My take is that eventually you'll need higher doses to sleep, that you'll become resistant to normal doses, and that it will lose effectiveness.
Then on nights you try to skip, you'll have worse insomnia. It's called rebound insomnia.
In reality, if you stop taking it, you'll go through several weeks of hell. But eventually, you will fall asleep.
I would try what experts call sleep hygiene. Several things you can do to make your body produce its own sleep hormones is to walk more and be more active (increases adenosine); regulate darkness, either by eliminating all ambient light (LEDs, blinking chargers, clocks, etc) or by wearing a an eye mask (increases melatonin). Also watch temperature, coffee intake, all the common sense things.
Then if you take ambien once in a while, you'll feel a lot better. You really can fall asleep without it. and it's okay for occasional use. Studies show it only adds about a half hour to total sleep.