"To Medicate or Not to Medicate?" or "My Collegues Are All Drug Addicts"

You get an unbelievable amount of advice on medications and sleeping aids. Especially in an office of international travelers.

I'm not one to take medication - aside from Advil - if I don't have to. But traveling to a foreign country it probably makes sense to be prepared. So, aside from the Travel Clinic prescribed Imodium, pepto, and emergency stomach Rx, I'm going to carry a pharmacy of sinus, cold, and allergy medications.

But the sleeping "aid" is one that continues to gnaw at me. I don't have a problem sleeping. My philosophy is that when you're tired, you'll sleep. But I've been asked so many times if I'm getting a prescription for Ambien, buying melatonin, or taking Benadryll, that I'm starting to doubt myself and think maybe I should.

Sleeping on a plane sucks. There's nothing you can do to get "more" comfortable in the 21 cubic inches your $2,500 airline ticket gets you. I believe that the next "stage" in airline flight are stand up pens, like cattle. So I won't sleep on the plane. And I've traveled overseas - a lot - to Israel and have never had a real problem with jet lag. But this is farther and the work expectation is slightly different. Nothing worse than falling asleep, face first, in your dim sum... So maybe a sleeping aid would be a good idea. Normally my colleagues travel with medical personnel - doctors and nurses - and the sleep medication is free flowing. A few glasses of wine and some medication handed to you by the foremost cardiac physician in the world is a little different than a ginger ale and a pill on your own.

Then the question is - when? Do I take it on the plane to sleep? We leave Detroit at 4:30 PM and arrive in China at 7:10 PM the next day. If I sleep on the plane like normal, won't I be wide awake when I arrive at bed time? As someone said to me, nothing worse than being awake at 2:00 AM in Shanghai.

Aside from the near nuclear meltdown happening "next door", this is the one thing that is worrying me. Some of you must be world travelers - what do you think?