A while ago I posted with the heading, Every pilot in the world should read this book. Something like that. It was Matthew Walker's 'Why We Sleep'. There was a LOT said about Ambien. Now I see:-
These instances are sometimes called
Ambien blackouts: The person performs activities after they have taken Ambien, although they do not remember them. The clinical term, however, is
parasomnia – an activity like walking, eating, talking on the phone, and others, which occurs after a person has gone to sleep.
There are certainly reports of sleepwalking, sleep-eating, and sleep-driving that do not involve Ambien and other prescription sleep aids, but the addition of Ambien appears to induce these behaviors in people who do not normally have them and may potentially make them worse in people who do have parasomnias.
If she takes any form of Zolpidem, I rather think she should be released from jail while the defence can be advised. It might be she'd then be guilty of another crime, but rather a lesser stigma perhaps.
Some of the facts in that book are utterly jaw-dropping.