Phoebe Judge

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The year the Canadian Supreme Court reviewed Kenneth Park's sleepwalking case, the FDA approved a new pill for insomnia, Ambien.

The most popular sleeping pill then, Halcyon, had been linked to suicide and psychosis and had been banned by the UK and several other countries.

In a few years, Ambien became a bestseller.

At first, the fine print warned that it could cause abnormal thinking, strange behavior, and hallucinations.

It said sleepwalking was possible but unusual, affecting one in a thousand people.

But then, people started to tell stories of taking Ambien, going to sleep, and waking up to see emails they didn't remember writing, receipts for things they didn't remember buying, and wrappers from food they didn't remember eating.

In April 2001, newspapers reported that R.E.M.

guitarist Peter Buck had been arrested at Heathrow Airport.

A few years later, in 2006, U.S.

Congressman Patrick Kennedy was seen speeding in the wrong lane of traffic on Capitol Hill in the middle of the night.

He hit a curb and then ran into a traffic barrier,

He told the police that he was on his way to vote.

But the House was not in session.

Later, he said he was disoriented because he'd taken an Ambien.

That year, a study found that the number of car crashes caused by people on Ambien was going up.

A group of people filed a class-action lawsuit against Ambien's manufacturer.

One plaintiff was a woman who'd been arrested for shoplifting DVDs and a candle from the Navy base where she worked.

Others found themselves sleep-eating or driving after they'd taken Ambien.

In March 2007, the FDA began requiring a stronger warning on the Ambien label and told the manufacturer to let doctors know about the risk of sleep-driving.