Ambien?

[mississippiRN71]

Hi everyone. Has anyone had Ambien show up on their drug screen as benzos? I googled it and it says it doesn't but it rare cases it would show up as a benzo.

Thanks!

[New mommy 26, BSN, RN]

Ambien is a controlled substance. I would be shocked if there was not a test they use to test for it.

[hppygr8ful, ASN, RN, EMT-I]

In California I had to stop taking Ambien as a stipulation of my contract. They do test for it ! My PCP and I looked at all the available non-comtrolled options for sleeplessness and went with remeron. It wasn't perfect but over the five years of my contract I participated in sleep study and also learned to train my brain for sleep.

Hppy

[KyBeagle, ASN]

When I joined the KARE program in 2014, the case manager mentioned that they had 1-2 nurses that they tested regularly for Ambien. Of course, she reminded me that ANY of us could be tested at any time for it.

I was allowed to take Benadryl while in the program since I had a prescription for it. That one never caused any false positives for me. I have heard of others receiving a false positive for PCP with the initial immunoassay but further gc/ms testing correctly identified it as Benadryl.

[gettingbsn2msn, MSN, RN]

My recruiter told me to stop ambien for 7 days. She said this even though I have a legal RX. She was sure it would show up on a test.

[DistressedRN]

There is a specific test for Ambien and it is frequently added onto the testing panels on nurses in monitoring contracts. It is on the big no-no list for people in recovery, as it alters your LOC and is habit forming.

[scerrn90]

There's a specific drug test. Ambien was one of my addictions. I had been on it a decade (since the ripe ole' age of 18) and they did a librium trial to get me off. This week my rehab (I'm in intense outpatient rehab for 8 weeks on top of the 5 year board program) program sent out my urine without telling me and it was negative for ambien.