After the comedian partly blamed her controversial tweets on taking the sedative, drug-maker
Sanofi released a statement
The drug manufacturer Sanofi felt compelled to clarify that one of its most popular medications, the sedative
Ambien, does not cause
Racism. They tweeted that “while all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication”.
The company’s statement comes after
Roseanne Barr partly blamed the drug for the series of racist tweets which led to her sitcom being cancelled.
Barr tweeted: “It was 2 in the morning and I was ambien tweeting — it was memorial day too — i went 2 far & do not want it defended — it was egregious Indefensible. I made a mistake I wish I hadn’t but...don’t defend it please.”
The medication guide that comes with every bottle of Ambien lists potential activities that may occur under the influence of the drug. While it does not mention Twitter outbursts, it does warn of a wide-variety of other potential activities: “You may get up out of bed while not being fully awake and do an activity that you do not know you are doing. The next morning, you may not remember that you did anything during the night ... reported activities include: driving a car (″sleep-driving″), making and eating food, talking on the phone, having sex.”
In a separate tweet Barr herself said she was “not giving excuses for what I did” but that she had previously “cracked eggs on the wall at 2am” after taking the drug.
Replying to the radio host David Pakman she also wrote: “I have had odd ambien experiences on tweeting late at night-like many other ppl do. I BLAME MYSELF OK? it’s just an explanation not an excuse, Ok, bully?”
Barr’s tweet led to Ambien quickly becoming a meme on social media with many people suggesting that other heinous acts in history were the result of taking the drug.
Barr did not say whether her decade-long history of racially-charged tweets and promotion of conspiracy theories also occurred under the influence of Ambien.