I have difficulty sleeping, so I take Ambien. It works well, but sometimes I feel aggressive the next day. It’s not like I’m driving my car into people, but I feel like I could contemplate doing that. Is there some way to counteract this feeling?
B.F., Baltimore, Md.
Dear B.F.,
I, too, have taken Ambien, and while I found it effective, it caused me to dream that I was Alex Trebek.
As someone who once thought for 10 minutes about becoming a physician, I recommend that you cease taking Ambien immediately, and see if these thoughts about driving your car into people also cease. If they don’t, we have another problem here. In the meantime, my suggestion for when you’re having difficulty falling asleep: warm milk, stewed peaches, and Harper’s magazine.
Unfortunately for me, I share a name with a notorious political figure, and my name is also the name of my business. I’ve been in business longer than he’s been notorious, but now I get jokes about it all the time, and I wonder if I’m losing business because of this.
J.E., Atlanta, Ga.
Dear J.E.,
Rebranding a company with a troubled history, or renaming a product with unfortunate associations, is often a necessary act of self-protection. The makers of the diet drug Ayds, which was popular in the early 1980s, did not move quickly enough to change their product’s name, for instance. And it’s recently come to light that before he was killed, Osama bin Laden, realizing that al-Qaeda was a damaged brand, proposed renaming his organization the “Monotheism and Jihad Group.” (My own suggestions would have included “Snowcones and Monotheism” and “Altria.”)