Americans are drugging themselves to sleep more than ever, says a five-year government study, the first ever to track use of sleeping pills in the U.S. About 8.6 million Americans take prescription drugs like Lunesta and Ambien to get to sleep—about 4 percent of the adult population over 20. That’s in addition to a Thomson Reuters study that found sleeping prescriptions had tripled among people under 45. The new study found that drug use started increasing with age, with people in their 40s and 50s more likely to start medicating to get sleep.
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