I have been on ambien for 7 months now and am trying to stop using it. I am seeing a sleep/addiction doctor and its just been hard. Ambien makes me feel sick to my stomach even when I think of it. It used to make me feel great, now I feel anxious all the time and sleep is constantly on my mind - or lack of sleep - I should say. This is night number 4 of trying to reduce my dosage and feel better. Obviously I am up right now but I have to say I feel better knowing I have only 2 mg of that in my system and I took it 3 hours ago when I first tried to go to bed. People say its hard to break this habit of using a pill to go to sleep but I am so game. Any advice of what people do during the middle of the night that helps them? Any advice on what other natural methods people use? I work out in the morning and work all day. I am not sure I will go to work tomorrow since I may be up all night. I hear its hard to stop taking this drug. I hear that all the side effects though will go away after it gets out of your system. I have not set a "cold turkey quitting" timeline, yet am doing it gradually. I found that I was stock piling up ambien - probably had about 400 pills - so I would always have them and (so I thought) never have sleep issues again. I flushed all but 20. I am ready to make a change. I think to myself - I used to sleep like a normal person, lay my head down on the pillow and be out. What happened to that? Ambien. You go a couple of days without sleep and you think the world is going to end. Ambien helps with that but I will say for me, I am addicted. I think its possible to gain that natural sleep cycle back without being on a substance and am more than willing to try. If anyone has gone through this and had advice, I would greatly appreicate that.