As stated earlier, the occupational medicine center gave me a prescription for an industrial-strength sleep aid called "Ambien" for use on my impending trip. I asked people how it worked and I got mixed responses. Half of the people said that it worked awesome, they slept like a baby for about 8 hours and woke up feeling wonderful. The other half said they had psychotic dreams, woke up disoriented and feeling sick. So I decided to test-drive it before using it on my trip.

I took one last night at my usual bedtime. I was wondering if it would kick in really fast and just knock me out; it didn't. In fact, there was nothing about last night's sleep that seemed out of the ordinary, except that I slept a bit longer than usual. Of course, I was taking the Ambien at a time when I would have been sleepy anyway. The real test will come when I take it on Saturday evening in an attempt to sleep through the 9 hour flight to Frankfurt and wake up Sunday morning feeling refreshed. I leave Denver at 5:20pm and arrive in Frankfurt at 10:35am, local time, having flown for 9 hours. It is critical that I sleep through this flight if I am to rotate my sleep schedule by 12 hours in a day. Hopefully, taking the Ambien at a time that my body isn't used to sleeping will be as painless and effective as it was last night.