Insomniacs and healthy controls prescribed popular sleep medications (for example, Sonata and Lunesta) slept on average the same number of hours (about six hours and twenty minutes) as those prescribed a placebo, and they fell asleep only fourteen minutes faster, despite sometimes also reporting memory lapses the next day.69 To quote Jerome Siegel, “In twenty years, people will look back on the sleeping-pill era as we now look back on the acceptance of cigarette smoking.”
