Zolpidem may cause serious or possibly life-threatening sleep behaviors. Some people who took zolpidem got out of bed and drove their cars, prepared and ate food, had sex, made phone calls, sleep-walked, or were involved in other activities while not fully awake. After they woke up, these people were unable to remember what they had done. Tell your doctor if you have ever had an unusual sleep behavior while taking zolpidem. Be sure that your family or caregiver are aware that these symptoms are serious and to call your doctor if they occur. Stop taking zolpidem and call your doctor right away if you find out that you have been driving or doing anything else unusual while you were sleeping.
It’s a crap calculation but dementia years away is better than a life without proper sleep. You might not make it to those dementia years or skip it through some other process-like not triggering it. I’ve accepted similar trade offs with medication for chronic migraine (as in literally every day sometimes multiples per day). Functioning today definitely matters more than decades down the road if that’s what it truly takes.
People making choices of that sort are almost always much more afraid of something else, that "something else" being what happens if they don't treat for X. If they had better options, they would be all over them.
Zolpidem may cause serious or possibly life-threatening sleep behaviors. Some people who took zolpidem got out of bed and drove their cars, prepared and ate food, had sex, made phone calls, sleep-walked, or were involved in other activities while not fully awake. After they woke up, these people were unable to remember what they had done. Tell your doctor if you have ever had an unusual sleep behavior while taking zolpidem. Be sure that your family or caregiver are aware that these symptoms are serious and to call your doctor if they occur. Stop taking zolpidem and call your doctor right away if you find out that you have been driving or doing anything else unusual while you were sleeping.
https://medlineplus.gov/druginfo/meds/a693025.html