Barbiturates - Overview
Overview
Barbiturates have an extremely high potential for abuse. Ever since their introduction in the early 1900s, barbiturates have been considered addictive drugs. Barbiturates slow down both the mind and the body. In his book A Brief History of Drugs: From the Stone Age to the Stoned Age, Antonio Escohotado pointed to their "high capacity to produce numbness" by putting the user in a state somewhere between drunkenness and sleep. Aside from those effects, he continued, is their "almost inevitable ability to kill in high doses: a detail that converted these drugs into the most common means of committing suicide" from the 1940s through the 1960s.
Discovered in the 1860s
The story of barbiturates began "when a chemist combined animal urine and acid from apples," explained Clayton. That chemist was German professor and future Nobel prizewinner Adolf von Baeyer (1835–1917). The substance he created became known as barbituric (bar-bih-CHUR-ik) acid. It received its name because Baeyer first produced it on St. Barbara's Day (a day of religious recognition observed each year on December 4) of 1863.
Following Baeyer's discovery, two German researchers, Dr. Joseph von Mering (1849–1908) and Nobel prizewinner Emil Hermann Fischer (1852–1919), produced barbital, the first barbiturate. Barbiturates are compounds derived from barbituric acid. Doctors recognizedbarbital'ssleep-enhancingeffectsasfar back as 1882. More than twenty years later, in 1903, barbital was marketed as a sleeping pill under the brand name Veronal. The second barbiturate, phenobarbital, arrived on the scene in 1912 under the name Luminal. Since then, several thousand barbituric acid-type drugs have been synthesizedMade in a laboratory.. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, only about twelve were still being used.
Barbiturates were found to reduce the activity of nerves that control emotions and bodily functions such as breathing. Because of the drugs' soothing effects, they were commonly prescribed as sedatives for nearly fifty years. Other uses include epilepsyA disorder involving the misfiring of electrical impulses in the brain, sometimes resulting in seizures and loss of consciousness. treatment and anesthesia before surgery.
Intoxicating Effects Lead to Abuse
During the 1930s, many Americans received barbiturate prescriptions to help them sleep or relax. Barbiturates quickly gained a reputation as an intoxicant, a substance that makes users seem drunk. People began taking barbiturates as recreational drugs. They also began the dangerous practice of combining the pills with alcohol to increase the intoxication.
The 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act gave authority over drug production to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The federal agency used those powers to restrict access to drugs that had a potential for abuse or misuse. The use of barbiturates without a medical doctor's prescription became illegal in the United States. But that didn't keep the drugs from becoming more and more popular throughout the 1940s.
At that time, researchers in the United States and the United Kingdom began noticing a disturbing trend. Over the years, the production of barbiturates had grown from thousands to millions of doses per year. Higher rates of barbiturate production and consumption seemed to coincide with a growing number of deaths from barbiturate poisoning. As late as 1964, Joel Fort, author of "The Problem of Barbiturates in the United States of America," argued against the wide availability of barbiturates. "Despite conclusive evidence to the contrary," he wrote, "many physicians in the United States appear to think and act as though barbiturates are completely harmless drugs that can be prescribed in unlimited quantities." His report was prepared for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Downers and Uppers
The pairing of barbiturates with amphetaminesPronounced am-FETT-uh-meens; stimulant drugs that increase mental alertness, reduce appetite, and help keep users awake. became a significant problem throughout the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. It all began when record numbers of people started taking barbiturates to help them sleep at night. To counteract the grogginess and lack of energy they suffered the next morning, users would take amphetamines to help them wake up. Amphetamines are stimulantsA substance that increases the activity of a living organism or one of its parts. or "uppers." At night, users still "up" from an amphetamine HIGH would take "downers," or barbiturates, to rid themselves of their extra energy and get to sleep. The next day the drug-taking cycle would start again. The regular use of barbiturates with amphetamines was so widespread by the 1950s that the U.S. government classified them as the most abused drugs in the country.
New Generation, New Drugs
During the 1960s, a new generation of young people began experimenting with a wide variety of mind-altering substances. Barbiturates were among the drugs abused by these new users, mainly because the pills were widely available and frequently used by the generation that came before them—their parents. According to the 1972 Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs, 10 billion barbiturate doses were scheduled for production in 1969 alone. That figure represented an 800-percent increase in the amount produced twentyseven years earlier in 1942.
Passage of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) in 1970 restricted access to barbiturates in the United States. Another category of anti-anxiety drugs, the benzodiazepines (pronounced ben-zoh-die-AZ-uh-peenz), were promoted as a safer alternative to
Drugs and Fame
"Until recently," wrote Paul M. Gahlinger in Illegal Drugs: A Complete Guide to Their History, Chemistry, Use, and Abuse, "about 3,000 people a year died from barbiturates, about half of them suicides." Film star and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe died of an overdose on August 5, 1962, after taking nearly fifty Nembutal tablets. The popular blonde had appeared in such films as Some Like It Hot, How to Marry a Millionaire, Bus Stop, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Her death was controversial as it was deemed a suicide. But many of her fans insisted that she would never take her own life.
Other celebrity deaths can be attributed to barbiturate use as well. Electric guitarist Jimi Hendrix died of suffocation brought on by a barbiturate overdose on September 18, 1970. Hendrix thrilled audiences with his performance at Woodstock in 1969. Among his popular songs were "Purple Haze," "All Along the Watchtower," and an electrifying guitar rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner."
Barbiturates may have played a role in the death of Elvis Presley, the King of Rock 'n' Roll, as well. He died on August 16, 1977, of a drug overdose. A mixture of methaqualone, morphine, codeine, and several barbiturates were found in his system at the time of his death. (Entries on
each of these drugs are available in this encyclopedia.) Remembered for his many movies, he recorded such hits as "Hound Dog," "Jailhouse Rock," "Love Me Tender," "Don't Be Cruel," and "Return to Sender." Each year, thousands of people visit his former home, Graceland, in Memphis, Tennessee.
barbiturates. Prescriptions for benzodiazepines rose because health providers considered them less addictive than barbiturates, with a lower risk of accidental overdose among users. As barbiturates became harder to obtain, drug abusers turned to other illegal substances during the 1970s and 1980s. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reports indicate that the use of marijuana, heroin, and cocaine began to rise after 1970.
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