If used more than a day or two, sleeping pills can actually make insomnia worse, says Johns Hopkins sleep therapist Dr. David Neubauer.

``Tons of sleeping pills are devoured each night,'' says Dr. German Nino-Murcia, director of the Sleep Disorders Clinic at Stanford University. In fact, on any given night, about 2 percent of the USA has drugged itself to sleep, he says.

Still, drug-induced sleep is not normal; experts say sleeping pills interfere with the brain's electrical activity and disturb the phases of sleep.