Jackson withdrew his nomination to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs Thursday morning in response to an avalanche of allegations of questionable behavior. But the 50-year-old US Navy rear admiral remains President Donald Trump's physician and the head of an office that treats the first family, Vice President Mike Pence, members of the Trump Cabinet and other senior government officials.

  CNN

Hey, everybody does it.

Some former Obama administration officials are defending Jackson, saying they were only given sleeping aids after being asked routine medical questions. He would ask staffers how long they wanted to sleep and whether they had to get any work done on the flight, before offering drugs ranging from Ambien to non-prescription drugs like melatonin.

LOL. Those are NOT routine medical questions in anybody's definition of the term.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The accusations against Dr. Ronny grow

Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, the White House physician nominated to lead the Veterans Affairs Department, provided such “a large supply” of Percocet, a prescription opioid, to a White House Military Office staff member that he threw his own medical staff “into a panic” when it could not account for the missing drugs, according to a summary of questionable deeds compiled by the Democratic staff of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

A nurse on his staff said Dr. Jackson had written himself prescriptions, and when caught, he simply asked a physician assistant to provide him with the medication.

[...]

The document includes allegations that Dr. Jackson regularly distributed Ambien, a prescription sleep aid, to members of the White House staff and members of the news media flying on long overseas trips, as well as another prescription drug to promote wakefulness.

It says that the committee was told that physicians working with Dr. Jackson “felt uncomfortable and refused to be a part of the loose dispensing of drugs to current and former” White House staff members. It also states that Dr. Jackson “also had private stocks of controlled substances.”

[...]

Mr. Cornyn defended Dr. Jackson’s reported distribution of Ambien and other drugs during long trips as nothing out of the ordinary. He said that because Dr. Jackson was a doctor, it was not a problem that he distributed the drugs, even without writing a prescription.

“On overseas travel, yeah, sure, people take Ambien to help them transition through time zones,” he said. “It’s pretty common, I’m led to believe.”

  NYT

Colin Powell once bragged about using Ambien ("Everybody here uses [it].").* Since that was before Jackson was working in the White House, I'm guessing he's not the first to be passing out the candy, and I'm sure Senator Cornyn knows all about it.

And at a Secret Service going away party, the doctor got intoxicated and “wrecked a government vehicle,” according to the summary.

[...]

An aide to Senator Jon Tester of Montana, the top Democrat on the committee, said each allegation included in the document was based on information provided by two or more individuals.

He has denied he "wrecked a car." Surely that one would be easy enough to prove or disprove. Although, I suppose it's probable that no one made out a report.

On [one] trip during Barack Obama’s presidency, White House staff members reached out to Dr. Jackson for medical reasons but found him passed out in his hotel room after a night of drinking, Tester aides said. The staff members took the medical supplies they were looking for without waking Dr. Jackson.

The document prepared by the Democratic staff of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee paints a picture of a medical office that was casual with the prescribing and distribution of drugs but terrorized by a mercurial boss, quick to anger. According to the summary, interviewed staff members described Dr. Jackson as “the most unethical person I have ever worked with,” “flat-out unethical” and “incapable of not losing his temper,” among other charges.

A mean drunk.

Dr. Jackson had been scheduled to testify before the Senate panel on Wednesday, but its top Republican and Democrat announced on Tuesday that the session would be postponed to allow more time to investigate the claims.

* Re Ambien:

It inspires sleep-eating, sleep-driving, sleep-shopping, sleep-blogging. Ambien gives you the hallucinatory urge to indulge your most moronic whims — in other words, it turns you into the pitiful jerk you already are. That's the clanger of this drug: The side effect is you.

Insomniacs used to get pre­scribed sedatives like Tuinal, Valium, Seconal, even Thorazine or lithium, just for their meagerly soporific side effects, which is like sticking your head in the microwave for an earache. But Ambien takes a sharpshooter approach, tar­geting brain receptors to pro­mote gamma-aminobutyric acid.

[...]

No wonder it's become America's drug. It's the drug that turns America into America.

  Rolling Stone

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: