The amount of North Americans who are dependent on sleeping pills is unfathomable.

There's clear guidance that sedative use for any more than a few days/few weeks more or less irrevocably harms the natural sleep-wake cycle and makes people permanently dependent on pills to sleep in any form, even with tolerance building and diminishing returns.

Most patients don't give a shit. They only can about getting to sleep tonight ASAP and don't see anything wrong with requiring a pill every night for decades, other than occasionally coming back demanding "something stronger" when it evitably stops working.