drugtalk.myfreeforum.org

admin · Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2006 12:35 pm Post subject: What are they?

Barbiturates are central nervous system depressants. They act in a similar manner to alcohol and slow down many areas of the brain. Drugs of this class are known as sedative/hypnotics, in that they can be used as sedatives to calm people and also (at higher doses) as hypnotics to assist sleep.

Medicinal uses

Through the early 1900's barbiturates were prescribed widely for anxiety and insomnia and were also used in conjunction with amphetamines to treat depression. Prescription of barbiturates increased markedly in the late 1950's and 1960's, when up to 500,000 people in the UK were estimated to be taking them, with nearly one quarter of these patients dependent upon them. Their widespread availability resulted in many deaths through accidental overdose and they were a common agent for suicide.

Concern about the addiction potential of barbiturates and the ever-increasing numbers of fatalities associated with them led to the development of alternative medications. With the discovery of a 'safer' alternative - the benzodiazepines - (see Tranquillisers) the medicinal use of barbiturates for treating anxiety and insomnia has been greatly reduced since the 1970's. Nevertheless, phenobarbital is still widely used as an anti-convulsant to control Epilepsy and other barbiturates are occasionally used to treat depression.

Abuse of barbiturates

Unlike many other drugs of abuse, barbiturates are rarely produced in clandestine laboratories. Generally, legitimate pharmaceutical products are diverted to the illicit market through forged prescriptions etc., although many barbiturates are also illegally imported from foreign manufacturers.

Barbiturates are generally nicknamed "barbs" or "downers" by drug abusers - or called other names, often based on the color of the capsule, such as "reds" or "yellows". Barbiturates that used to be very commonly abused included amobarbital (Amytal), pentobarbital (Nembutal), and secobarbital (Seconal). As they are not prescribed much these days, these drugs have only a limited presence in the illicit drug market, where they may be available as capsules and tablets or sometimes in a liquid form or suppositories.

Barbiturate sleeping pills are most often abused for their intoxicating effect. Abusers will usually swallow the drug, often with alcohol to increase the inoxicating effect. However, they are also sometimes injected by opening the capsules and dissoving the contents in water. Small particles of undissolved material used as 'bulk' within the capsules can block or damage veins.