Wise Man Say, "Don't Double Dose."

Xanax has a 5 hour half life.

Just to clarify this - 5 hours after taking a Xanax, only half of it remains in your system.  In other words, if you take a Xanax at 11:00 P.M., and you wake up at 4:00 A.M., you can't count on the drug to lull you back into your dreams.  On the bright side, you've just enjoyed 5 hours of heavy, drug-induced sleep.

Now that I have stated scientific fact, I would like to take a moment to negate this because it can not be counted as gospel truth.  However, what can be assumed is -

Don't mix drugs.

Let's assume I have a gut-wrenching, hacking, keep-everybody-up-all-night kind of a cough.  For reasons I can not, for the life of me, understand, my sons are sleeping in my room with my husband and me.  One politely takes a spot on the floor.  The other is still referred to as "Oedipus."

So now we'll assume that I take the cough syrup that contains a trace of codeine.  Not enough to wake up with a hangover, but enough that my cough will be suppressed.  Yay.  We all sleep.

Or not.

Assume we stay up another couple of hours enjoying cough-free reading time.  Finally, we (when I say "we," I mean "I") stumble into bed, land on a child, scoot him over, spend the next 45 minutes wrestling for our (again, "my") spot, settling in, listening to the cat insist she is ready to go outside, let her out then be ready - REALLY ready to fall asleep.

But then the cough kicks in.

I know the cough syrup is still in my system and I really don't want to take any more of it but after an hour or two, I've disturbed the boys' sleep and coughed up a lung and maybe even a hairball. . . possibly the cat.  So I take a Xanax and settle on the couch.  Theoretically speaking, I'll be up and at 'em in 5 hours.  Right?

Three hours later, my oldest teen comes upstairs to eat breakfast.  I manage to drag myself back to my bed.

An hour later Scott informs me he's taking the 5th grader to school and the 7th grader is waiting for carpool.

Half hour later I find my bed empty and my 5 year old is getting dressed.  He assures me that the 7th grade sister has gone to school and he wants to play Wii.  But not until he gets dressed and eats his breakfast.

45 minutes later, he asks if I want him to make me breakfast, too.  I stumble out and find he has made his toast, sprinkled cinnamon sugar, cleaned up, and is waiting for me to turn on the Wii.  I set the kitchen timer just in case.

25 minutes later he wakes me up.  His shoes are on.  He's wearing his jacket and backpack.  He's ready to go to school.

Someone should really put a warning label on that stuff.