For one thing, many prescription sleep medications come with dangerous side effects. “I encourage people to limit their use of prescription sleep aids, which have been associated with various side effects, including sleepwalking, next-day grogginess, falls, and increasing airway collapsibility with sleep,” says Dr. Tsai.
Prescription sleep aids also come with a risk of dependency. “While most prescription sleep aids don’t have significant potential for physical addiction, people can become psychologically dependent on them fairly easily,” says Phil Gehrman, PhD, professor of clinical psychology in psychiatry at the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Eventually, you may feel like you can’t get to sleep without medication.
Some people may also notice that, over time, the sleep medications become less effective, or that they require higher dosages to be effective, Tsai adds.
“They are generally recommended only for short-term use, one month or less,” Dr. Gehrman says. For help with maintaining a good sleep routine during a time period of temporary stress (a common cause of insomnia), prescription sleep aids may be a good short-term solution, he notes. But remember, as goes for all prescription medications, they should be used only under the direction of your doctor.
