I fell from the seventh floor, lost my vision and part of my leg after taking zolpidem, says doctor

He took a zolpidem tablet, an insomnia medication that he was already accustomed to taking. Vitor claims that he knew the risks of the drug, but he still used it - and sometimes abused it - to be able to rest. As a single pill didn't work that morning, he took a few more afterwards. He can't say exactly how many. He only remembers that he woke up in the ICU unable to see and with part of his right leg amputated.

He had fallen from the balcony of his apartment, on the seventh floor.

After the accident, Vitor had to start his life over and live with the consequences. He says his case is a warning about the inadvertent use of zolpidem.

Since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, in 2020, the sale of zolpidem has grown in the country. Data from Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) shows that, between 2018 and 2023, sales jumped from 13.2 million boxes to almost 22 million.

In November last year, the ABN (Brazilian Academy of Neurology) issued a warning about the inadvertent use of zolpidem, which turned the most popular medicine for insomnia into a public health problem in Brazil, with the escalation of dependence, abuse and withdrawal crises associated with the so-called Z drugs.

The article was published in the journal Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria. It is the first Brazilian consensus on abuse, dependence and safe management of these substances, which also include zopiclone and eszopiclone.

In August 2024, Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) adopted stricter rules for sale and started to require prescription B (blue), with special control, making access more restricted.

Z drugs were launched in the 1990s as a safer alternative to benzodiazepines to treat occasional insomnia without causing morning drowsiness. But current evidence shows that they can also cause chemical dependence, withdrawal crises and complex adverse events, such as sleepwalking, sleep-driving and delirium.

Read below the testimony of Vitor Piva, who is now 34 years old.

"Since childhood, I wanted to study medicine to take care of people. I lived in Cuiabá (MT), but I passed the entrance exam to the University of Vassouras (RJ) and moved there.

I finished my degree in 2018 and returned to Cuiabá. My plan was to spend a short period there and then move to São Paulo. But soon the Covid pandemic came and I postponed everything. I stayed in Mato Grosso until February 2022, when I finally moved to São Paulo, a city that I knew would be an important place to connect with myself and to evolve in my career.

In the capital of São Paulo, I lived with a couple of friends. To support myself, I started working a lot. I took one shift after another in public hospitals in the city. As a recent graduate, I just worked more and more because my expenses were high.

There were days when I would work 12 hours on duty, go home and hours later return to the hospital to work. It was difficult to get home and sleep, so I resorted to zolpidem. I started using this medicine during the pandemic, because a lot was happening during shifts and it caused me very bad insomnia. I just took one pill and was already asleep.

But after I moved to São Paulo, my life became very frantic. I lived practically alone, because my friends almost never stopped at home. I arrived from night shift and had to sleep. So I started taking zolpidem in the morning.

In the beginning it worked. I slept peacefully. But a while later it seemed that the medicine was no longer effective. Some days I had to take more than one pill. Then I slept, but I really blacked out, at a level that I didn't even remember how I had slept.

I had already had some strange reactions to zolpidem. I once bought a t-shirt online. When it arrived, I had no idea when I bought it.

There were also days when I woke up with a bruise on my body, not knowing what had happened. This was because I had walked around the room while I should have been sleeping.

Even with all this, I continued taking zolpidem. It's like they say: the doctor is the worst patient in the world, because he knows the risks, he knows he's doing harm and, even so, he continues.

That day, June 29, 2022, I had arrived in the morning after another night shift and I couldn't sleep at all because there was a subway project near the building. The noise bothered me a lot and I took zolpidem, but I couldn't sleep. Afterwards, I believe I took about four pills, or more, at once. I turned it off.

I try to reconstruct in my memory what happened after that, but everything was completely erased. I think I opened the balcony door, which was small and close to the living room, to do something. After that, I just remember waking up in the ICU trying to understand what had happened.

Today, I believe I lost my balance somehow and fell from the seventh floor. My survival is a miracle, I don't know how to explain it. But I had several effects on my body, the main ones being the amputation of my right leg and the loss of vision due to the impact of the fall.

The police suspected a suicide attempt, but I knew I hadn't tried to take my life. The police investigation concluded that the accident was caused by the use of zolpidem, which has side effects such as hallucinations and sleepwalking.

I was hospitalized for 90 days. The support of my parents and my brother was fundamental during this period. They moved from Cuiabá to São Paulo so they could accompany me. Without them, I wouldn't have made it.

In 2024, I saw a report about a stem cell treatment in Thailand that promised to help restore vision. I made a crowdfunding online and t