CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) - Be honest. Have you ever taken sleep or cold medication and thought you were still ok to drive?
Well, what if you couldn't remember driving?
Just ask Belinda Deese, who has taken sleep medication for years.
That's the grime reality she faces each time she takes medication to help her sleep.
"You know you're driving but you don't know where you are," she said. "I only take it when I have to take it. When I feel like I really need to sleep. If I was to take it every night to sleep, I would be a walking zombie."
A feeling she says doesn't hit her until the next day.
"It can be 12 o'clock the next day, it can be three o'clock the next day," said Deese. "It just feels like you've been out all night partying and you've been drinking. But you've been home sleeping."
Just ask her to recall a simple route she takes from her home daily in Union County.
"You can remember leaving your home but then you can't even remember getting to Monroe and that's like 15 minutes from my house," Deese said. "You know, what happened between Marshville and Monroe. You can't answer it."
The reason she can't answer it: entire blocks of her memory are gone, erased.
Deese is not alone.
70 million people nationwide suffer from sleep disorders, according to the U.S. Institute of Health.
Dr. Carolyn Hart, a sleep expert with Presbyterian Hospital, says you'd never know it just looking at the person in the car next to you.
"Their eyes are open," she said. "They're not driving with their eyes closed. They stop at stop lights, they put on their turn signal. They just don't know where they're going."
Since the sedatives in sleep medication only depress the central nervous system and don't shut it down, you can still perform tasks like driving, walking and even eating without realizing your doing it.
Trooper Derek Heintz with the North Carolina Highway Patrol said it's a problem he's seeing more and more.
"You'll get some people who say, I'm not impaired, I'm given it by a doctor," he recalled. "Well, just because you're given to it by a doctor doesn't mean your safe to drive on it."
A drug recognition expert, spotting this kind of impaired driver is Heintz's specialty.
"Pupil size, pupil reaction to light, blood pressure, pulse, muscle tone, body temp," he said, ticking off each telltale sign.
Even more disturbing, Dr. Hart said, it is not just prescription drugs you have to worry about.
"Tylenol PM, Advil PM, you know Nyquil," she said. "They have sedatives in them."
Whether prescription or over-the-counter meds, if you're caught driving while impaired, the you can face stiff penalties.
Your license could be revoked for a year and you could also face jail time, especially if you damage property, injure or even kill someone.
Deese have never been stopped but knows the risk each time she takes a single yellow pill.
"For something to happen, that would just be devastating."
Editor's Note: Deese also said she only takes the medication after several nights of sleeplessness. Even then, she tries to make sure someone can drive her where she needs to go.
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