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Barbiturates -- now nearly never prescribed -- are hypnotics, used predominantly as sleeping pills as late as the 1970s. They depress respiration and have a surprisingly low lethal dosage (which is why they're almost never given as a prescription anymore). Also, they have a deadly synergistic effect when combined with ethanol (booze) that makes them even more deadly.

They're highly addictive, not just in the habituating sense, but physiologically so. Stopping a barbiturate addiction cold turkey (all at once without help and without tapering off) may in and of itself be lethal, often causing convulsions. Detoxing barbiturates is an inpatient procedure and not a small one.

Development of tolerance is extremely rapid too.

Once a popular sleeping prescription and a huge black-market item, barbiturates are nearly gone, both from the legal and black-market drug scene.

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13y ago

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