In my experience with sleeping pills, I’ve been able to run through quite a few.  My favorite was actually Lunesta.  It came out some time after Ambien, and it was supposed to be the one that didn’t get addictive, didn’t cause weird behavior, etc.  I never really had a problem with addiction in my life anyway, but it worked well.  The one thing about it was that if you didn’t keep it far away from your tongue, it had a horrible taste. 

Most pills have no taste, but this was distinct as anything.  Anyway, after about a year, the effects actually wore off, and then I moved onto other things in general as far as sleeping pills.  But from what I’ve found it really does depend on the person as to what works.  My mom used Ambien for a while and due to addictive tendencies, she ended up going to what they call “sleepy time tea.”  It works for her now, and she has a whole routine actually that she goes through. 

On the other hand, my cousin swears by valerian root. I have tried sleepy time tea with the whole routine, cutting out all caffeine, etc, and it doesn’t work for me the same way.  Actually, when I cut out all caffeine, I was just tired all the time and yet still couldn’t fall asleep which left me not sleeping at night and non functional during the day.  But I lasted about a month trying to get my body to adjust back, it never did.  So with sleep aids, unfortunately it’s one of those things that you have to base it on you rather than everybody else.