Flying across time zones? Anxious and uncomfortable while doing so? We asked medical experts the pros and cons of five different sleeping aids.
If noise-canceling headphones don’t help you doze off, you may need to consider a more heavy-duty fix: sleeping pills for flights. Certainly, some flights don’t warrant sleeping aids—such as when you’re taking a short trip or traveling west against a time difference, says Aneesa Das, M.D., a sleep medicine specialist at the Ohio State University. For those flights, you may as well stay awake, she says. But if you’ll be on a plane overnight and waking up in a vastly different time zone (find our list of long flight essentials here), logging some shuteye on the plane is crucial to arriving refreshed—or close enough to it.
That’s when sleeping pills and supplements can help. For most people, they’re a reliable solution if they have trouble sleeping on planes, and they’re always a better option than ordering wine when the beverage cart rolls around. “Alcohol will allow you to fall asleep more quickly, however most people will then experience very disrupted and fragmented sleep quality,” says Thomas Kilkenny, M.D., director of the Institute of Sleep Medicine at Staten Island University Hospital.
Here’s what you should know—according to medical experts—about five of the most common sleeping pills for flights, including side effects to be aware of before you pop one.
This article has been updated with new information since its original publish date.
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Ambien
Ambien—the most powerful option on this list—is available by prescription only and works as a sedative-hypnotic medication that slows your brain activity to make you feel very sleepy. It’ll knock you out good—maybe even too good. Some users experience retroactive amnesia, which means you could wake up mid-flight, have a full conversation with the flight attendant, and have no memory of it hours later, Das says.
Ambien can also lead to unwelcome side effects like sleepwalking, which could result in some awkward bump-ins on the plane. “This is especially true if combined with alcohol or if not enough time is allowed for sleep,” Kilkenny says. He recommends having at least six or seven hours to sleep in order for the drug to metabolize, so avoid taking it on a short flight or when you have only a few hours to go before landing. But it’s not all bad: Zolpidem (the generic name for Ambien) has been shown to fight off jet lag, per a 2018 review article published in Springer. Lunesta and Sonata are two other prescription-only sleep aids which work similarly to Ambien (they’re collectively known as Z-drugs, or non-benzodiazepine sedative-hypnotics).
Rozerem
Rozerem (the brand name for ramelteon) is another sleep-aid medication available by prescription, but it isn’t as aggressive as Ambien. “It’s a melatonin receptor stimulant and is unrelated to the Z-pills,” Kilkenny says. It may be a more attractive option for travelers as it reaches peak levels quickly and has a very short half-life, which means it won’t linger in your system as long. You’ll want to take an 8 milligram (mg) dose 30 minutes before you want to doze off. It likely won’t knock you out as well as Ambien, but research published in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research in 2020 suggests that it will regulate your sleep-wake cycle to help your circadian rhythm adjust to a new time zone with fewer sleep disturbances if you take it once a day for five days starting with the day of your flight. Plus, it doesn’t come with the nasty side effects of the Z-drugs, like sleepwalking and retroactive amnesia, Kilkenny says.
Tylenol PM
The over-the-counter medication is easy to pick up at the drugstore when you’re stocking up on travel-sized shampoos and other carry-on essentials. Tylenol PM contains diphenhydramine, the same antihistamine found in Benadryl, which will likely put you to sleep easily. “The histamine system usually functions to activate parts of the brain, contributing to wakefulness and increased awareness,” Kilkenny says. You may pay the price, though, once you land. “It makes us feel really groggy when we wake up, and it can make us feel really hungover,” Das says. The antihistamine may also leave you with a dry mouth that those tiny airplane cups of water just can’t quench (not a good situation since flying in general can make you dehydrated thanks to low humidity levels when you’re up in the air). Still, Das says it’s okay to take Tylenol PM on a flight so long as you’ve tolerated it in the past.
Doxylamine (Unisom)
Doxylamine (sold under the brand name Unisom) is another antihistamine and acts similarly to Tylenol PM—dry mouth and grogginess side effects and all. Typically, you’ll want to take Unisom 30 minutes before you want to be asleep. It can leave you sleepy for up to eight hours and with a hangover effect that makes you feel groggy, mentally cloudy, and sluggish for several hours after awakening (though it affects people differently), Kilkenny says. You’ll want to reserve this medication for long flights without connections. “It’s easy to miss a connecting flight when you fall asleep at the next gate,” Kilkenny says. You can consider taking a half dose to mitigate how hard it hits you.
