It is. You’re right. I never take Ambien recreationally.

Here’s the path I went down:

It quickly becomes this cyclical pattern where if you don’t take it, then you don’t sleep for days, so you’re forced to use it. And when I mean forced, I can’t go to work sleep deprived, especially in my line of work. You’ll build a tolerance quickly, then you begin ramping up your dosage, and this helps for awhile. But like a lot of long term ambien users know, you don’t fall asleep as easily anymore. Then the side effects really begin hitting you because you’re awake with a 30-60 mg of Ambien in you.

And if you have a history of drug abuse like I do, you do the dumbest thing possible and drink wine with ambien. This will knock you out for sure, but before that happens, you’ll begin doing extremely destructive things.

I’ve taken a considerable amount of drugs in my life, but Ambien is something else. It’s not a black and white drug as people say to just take and fall asleep. That’s how my first 6 months were like, but after 7 1/2 more years, it becomes something entirely different.

As a counterpoint, I've taken Ambien for like four years now, have never taken more than 20mg, and have never done anything destructive or hallucinated.

It's possible there is some genetic factor.

The USAF also gives amphetamines to its pilots to help them fly missions for over 24 hours without sleep.

I don't think that it's recommended for the general population though.