Benzodiazepines - Freebase or Salt?

[Geist89]

Are benzodiazepines (e.g. clonazepam, alprazolam, diazepam, etc.) that are found in pills in freebase form or bound to an ion (i.e. making it a salt, like xxxxxx hydrochloride or xxxxxx phosphate)?

 

[Chaos Butterfly]

shifting to ADD...

 

[Ham-milton]

vast majority are freebases, they're difficult to make salts.

 

[Limpet_Chicken]

Chlorazepate is the only one I can think of, off the top of my head that comes as a salt

 

[immaturepoop]

vast majority are freebases, they're difficult to make salts.

Yo Ham, I've heard this before, but could someone explain to me why they are hard to convert into salts? On most like valium or temazepam I see a tertiary N that a H can attach to, or am I overlooking something? Maybe the triazolo ones like xanax that have some steric hindrance or others with their respective resonance forms that delocalize the lone pair into the ring decreasing the N's basicity. Hmmm, someone inform me! haha

 

[mindfaq]

Chlorazepate is the only one I can think of, off the top of my head that comes as a salt

Midazolam ist also available as the Hydrochloride and the Maleate.

For the majority of benzodiazepines there is simply no reason to make a salt, because the freebase is already a stable compound and gets quickly resorbed in the gastrointestinal tract.

 

[djsim]

how can diazepam be made into an injectable formulation if its a freebase? In Other Drugs they always warn ppl not to IV benzos because they are so insoluble in water

 

[johanneschimpo]

insoluble in water, yes.
soluble in other things? yes.
thats how diazepam vials/amps are made
(don't feel like going into detail in what its soluble in, don't want to make anyone think its a good idea to do it)

 

[Jabberwocky]

propylene glycol could be used, but I don't know if thats safe to IV.

 

[djsim]

insoluble in water, yes.
soluble in other things? yes.
thats how diazepam vials/amps are made
(don't feel like going into detail in what its soluble in, don't want to make anyone think its a good idea to do it)

yep, I had a look at ingredients and I understand what you're saying now; the ingredients are almost identical to steroid (oil) preperations (1.5% benzyl alcohol, 5% benzyl benzoate, propylene glycol. I guess this is pretty standard across the board