Your doctor may prescribe a short-acting sleep medication for a few days, especially if insomnia is seriously interfering with your ability to function during the day. Newer sleeping pills, including zolpidem (Ambien), zaleplon (Sonata) and eszopiclone (Lunesta) appear to be safer and potentially more helpful medicines than other sleeping pills.

Other sleeping pills are not generally helpful for long-term use, although many people use them. Antihistamines such as diphenhydramine (Benadryl andTylenol PM) and doxylamine (Unisom) cause daytime drowsiness in many people. Treatment for longer than two weeks with trazodone (Desyrel) has not helped insomnia in studies of this medicine. Sedative drugs such as diazepam (Valium), triazolam (Halcion), lorazepam (Ativan), estazolam (ProSom) and temazepam (Restoril) are potentially addictive medicines, may require increasing doses to continue to have a treatment effect, and can cause insomnia as a withdrawal symptom after they are stopped. Melatonin, a dietary supplement, hardly had any effect on people in small studies who took it for treatment of insomnia.