Pharmaceutical sleep aids. In 2006, consumers spent $3.6 billion on prescription sleep medications, up 29% from 2005, according to health care and pharmaceutical consulting company IMS Health. It reports that more than 48 million sleep-aid prescriptions were written last year

The FDA acknowledges those side affects are quite rare. So what alternatives are available if you don’t want to turn to prescriptions?

More than a dozen reports of patients having sex, binge eating, driving or making telephone calls while taking sleeping pills have been submitted to the FDA, said Russell Katz, director of the agency’s neurology division. The patients didn’t remember what they did.

Exhaustion reduces the body’s ability to fight disease. It diminishes mental sharpness, leading to poor judgment and delayed reaction time — critical factors while driving a car, say, or caring for small children. Drowsiness or driver fatigue is cited by police as a factor in 56,000 accidents annually.