Heath Ledger was one of my favorite actors. In fact, he may have been my favorite. So the news this morning that Ledger may have died from an overdose of Ambien both saddens me and pisses me off, and it also scares me a little bit.

Here’s why.

When I returned from my stint in Iraq in 2004, I was prescribed Ambien for difficulty sleeping. It worked like a charm…as long as I fell asleep before the drug really hit me. If I was awake when the effects began to hit, however, all bets were off. The stuff causes you to hallucinate in a bad way, and you completely lose control of your actions. I would end up running around outside my barracks, sometimes naked, and basically doing stuff that I (and most other humans) would never do. The worst part is that I wouldn’t remember anything the next day; I’d wake up and have to repair my room after completely destroying it, or make amends by apologizing to someone I’d offended the night before. You can read some of my thoughts on Ambien from May 2006 here.

In early 2005, I went to bed one night, and woke up the next morning in the hospital. I had taken a single Ambien to help me sleep, and apparently did not fall asleep before the effects hit me. At some point during the night, I had taken the entire bottle of Ambien — 30 pills, and ended up being taken by ambulance to the hospital and having my stomach pumped.

Heath Ledger’s death is incredibly sad. For the past 4 years, I’ve made it a point to see every film he’s in, just because I know it’s going to be great. He was an incredible actor, a REAL actor, someone who made you forget you were watching him play a role and instead feel like you were seeing the actual character. And I’ll tell you what - I’m furious that Ambien is apparently responsible for his death. This crap needs to be taken off the market, because it’s dangerous, it’s addictive, and it kills people. It very nearly killed me and now it’s taken the life of one of the best actors of my generation, and I’m pissed.