Ambien manufacturer tells Roseanne: 'Racism is not a known side effect'

It’s certainly been a long year this month.

We have the usual nonsensical ramblings from someone who is supposed to be the leader of our country. Then we had the white woman who pretended to be black get charged with welfare fraud. Then there was the InfoWars-esque conspiracy theorist with a television show who got fired after the free market collectively agreed that she’s not that great of a person.

It feels like an SNL sketch, but it’s not.

(My partner in satire, James Schlarmann’s creation.)

I truly feel bad for the other cast members and crew of the show. It’s one thing for someone who has abhorrent views to get canned, but the schadenfreude ends when you consider that there are many other people who were depending on the project for income. Hopefully they’re able to find other employment quickly and easily.

But Roseanne’s Twitterstorm shouldn’t surprise anyone. She’s regularly said things that are just awful, such as:

and

and… Well, you get the idea.

But the most recent foray into stupid involved, of course, the racist tweet about a former member of Obama’s administration… To which Roseanne had an interesting rationalization for.

It’s interesting when you consider how Ambien works:

Ambien works by activating the neurotransmitter GABA and binding it to the GABA receptors in the same location as the benzodiazepines such as Xanax and Valium. The extra GABA activity triggered by the drug inhibits the neuron activity that is associated with insomnia. In other words, it slows down the brain. Ambien is extremely effective at initiating sleep, usually working within 20 minutes. It does not, however, have an effect on sustaining sleep unless it is taken in the controlled release form.

As someone who has been prescribed Ambien before, it’s best to take it and go to sleep. But sometimes you wake up and don’t remember it. I once made a lot of popcorn for myself, ate all of it, and had no recollection of it. There are other documented cases of people driving, getting citations, and having no idea because they were “Ambien Sleepwalking.” It’s pretty scary, and it’s why I stopped taking Ambien a while ago.

So should Roseanne get a break for the “bad joke” in this case?

Are you excused from liability if you drunkenly say something stupid, such as “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world!” or something similar? These thoughts had to have been already in their heads. Ambien, alcohol, whatever it is just lowered their brain’s word filter, so they spilled out.

The manufacturer of Ambien had this to say regarding the issue:

I’ve written before about how much I enjoy it when brands show some personality on social media. Sanofi is no different here.

When you are awake at 4:30 in the morning for no GD reason and you check Twitter to find that (on the day you need her most) your good pal Ambien is being dragged through the mud pic.twitter.com/Uw7OB4ZYy1

— Anna Kendrick (@AnnaKendrick47) May 30, 2018