Tranquilizers

1 - TRANQUILLIZERS (Major and Minor)- The New York Times and the National Commission on marijuana and Drug Abuse each did a separate study on tranquillizers. They discovered that an average of one out of six Americans takes some form of tranquillizer regularly.

Valium is the most potent tranquillizer-and it is the most prescribed drug in the United States . Librium, a chemical relative of Valium that is about one-fourth as powerful, is the third most prescribed drug in the nation.

Yet other studies, overseas, indicate that Japan and Europe have tranquilizer sales that are equally as high and sometimes higher.

On every "most abused drug" list, tranquillizers are always fourth highest, after alcohol, nicotine, and aspirin. There are far more prescription tranquilizer users in America than there are illegal drug users.

The major tranquillizers include the phenothiazines (chlorpromazine, for example) and reserpine. They are used on mental patients, to keep them calm. But an overdose of these drugs produces a deepening state of unconsciousness, a fall in body temperature and blood pressure, and eventual respiratory failure. The breathing stops and death results.

The effects produced by an overdose are long lasting, and the victim must be watched carefully as long as severe central nervous system depression persists.

The minor tranquillizers are used to calm anxiety and other feelings of stress and excitement without producing sleep. At higher dose levels, their effects are practically identical to those of sedative hypnotics.

Here are some of the leading minor tranquillizers: chlordiazepoxide (Librium), diazepam (Valium) meprobamate (Miltown, Equanil), and ethchlorvynol (Placidyl).

Prolonged administration of a minor tranquilizer, with a tendency to increase the dose, can cause psychic and physical dependence (addiction). All of the essential characteristics of dependence on minor tranquillizers and the related withdrawal symptom are similar to those produced by barbiturates (set chapter on "barbiturates").

Increasing the dose is a primary problem with the tranquillizers. Drugs are dangerous, and those brave enough to take them should be made aware of the side effects and problems that can develop. Surely, no one would wish to experience any of the side effects described in this chapter or the one on barbiturates.